Julian Ageyman gives the keynote address Monday morning to AASHE 2010 attendees. Ageyman focused on "just" sustainability that incorporates social and environmental justice.
Julian Ageyman, co-founder and co-editor of the international journal ‘Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability,’ opens up the Monday morning AASHE conference talking about ‘just sustainability.’ ‘Just’ sustainability is re-imagining (e)quality, living within environmental limits.
Ageyman quotes Ghandi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” He follows up with a question, “Are we being the change we want to see in the world?”
“We will only have environmental well-being when we have human well-being,” said Ageyman. The environmental has this message of “saving the world” and therefore being equitable. However, Ageyman argues that human equality and environmental equality are intrinsically linked, and yet many environmentalists choose to not look “inward” in many cases. Speaking with a UK group of Greenpeace, Ageyman asked if they consider social equality in their environmental work. Their response: “Equity, that’s not an issue for us. We’re here to save the world.”
The two paradigms: sustainability and environmental justice. More than 40 percent of the cities in the US had sustainability projects displayed on the Internet. However, only five cities talk about environmental justice, linking sustainability and social justice. He purposes rethinking sustainability so that it includes environmental justice and social equality.
Healthy human habitats are the common denominator between sustainability and environmental justice. He asks, can we create campuses that involve healthy human habitats? Do we bring these paradigms together through coalitions or movement fusion? The Clean Buses for Boston was an environmental justice/sustainability coalition that focused on an agenda that all could agree on and delivered 350 CNG buses.
There’s a lot of evidence that the two paradigms can be fused, but the bridges have to be built to create a more powerful and impacting movement. The ideas are not that dissimilar, only the groups are because they choose to be.
Environmental space is the idea that there is a theoretical consumption space. If humans fall below the ‘dignity’ floor their quality of life a below the UN’s $1 a day poverty level, the minimum resource to ensure quality of life. The over consumption ceiling is where most people (at the conference) sit or are above, maximum use of the Earth’s capacity feasible without depleting natural resources. The “environmental space” in between is the equitable consumption arena.
Spatial justice focuses on the geographical distribution of equality rather than social inequality. “We are facing an era where patterns of design and management exclude some people,” said Ageyman, “And reduce social and cultural diversity.” He looks at park benches that cater to 2 children, 2 parent families rather than large extended families common in other cultural groups. This is both a design and cultural competency issue.
Another example of spatial justice/injustice looks at coffee shops in Gothenburg, Sweden and Campbridge, Mass., and the view from the coffee shop window. In Sweden, there is a pedestrian right of way and an equity of transportation, where as in Cambridge the rule is that the bigger you are the more right of way you have. What does this say to kids growing up?
In campus sustainability images, are not usually outreach but “greening” the campus photos of solar panels and recycling. “We need to broaden our scope of sustainability on campus,” said Ageyman. “We need to move toward ‘just’ sustainability.” Measure what matters, ‘just’ sustainability indicators: tenure/earnings by ethnicity, average income disparity between highest and lowest earners, number of people who use the counseling center on campus, number of rapes and hate crimes on campuses, etc. (indicators that Ageyman’s class looked at on Tufts’s campus).
If this movement is going to work it has to reach across the broad spectrum of student groups on campus from the environmental groups to the LBGTQ groups, for example.
Last notes: 1) focus on both environmental equality and human equality, 2) re-imagine sustainability and broaden our definition, 3) measure what matters in terms of whole campus well-being, 4) develop coalitions with groups on and off campus, 5) model our campus sustainability organizations around ‘just’ sustainability
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