Emerging themes in sustainability and the need for applied systems solutions

30 August 2007

Author:

Simon Chun Kwan Chui,
Master of Architecture student at The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Email:

sckchui@gmail.com

Based on research for a Master of Architecture degree supervised by Dr. Ross Jenner of The University of Auckland

Abstract

The world since the industrial revolution has seen improvements to human welfare on a massive scale, but also environmental problems on a massive scale. A summary of the emerging sustainability fields of environmental economics, industrial ecology, sustainable urbanism and lean management reveals a call for a sophisticated whole-system perspective in tackling these problems, emphasising decentralised and streamlined relationships between system elements. Taken as a whole, these initiatives indicate a cross-discipline paradigm-shift towards the application of systems theory as practical solutions to the shortcomings of industrialism, and suggest directions where future developments in systems theory and thinking will be most useful.

Conference themes

Organisational systems; Systems theory/systems thinking.

Keywords

Sustainability; resource depletion; environmental degradation; environmental economics; industrial ecology; sustainable urbanism; lean production; lean management; whole-system perspective; modularity; pervasive knowledge.

Introduction

Two of the most pressing problems in the contemporary world are resource depletion and environmental degradation, both results of the massive and pervasive industrialisation of human activity. While industrialism has provided tremendous improvements to human welfare over the past two and a half centuries, it also inherently neglects to factor in environmental constraints until substantial damage is done. This paper briefly summarises four fields that have emerged to address the shortcomings of industrialism, namely environmental economics, industrial ecology, sustainable urbanism, and lean management. This reveals some commonalities that suggest that a pervasive culture of sustainability, in contrast to the existing culture of consumerism, may be reached through the widespread application of systems theory to all facets of human endeavour. This paper identifies some specific issues where the application of systems theory will greatly benefit the continued development of the four fields.

The global industrial system

Industrialisation is a series of mutually supporting technological innovations developed some 250 years ago that changed human activity from predominantly agrarian to predominantly industrial (Grübler 1994). Practically synonymous with human activity, industry mobilises hundreds of billions of metric tonnes of raw materials every year (Hawken, et al. 1999: 50-53), extracting and transporting raw materials across the globe to sprawling factories and industrial zones to be transformed into the myriad consumer goods that are distributed to the cities and homes of the world’s consumer population (Graedel, et al. 1995: 8). In our industrial world, socio-economic success flows from technology applied to material production to maximise labour productivity (Kam 2001: 35-68, Swamidass 2000: 4).

Mass production and the division of labour

From the beginning of the industrial revolution over 200 years ago, the hierarchical subdivision of labour was identified as the basis of successful industrialism, utilising specialisation to enable improved worker skill and focus, and, most importantly, the utilisation of specialist tools and machines (Smith 1979: 110-115, Womack, et al. 1991: 12-13). Since 1750, human industrial output has grown by a about factor of 100, the outcome of the increasing utilisation of sophisticated mechanical tools to multiply labour productivity (Grübler 1994: 41). By all measures, overall human welfare has been improved by industrialisation: people live longer; infant mortality is reduced; food supply per capita is greater and more stable; people work fewer hours while output has increased; education levels have improved; and people are more likely enjoy the benefits of living in a democratic and pluralistic society (Goklany 2003: 195-198).

Resource depletion and environmental degradation

Despite the benefits of industrialism, there have also been substantial costs. Industrialism, by definition, is a process that transforms natural resources into human-made artefacts (Bourg 2003: 59), and the success of industrialism came hand in hand with the large scale depletion of natural resources and damage to the environment (Hawken, et al. 1999: 2). Of the hundreds of billions of metric tonnes of raw materials mobilised every year, some 90 percent are immediately discarded as they are not the resources that are actually desired, but only material that is disrupted by the processes of extraction (Graedel, et al. 1995: 19). Less than 2 percent of the material is actively recycled at the end of their use (Hawken, et al. 1999: 50-53), and only 1 percent remains in use within the system six months after its extraction (Dale 2006: 4). In other words, the industrial system is one where materials flow rapidly from un-extracted resource to discarded waste, in processes that involve substantial environmental disruption.

Four responses to environmental limits

In the past, the response to localised resource depletion has simply been to find more resources or to find substitutes (Bourg 2003: 58, Graedel, et al. 1995: 66), while the response to local environmental degradation has been to capture and control effluents and to remediate any damage done (Bringezu 2003: 21, Graedel, et al. 1995: 47). As both industrial activity and environmental constraints become increasingly global in scope, these responses become inadequate. The four developing fields summarised below take a different approach: they seek to address some fundamental shortcomings in traditional industrialism.

Environmental economics

Economics is the codification and quantification of human needs and wants, and the activities we conduct in order to satisfy them (Graedel, et al. 1995: 63-64). A primary shortcoming of current economic systems is the presence of “externalities”: activities that have real costs and benefits, but which are not entirely factored into prices, and therefore not fully accounted for in decision-making mechanisms (Graedel, et al. 1995: 86). The aim of environmental economics is to adjust market incentive/disincentive mechanisms so that as many externalities as possible are internalised, and that these enter decision-making processes early enough to significantly influence outcomes. Possible initiatives include waste taxes and recycling subsidies that reflect the true costs and benefits of these activities to society (Graedel, et al. 1995: 82, Griefahn 1994: 424-425, Hawken, et al. 1999: 41-42, 159-167), and the realignment of prices so that they focus on services provided, rather than on products sold, thereby removing the market’s emphasis on material throughput (Graedel, et al. 1995: 305, Hawken, et al. 1999: 10-11, Kazazian 2003: 85-86, Stahel 2003: 266). By adjusting the rules of the system, environmental economics hopes to address a dysfunction that pervades all aspects of the system at every scale.

Industrial ecology

Industrial ecology looks to natural ecological systems as a model for redesigning human industrial systems (Bringezu 2003: 20, Hawken, et al. 1999: 10). In contrast to the resource depleting model of human industrialism, material flows in natural ecosystems are overwhelmingly cyclic: the outputs of any one organism become inputs for other organisms, and the volume of material cycling within the system are much greater than the volume entering or leaving it. If human industry can successfully mimic this cyclic paradigm, then the problems of resource depletion and environmental degradation can be largely eliminated (Bringezu 2003: 22, Dale 2006: 3, Graedel 1994: 23-26, Graedel, et al. 1995: 93-94). The primary challenges of industrial ecology are the re-conceptualisation of “wastes” as “resources”, the development of process technologies that retain the embedded utility of residues from industrial processes (Graedel, et al. 1995: 113, 183-186), and the development of markets for the exchange and redeployment of these residual resources (Braungart 1994: 335-336, Graedel, et al. 1995: 83, Kincaid 2003: 97-99, Yap 2006: 101). From the perspective of industrial ecology, the industrial system is incomplete in its current configuration, so existing resource distribution mechanisms need to be extended and augmented to include residual products.

Sustainable urbanism

After Second World War, urbanism in the West has been characterised by substantial amounts of sprawl: low-density development that, while attractive and in demand in the market, require high infrastructure costs, consumes large amounts of land, and necessitates expensive private automobile use (Burchell, et al. 1998: 1-26, Grant 2006: 50-53). This unsustainable, consumerist approach to urbanism been met by initiatives like New Urbanism and Smart Growth that, among other things, advocate for geographical limits on urban development to preserve agricultural lands and natural habitats (Yaro 1999: 23-25), better integration and coordination of civic governance to prevent conflicting priorities in civic management (Orfield 1999: 65-69), and the creation of concentrated and mixed use neighbourhood centres to improve urban vitality (Barnett 1999: 73-77, Norquist 1999: 97-99, Plater-Zyberk 1999: 79-82). Most significantly, sustainable urbanism recognises that complex and highly interconnected urban influences require holistic solutions, and that attempting to address specific urban problems in a piecemeal manner will only aggravate system dysfunction.

Lean management

Under conventional management hierarchies, the increasing complexity of the subdivision of labour results in highly inflexible and unresponsive production systems. In aversion to costly stoppages, non-critical defects and mistakes are simply allowed to continue and be passed down the line to be remedied later. Processes are seldom changed or improved due to the high costs, resulting in unnecessary waste (Womack, et al. 1991: 12-14, 24-26). Lean production overcomes these shortcomings through pervasive modularisation, dividing the production line into discreet process stages that are linked together with streamlined communication and inventory management mechanisms. Each stage of the work is then associated with a work cell, a small and semi-autonomous team of multi-skilled workers. Responsiveness is improved by allowing routine decision-making to be done at a lower management level, and flexibility is increased as cells can be added to or removed from the system without disruption to the larger system. This reduces, with the aim of eliminating, the unnecessary and non-value-adding consumption of resources (Black 2000: 177-178, Feld 2001: 3-6, McCreery and Bloom 2000: 97-101, Womack, et al. 1991: 49-68).

Common strategies for systemic sustainability

On the surface, the four fields vary widely in scope and in focus. However, there are significant commonalities in the different approaches to addressing the shortcomings of contemporary industrialism. These commonalities, summarised below, indicate that the solution will involve the widespread practical application of systems theory. Although the concerns are conceptually separated into three major themes here, it should be noted that they are mutually supportive, and unlikely to be useful if each is considered and implemented in isolation.

Whole-system perspective

The most frequently expressed concern is the need for a whole-system perspective in process design and implementation (Fischer-Kowalski 2003: 44-45, Hawken, et al. 1999: 64, Hodge 2006: 159, Kazazian 2003: 85, Stahel 2003: 267-268). While the division of labour creates highly proficient specialisations, it does not guarantee that they will come together into a complete system. This is evident in a market system that neglects and inadvertently promotes resource depletion and environmental damage on a massive scale, in industrial systems that neglect the residues they produce (Graedel, et al. 1995: 8), and in a piecemeal approach to urban design that neglects the interdependency of social, economic, and infrastructural issues. In all cases, the benefits of specialisation need to be complemented by a whole-system perspective that creates an understanding of the relationship between each specialist and the whole system, allowing the active building of useful connections between entities in order to capture potential synergies and prevent dysfunctional system behaviour (Côté and Wallner 2006: 130, Dale 2006: 10, Gibson and Peck 2006: 137-138, Stahel 2003: 273). Obviously it would be counterproductive if increased connections between entities simply resulted in excessive complexity and information overload. Therefore, the challenge is to devise mechanisms to transfer and internalise only the useful types and amounts of information, and to devise mechanisms that can quickly detect and highlight the presence of externalities so that they can be acted upon.

Modular networks

A second major theme is the use of modularity as a means to achieve systemic flexibility and upgradability where modules can be added, subtracted, or modified with minimal system disruption (Duray 2000: 280-281, Stahel 2003: 272). The need is for modular systems where each module has the sufficient mix of resources to perform its function while remaining small enough to be agile and responsive (Graedel, et al. 1995: 328-332, Stahel 2003: 273-274). System-wide coordination is achieved through unobtrusive yet pervasive and powerful incentive/disincentive mechanisms that can translate overarching goals into specific actions to be performed in each module of management (Andrews 1994: 406-410, 412-415, Gibson and Peck 2006: 141-144, Graedel, et al. 1995: 80-82 293-295, Griefahn 1994: 424-425, Hawken, et al. 1999: 41-42, 90-93, 159-167, Panayotou and Zinnes 1994: 389-391, Stahel 2003: 271, Yap 2006: 105-107). This modularity retains the advantages of the specialisation and the division of labour while employing more flexible and streamlined connections between process segments that facilitate effective transfer of materials and knowledge, avoiding specialisation isolation. Minor disruptions are autonomously handled within modules, and are prevented from spilling out beyond individual modules to affect the larger system. The deployment and management of modules may be substantially automated by the careful design of rules and guidelines that determine optimum module size and composition in relation to the system, and the design of the mechanisms of exchanges between modules such that they network into a successful system.

Pervasive knowledge

Any system that is as complex and dynamic as cities or large industrial systems will exhibit unpredictable behaviour and non-linear interactions between elements (Bourg and Erkman 2003: 14, Gibson and Peck 2006: 139-140, Hawken, et al. 1999: 113-121, Hodge 2006: 159). In such a complex system, detailed centralised planning is impractical as it necessitates the collection and analysis of vast amounts continuously changing data in an attempt to monitor dynamic and multi-faceted situations (Lister 2006: 18-21). An alternative strategy is to incorporate into each system element effective feedback and feed-forward mechanisms that are designed to allow them to automatically optimise themselves in shifting conditions, which, in turn, allows the system to find its own “plan” (Hawken, et al. 1999: 127-131). Such a system would require a sophisticated and pervasive knowledge infrastructure to continuously collect accurate and useful information when and where it is generated, to be distributed to wherever feedback action is required (Hill 2006: 44-46). The point of pervasive knowledge is to avoid flooding a centralised decision-making mechanism with excessive data and to direct information effectively to wherever it will be useful, with minimum or no input necessary from a centralised decision-making mechanism. An essential aspect of pervasive knowledge is the translation of raw data from any one system element into information that will be useful and applicable to other system elements, or, in other words, the development of an effective knowledge infrastructure. The “pervasive” aspect of pervasive knowledge highlights the need for knowledge to be collected and be made applicable at all levels and in all situation; the knowledge infrastructure itself, like all the system elements that it serves, should have mechanisms that constantly collects and processes feedback information to ensure that it is functioning effectively.

Conclusion

Sustainability, in addressing the problems of resource depletion and environmental degradation in human industrialism, has identified the problem as an inability to sufficiently understand the complex interrelationships between all aspects of natural and human activity, and an inability to effectively coordinate the complexity of increasing specialisation. It is not surprising that the four fields summarised in this paper, in dealing with the problem of sustainability, all begin to look to concepts from systems theory for solutions to dealing with complexity across issues that vary so widely in scope and in focus. The significance is that these four fields do not simply propose to “patch up” industrialism’s negative symptoms with localised fixes; these are paradigm-shifting proposals that aim to reengineer the entire industrial system by reassessing its basic strategies and underlying assumptions. If these initiatives, and others like them, eventually come to affect every aspect and scale of human activity, just as industrialism has done in the past centuries, then it may be that the practical application of systems theory will also become as routine and commonplace as the tools of industrialism are today. Tools that will need to be developed will likely include: automated mechanisms for the collection, processing, and distribution of useful information at local and global scales; techniques for quickly detecting and highlighting the existence of externalities; a framework for assembling multi-skilled, self-managed teams as a module of a larger system, and; protocols and infrastructure for the streamlined transfer of information, materials and incentives between system elements.

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