1. The Natural Step City of Madison

2. What is Sustainability?
“Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
United Nations 1987 Brundtland Report - Our Common Future
A Sustainable City:
Balances environment, economy and social good
Recognizes a healthy environment underpins economic and social well-being

3. Madison’s Impacts on the Environment
The City’s domain:
750 miles of streets
3.7 million sq ft of office and buildings
54 million kWh of electricity and 1.3 million therms of natural gas
60,000 tons of garbage and recycling
6,000 acres of parks
2.3 million gallons of fuel for buses and fleet
City government -- as both consumer and steward of our environment and its resources -- must incorporate the principles of sustainability to ensure the needs of tomorrow can be met.

4. What is The Natural Step?
Initially formulated in 1989 by Karl-Henrik Robert, The Natural Step (or TNS) identifies basic scientific principles that act as a framework to help us think about the environmental impact of City programs and projects.
TNS provides common language and systems thinking to help us analyze the long-term impact of City facilities and operations on social and environmental sustainability.
TNS will help the City make greater progress toward sustainability.
Adopted by the City in Initial TNS training in 2006.

5. Key Elements of TNS Systems Thinking
Funnel metaphor
Four System Conditions
Strategic Planning Framework
ABCD / Backcasting 5

6. The Funnel as a Metaphor
As time goes by, population growth and consumer habits increase the demand on natural resources and the environment.
At the same time, the capacity of natural systems to accommodate that demand is shrinking.
The convergence of these two realities will restrict our options.
In a sustainable society, these two pressures are stabilized or even reversed.

7. Framework for planning in complex systems
Success
Strategy
This framework is generic to any complex planning endeavour in any complex system. In chess, which is a good example of a complex strategic game, the…
1…systems level is about the board, pieces and rules,
2…success level is the basic principles of check mate,
3…strategic level is about launching moves that (i) bring the game closer to checkmate, (ii) provide flexible platforms to future moves in same direction and are (iii) economic enough with the pieces.
4…actions level is every concrete move and
5…tools level is strategic patterns, documented games, statistical calculations and chess clock.
Action
Tools 7 7

8. Reductionism has its corresponding organizational structure in society, compartmentalization. It means that each societal sector and each science field is drilling deeper and deeper into their respective ’drillholes’ of increasing knowledge but with limited or no understanding of what is going on in the other drillholes. This is not a viable societal model for sustainable development. The question is – how do the drillholes connect, and how can we make better use of the deep knowledge from a holistic point of view? 8 8

9. Copyright © 2004 The Natural Step
Structured
overview
What we need is a structured overview, by which all the drill holes, represented by their respective experts, connect. An example is rational clinical conferences, when all experts – pathologists, physicians, surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers – have a shared mental model of the problem at hand. That shared mental model is the ’purpose’ – to cure ”Mrs Anderson”. None of the professional groups can cure Mrs Anderson with her serious disease on their own. But they can do it together because they have a strict shared mental model what it is all about – Mrs Anderson. Today the patient is the biosphere with its human society. It is suffering from the deadly disease ”un-sustainability”. To cure that disease we need economists, business people, politicians, scientists and other professional groups. But how could we cooperate, unless we share a good understanding of the disease?
Copyright © 2004 The Natural Step 9 9

10. Level 1, the Basic System (Cannot, and need not, be engineered)
Thermodynamics, biogeochemical cycles, interdependencies, resilience and adaptiveness…
So under the first level, we explored the biosphere, with its biogeochemical cycles and with its ecological tissue; and we explored the human society, with its relationship to the ecosystems through flows of resources/services/waste and with its social tissue. And we asked ourselves: “By what basic mechanisms do we destroy this system?” 1 10 10 10

11. Sustainability – a systems perspective
Matter & energy do not disappear
Matter and energy can only be transformed.
The earth is a closed system with respect to matter.
Energy enters the system as solar energy and leaves it as heat radiation.
i.e. nothing disappears
earth has same mass as 4.5.billion years ago
carbon in your body in dinosaur
fuel in your car doesn’t disappear

12. Sustainability – a systems perspective
Matter & energy tend to disperse
All processes irreversibly disperse matter (and energy) into ever more chaotic states.
This is the 2nd law of thermodynamics (law of entropy)
i.e. everything disperses
car to rust, carpet to dust, ink in water, etc.

13. TNS System Conditions for A Sustainable Society
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing: 1
concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust
concentrations of substances produced by society
degradation by physical means
and, in that society…
people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. 2 3 4 3 2
To define sustainability, then, we take those 4 basic mechanisms through which we are disrupting natural cycles and causing the system to break-down, and we insert a “not” at the start.
These are the principles or conditions of sustainability, rooted in science and in systems-thinking.
In a sustainable society, nature is not…
…and in that society, people are not subject to…
Mine and disperse materials at a faster rate than they can be redeposited into the Earth’s crust;
Produce substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes; if they can be broken down at all;
Deplete or degrade resources at a faster rate than they are replenished (over-harvesting trees or fish) or by other forms of ecosystem manipulation (paving over fertile land or causing soil erosion);
Create conditions that increasingly undermines peoples capacity to meet their needs. 4 1
Slide provided by TNS Canada

14. Ecosystem Services: The multitude of resources and processes supplied by natural eco systems
Ex: Clean water, timber, fish habitat, pollination
Moderate weather extremes and their impacts
Purify water and air
Detoxify and decompose waste
Maintain biodiversity
Disperse seeds
Mitigate drought and floods
Cycle and move nutrients
Pollinate crops and natural vegetation
Regulate disease carrying organisms
Control agricultural pests

15. System Condition 1
In a sustainable society, nature
is not subject to systematically
increasing:
… concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust;
We cannot take more from the Earth’s crust than is redeposited again or is kept in tight technical loops to avoid dissipation to natural systems.
We are releasing billions of years of sequestered material (esp. oil and gas) over a very short period of time into the biosphere.
Nature cannot tolerate this, as the substances are either directly toxic to living systems, or they alter the physiochemical conditions that are necessary to support life.
Other notes:
Yes, we will require metals, but the question is how do we extract them, and from where, and do we allow them to be used in dissipative ways?
No, no fossil fuels are part of this future unless you’re directly injecting carbon back into the wells.
Inefficient Use
Efficient Use
Dissipative Use
Tight Technical Cycles
Scarce metals
Abundant metals
Fossil Fuels
Renewables

16. System Conditions 1 - 3
98,000 pounds of mercury are emitted by hundreds of coal-burning plants across the U.S.A.
-98,000 pounds are “emitted” (by smokestacks) but the real total is closer to 200,000 pounds, due to effluent and other types of contamination-methylmercury is highly toxic to human cognitive function, and it’s none too good for the fish, either
When mercury-contaminated effluent seeps into rivers, a compound named methylmercury, a neurotoxin, forms.

17. System Conditions 1 – 3
Before the industrial age the CO2 levels stood at 280 parts per million. In 2004 it was 379 ppm. This change has occurred at least 10 times faster than any increase in the last 500,000 years.

18. System Condition 2 …concentrations of substances produced by society;
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
…concentrations of substances produced by society;
Dissipative use
Persistent and Unnatural
Abundant and breakdown easily
Tight Technical Cycles
Inefficient use
Efficient use
We cannot emit more waste products than nature can process.
Two parts to the problem:
a) We are producing substances that are alien to nature
b) We are producing substances familiar to nature at a rate faster than it can cope with, leading to accumulation
Society produces over 70,000 synthetic chemical compounds commercially, many of them persistent as they cannot easily be metabolized by the biosphere.
Examples include DDT, PCBs, CFCs, endocrine disrupters leaching from plastics (gender benders!)

19. System Conditions 1 – 3
A comprehensive study by the US Centre for Disease Control revealed 13 pesticides in the body of an average American
-stats from study via Globe&Mail article
-survey good quality: 93% of Americans have chlorpyrifos, another toxic pesticide
-shows the persistence of these substances in our environment - link back to Basic Science of TNSF
99% of Americans, including all children born in recent years, had
DDT residues, a pesticide banned since 1972!

20. System Condition 3 … degradation by physical means;
In a sustainable society, nature
is not subject to increasing:
… degradation by physical means;
We must not systematically undermine the ability of nature to “pay the bills”, as photosynthesis is the only large scale net producer of order on Earth.
We must also maintain its productive capacity.
Currently we are experiencing worldwide deforestation, soil erosion, increased salinity of soils, infertility of soils, depletion of fisheries, and loss of biodiversity.
Inefficient use of resources and land
Resources from poorly managed ecosystems
Resources from well-managed ecosystems use
Efficient use of resources and land

21. The Funnel Paradigm Original Forest Cover Remaining Frontier Forests
80% of the worlds frontier forests (large, natural, self-contained ecosystems) have been cleared, fragmented or degraded. 39% of the remaining frontier forests are threatened by logging, mining or other human activities.

22. Sustainability – a systems perspective
“Photosynthesis pays the bills”
i.e. green cells are essentially
the only net producers of order

23. System Condition 4
In a sustainable society, people are not subject to:
conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
In order to be able to achieve the first three system conditions, society must also be sustainable.
We must not put up barriers to meeting human needs worldwide.
Inefficiency works like a gas pedal on the other three system conditions
Unsafe working and living environments
Economic barriers
Safe working and living environments
Sufficient resources for livelihood
Political Oppression
Political Freedom

24. FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN NEEDS
Protection
Affection
Subsistence
Understanding
FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN NEEDS
Freedom
Participation
There have been many excellent attempts to understand human needs.
Manfred Max-Neef, a Chilean economist who has contributed much to the dialogue of development and human needs, has identified nine fundamental human needs. These are inborn needs that must to be realised in order for people to remain physically, mentally and socially healthy.
These needs are considered to be universal, however what changes both over time and through cultures, is the way and means by which needs are satisfied.
The nine identified needs are subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity and freedom.
It is important to note that a need is not synonymous with a want or a desire. Therefore, the manner in which needs are realised are referred to as satisfiers. Further, human needs must be understood as a system in which all human needs are interrelated and interconnected. When looking at a global societal system, except for the need of subsistence, there is no hierarchy of needs within that system.
With respect to sustainability it is not so important to come to a consensus over the actual list of human needs, rather the importance is to understand that a sustainable society does not create conditions that systematically undermine people’s capacity to meet their needs (regardless of the classification of needs). So the larger question has to do with understanding the mechanisms that undermine people’s capacity to meet their needs.
Identity
Idleness
Creation

25. Unifying framework for SD
In order to find a unifying principled framework for sustainable development of this kind, we must apply a deductive method based on logics. Principles must be sought for, and scrutinized, to fit and explain all kinds of empirical data on impacts in social and ecological systems, as well as to fit and explain all the ideas and concepts that have been designed to act on all the empirical data on impacts. In an ongoing international learning dialogue between scientists and practitioners, TNS has developed a generic framework of five independent but interrelated levels, all defined at the level of basic principles:
The Systems level (Biosphere with the human society);
The Success level (Sustainability principles meeting the criteria at the previous slide);
The Strategic level (logical guidelines for Sustainable development);
The Actions level (concrete actions and action programs);
The Tools level (tools to foster actions to be strategic to arrive at success in the system).
This framework is called The Natural Step Framework. The key strategic element of this framework is the second level, the ’Success’ level. How can we find principles for sustainability that are necessary, enough, general, concrete and distinct (see previous slide)?
Empirical Science
Theoretical
science 25 25

26. Framework for planning in complex systems
Success
Strategy
This framework is generic to any complex planning endeavour in any complex system. In chess, which is a good example of a complex strategic game, the…
1…systems level is about the board, pieces and rules,
2…success level is the basic principles of check mate,
3…strategic level is about launching moves that (i) bring the game closer to checkmate, (ii) provide flexible platforms to future moves in same direction and are (iii) economic enough with the pieces.
4…actions level is every concrete move and
5…tools level is strategic patterns, documented games, statistical calculations and chess clock.
Action
Tools 26 26

27. TNS Strategic Planning Framework
Right direction?
Flexible platform?
Return on investment?
I like this slide better without the 3 types of ROI on it (less busy)
The ROI categories are included on the D-step (slide #6)
Slide provided by TNS Canada 27

28. Backcasting

29. Backcasting

30. Key Improvement Areas
Key improvement areas are those which, when addressed will bring the organization significantly closer to sustainability principles. Think about which violations have the largest impact, and where the organization has the most opportunity to build on current success.
What are the Key Improvement Areas?
Improvement areas are where the synthesis of previous analysis comes together. Given what we’ve just done where can we make the biggest impact to bring us closer to sustainability principles?
Take 20 minutes to compare top sustainability principle violations and necessary stakeholders. Identify a few key improvement areas for MBB. Make sure that they meet the test, and if addressed will bring the brewery closer to its Sustainability Principles.
Wrap up of Baseline
As you know conducting a baseline analysis can be high level or very detailed, such as an energy audit or a waste audit. What we’ve just gone through are the common highlevel baseline steps that we’ve done within companies and communities. As a reminder those steps included
Quickly set the scope of analysis
Identify flows of material and energy throughout the brewery’s operations
Identify key stakeholders who are necessary for success
Choose key improvement areas which when solved will move the brewery closer to sustainability principles.

31. Using many of the basic principles of TNS, the City will use a strategic planning framework to:
A) Work to increase awareness of sustainability among its staff and management. This will provide us with a common language and keep all of us thinking about the impact we have during the course of our daily tasks.
B) Take an inventory of current efforts that make progress toward sustainability and be frank about areas that need improvement. We will enhance our current efforts and identify additional improvements.
C) Formulate vision of what sustainability means for the City and identify long-term goals necessary to achieve that vision.

32. Using many of the basic principles of TNS, the City will:
D) Incorporate the awareness and terminology of sustainability into our budget decisions, program administration and project development. To achieve this, we will ask questions of relevant projects or policies like:
Does this help move the City toward sustainability (even if incrementally)?
Will elements of this project serve as a potential stepping stone toward other changes or initiatives?
Will increased implementation costs yield savings in the long-run or provide a social or environmental return on investment?