Categories
botany conservation biology ecology

Prof Sir Alan Mark

AlanMark

Emeritus Professor Sir Alan Mark is New Zealand’s first Knight honoured for services to conservation. We explore the relationship between science and championing change. So long as you have the science behind you, Sir Alan has no problem with taking an activist role – indeed, he says, it is an obligation of the privileged position of the academic. We talk about Sir Alan’s love for New Zealand’s alpine ecosystems – a passion and deep knowledge that he shares in his new book Above the treeline: A nature guide to alpine New Zealand.

Sir Alan is currently involved in the Wise Response (wiseresponse.org.nz) campaign, a call for a national risk assessment of the “unprecedented threats to our collective security” facing the country as a result of climate change, fossil fuel extraction, and economic and ecological uncertainty.

Shane’s number of the week: 1.2 is the percentage of material used in the production of goods left usable after six weeks. In other words, we’re wasting 98.2% of what we consume.

Categories
climate change energy peak oil

energy, and the growth delusion

Bob_Lloyd_sq

Associate Professor Bob Lloyd is Director of the Energy Studies Programme at the University of Otago. This interview is a tour de force of the role of energy and its importance in a sustainable world. We revisit the tragedy of the commons, understand the Jevons paradox, and examine why growth is a delusion.

Categories
geography history landscape

Prof Peter Holland

PeterHolland

Professor Peter Holland‘s new book “Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the Environment in Southern New Zealand” explores the complexities and nuances of the relationships between early settlers and their environment. Peter tells us of his journey through his career in biogeography in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Africa and back to New Zealand.

Shane’s number of the week: 12.9° The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climatic Data Center reports that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous U.S. (lower 48 states). The average temperature in 2012 was 12.9 Celsius, 3.2 degrees higher than the average for the 20th century. As well as being the warmest, it was also the second most extreme with multiple “significant weather events”. (There are lots more numbers from this report here).

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: There’s a debate raging amongst our student community about the merits of a new computer suite. But rather than fan-boy arguments about preferred interaction style, the debate centres on multinational business practices and the ethics of IT education. (see more>>>).

Categories
Conscious Consumers food marketing tourism

Megan Williams

Megan Williams

Megan Williams is the Otago coordinator for Conscious Consumers. We talk about Megan about background in sustainable tourism and Sustainable Wanaka. Conscious consumers is a non-profit sustainbility and ethical accreditation programme in New Zealand. Initially based in Wellington, Conscious Consumers has recently expanded nationally, including Otago.

We talk about the recently released smartphone app that allows consumers to find ethical businesses and check in to support them.

Shane’s number of the week: 2. The two extra colours added to Australian weather maps recently to represent the extreme temperatures.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: Sam revisits Klinenberg’s 2003 book Heatwave that examined the deaths in the 1995 Chicago heatwave.

Categories
climate change ecology

Climate change impacts ecosystems

Lesley Hughes

Professor Lesley Hughes is an ecologist in the Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University who researches the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems. She is a lead author on the IPCC fourth and fifth assessment reports, a member of the Australian Government’s Land Sector Carbon & Biodiversity Board and commissioner on the federal Climate Commission.

Categories
computing creative commons food permaculture

Permageekery

Active in both the Permaculture in New Zealand and the creative commons movements, Danyl Strype describes himself as a permageek. We spend an enjoyable hour wallowing in sustainable IT (without mentioning virtualisation).

Categories
development music

Sustainability of Are are music

Sean Linton talks us through his PhD research “The Music of ‘Are’are: acoustemology, environmental influences and sustainability”.

View Larger Map

Images from Sean of the Manawai harbour and the weekly/fortnightly supply boat Dragon:

Sean’s ‘Are’are recordings: SoundCloud

Categories
agriculture food

Sustainable growing

Alex Huffadine heads the Natural Resources Group (horticulture, viticulture and pest management) at Otago Polytechnic. We talk about how sustainability is changing the practice and profession of growing.

Categories
design

Smart Cornwall

Dr David Hawkins is Associate Dean (research & innovation), School of Art and Design at University College Falmouth. David talks to Sustainable Lens about the Smart Cornwall initiative.

Categories
art

Ecological artist

Lloyd Godman is an ecological artist. A successful photographer for many years, Lloyd is currently working with plants. This is not as big a transformation as it may seem – much of Lloyd’s photographic work explored plants as a form of photography – indeed he describes the planet as large scale photographic membrane. Lloyd says that he is an activist – in that art is an action for positive social change. Art itself though, he says is largely unsustainable.

Lloyd is based at Melbourne’s Baldessin Press. He describes his work as super-sustainable: artworks with a positive effect. They both question – what we are doing to the planet is a giant uncontrolled scientific experiment and we don’t know what is going to happen – and provide positive benefits. Working with bromeliads, particularly the Tillandsia family, Lloyd creates aerial gardens that are being increasingly recognised for their contribution to architecture.  His Rotating Gardens are now being installed in prominent locations in Melbourne.

Here’s Lloyd with a rotating garden.

Lloyd’s work discussed in the show:

Other links:

Categories
government labour politics

Historic precedents for active government

Megan Woods is the Member for Wigram. She is the Labour Party spokesperson for Youth Affairs, Spokesperson for Christchurch Transport Issues, and Associate Spokesperson for Science & Innovation. Megan talks with Sustainable Lens about how the reinvention of progressive politics is based upon historic precedents for active government. She describes economy and the environment as a bundled loop you can’t pick apart. We talk about industrial farming and working smarter to combine the primary and IT sectors.

(Note: interview recorded on 3rd December 2012).

Categories
water

Saving lakes and rivers

Limnologist Marc Schallenberg knows lakes. And rivers. He also knows the terrible state they are in. And why. And what we have to do about it. He tells us all these things on a fascinating session with Sustainable Lens.

Shane’s number of the week: 1,000,000,000,000. That is over $1 trillion in subsidies for areas ranging from fisheries to fertilisers and fossil fuels, wrote Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP in the OECD’s Development Cooperation Report: Lessons in linking sustainability and development

Much of this money is actually fuelling environmental decay, such as climate change; engendering collapse of fish stocks and damage to coastal systems and aggravating social and economic challenges.

The report goes on to say that

Removing these distorting, environmentally harmful and socially under-performing subsidies would completely change the incentive structure, promoting sustainable consumption and production and freeing up to 1-2% of global GDP every year.”

The report published this week by the OECD says that green growth is the only way forward for rich and poor countries alike to achieve sustainable development because of tremendous economic and livelihood losses from severe climate change and the depletion of natural resources and that climate change is hitting the world’s poorest people the hardest.

What is striking though is the report is using language like “collosal” and “collision ‘and ‘alarming’. Angel Gurria, the OECD secretary General uses surprisingly strong words:

We are on a collision course with nature

(OCED 2012)

“It is time for a radical change. If we fail to transform our policies and behaviour now, the picture is more than grim, Our current demographic and economic trends, if left unchecked, will have alarming effects in four key areas of global concern – climate change, biodiversity, water and health. The costs and consequences of inaction would be colossal, both in economic and human terms.”

What is so frustrating – and when I say that I mean tear your hair out this is totally insane frustration – is that more and more organisations and groups are saying that we are on a path to utter disaster and yet our leaders do nothing…

So that is my number $1 trillion pa in subsidies to things that are actively destroying our world.


Development Co-operation Report 2012 | OECD Free preview | Powered by Keepeek Digital Asset Management Solution

Categories
labour politics

Dr David Clark MP

When Sustainable Lens first talked with David Clark he was an aspiring politician. Now just over a year into his first term, the Labour MP for Dunedin North comes back to tell of his “interesting year”. We talk social justice, environment, debating, and values. We ask him for the best, the worst and the most difficult of 2012.

Categories
design policy

Science meet policy. Policy meet science.

Life at the intersection of science and policy.

During her career in management and governance, Dr Maggie Lawton has help lead New Zealand’s organisations down the road of a sustainable future. She describes her work as “Strategic Sustainable Design”. Not considering herself an activist but as a change agent, Maggie sees her role as “staying inside the room” – helping guide policy and decisions. Amongst other roles, Maggie now leads Otago Polytechnics Centre for Research Expertise in Sustainable Practice.

Shane’s number of the week: 9. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have been since 2001. 2012 is on track to being the ninth hottest year on record.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: This week a new report into consumer attitudes was released. The Regeneration Consumer Study is an in-depth online survey of consumer attitudes, motivations and behaviours relating to sustainable consumption among 6,224 respondents across six major international markets.

Categories
communication media

Storyteller challenging ideas


Allan Baddock describes himself as a storyteller. He tells us the story of identifying audiences and tailoring messages in film and print since the 1970s. Sometimes this means bring unpalatable ideas into mainstream thinking. Our discussion ranges from Lenin to milk, from iconic landscapes to marketing, and from stolen revolutions to reality TV.

Shane’s number of the week: 21 is the number of opportunities for Green Growth identified in the recent Pure Advantage report.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: Today the Otago Energy Research Centre held its annual symposium. Sam went along and cam back excited by some of the research. We’ll be hearing more from these people over the next few weeks.

Categories
climate change politics

Positive enthusiasm and participation

Smart, young and the right mix of serious fun. Alec Dawson talks with us about Generation Zero‘s incredibly successful first year. He says that climate change is the challenge of the generation, and responding to it is a matter of inter-generational justice. Despite – or perhaps because of – the seriousness of the threat, Generation Zero is resolutely positive with enthusiasm and participation at the core.

Shane’s number of the week: 21 is the number of opportunities for Green Growth identified in the recent Pure Advantage report.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: It’s the end of the academic year and that means showcases of student work. Sam talks about three successful capstone projects from the Bachelor of Information Technology: ExoExplore – a citizen science app framework, FarmBase – an integrated system for agribusiness and environmental data, and Panda Island – a game to support the Peace Foundation’s Cool Schools programme.

Categories
green party waste

Denise Roche MP

Denise Roche is an NZ Green MP. She is, among other things, the Green spokesperson on waste issues. The key, she says, is seeing waste as a behaviour problem, not a transport problem. We ask how she became an activist and how she became “enraged by injustice”. While many of our guests shirk from being described as an “activist”, Denise wears this badge proudly. The biggest challenge we face is disengaged citizens (note: pointedly not “voter apathy”). She entered parliament a year ago, wanting to take part in political debates “like they matter” – we ask how’s that going? what she’s learnt, and who on the ‘other side’ is doing a good job.

Categories
heritage local government

Living heritage


Dr Glen Hazelton is Dunedin’s Heritage Policy Planner. Glen argues that a buildings tell a story about a place that has a past, and that this gives a message about where that place might go in the future. While Dunedin’s European heritage might only be 160 years old, our settlers built in a classical style in a new country to impart a sense of permanence. Coming from a culture protecting their place, they over-engineered on purpose. This, combined with economic downturns, has left Dunedin with a huge stock of Victorian buildings. Glen stresses though, that the job is not just about the Victorian buildings, to become old, buildings have first to be young – and no-so-young. Heritage then, is about a living heritage, the fabric of the place that tells the story of the place. We ask if it is possible to build a new building with the intention of it becoming heritage.

Shane’s number of the week: 1200. That’s how many Sperm Whales where believed to be in the area of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. How many of these were harmed or killed is just starting to come to light.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: This week saw the finals of the Otago Young Enterprise scheme. A highlight this year was the prevalence of corporate social responsibility in the fledgling businesses. Without being required to,many of the student businesses donated a sizable chunk of their profits to community organisations and charities. Sam judged the award for Excellence in Sustainable Business Practice, and was pleased to see one business in particular – Grow Girls from St Hilda’s – take a systems approach to sustainable business. They sold compost derived from waste materials – coffee grounds, chicken manure etc. Grow Girls also won the overall Otago excellence award.