The 1996 INES Conference in Amsterdam

INES Conference Report in the Irish MSF Journal

The conference organised its own contribution to sustainability, in that there was a voluntary levy on participants to cover the C02 produced as a result of the travel.

The present rate of increase of international air-travel is certainly not sustainable, and needs increasingly to be replaced by inter-city rail, and by virtual conferencing on the Internet. A symbolic blow was struck in this domain by the conference participating in the planting of a tree on a plot lying in the path of the proposed extension of the Schipol airport runway.

The scope of the conference attempted to be as comprehensive as possible. The conference broke up into 20 specialist workshops, the output of each of which attempted to be sets of concrete proposals for governments,. The workshops fall into four groupings:

(a) ethical foundations and people's attitudes to the problem,
(b) challenges to the economy and strategies for sustainable economics,
(c) the global development problem and its local and regional aspects,
(d) global safety and security.

Key outputs from the first group were critiques of Western civilisations from an Islamic and African point of view, and proposals for university-based programmes for scientists and engineers with ethical and environmental emphasis. An example of the latter is a Baltic programme organised from Uppsala and including inputs from all Baltic States

The programme covers historical background, energy and energy politics, material flows and the geochemical cycles, agriculture and forestry, clean technologies in manufacturing, transport and mobility, urbanisation, ethics, law.

A student network has been set up, which ran its first 'real-presence' meeting during the Amsterdam conference. It proposes to continue in virtual mode; the convener is Knut Aufermann who is contactable via. auferman@rz.uni-potsdam.de.

From the second group of workshops there were many technical ideas. The most important output however, was the identification of the need for economic indicators other the GNP, which is based on the production of things, and ignores issues like waste and human welfare.

A contribution to this problem was made by Pentii Malaska, who heads a Future Study Federation in Finland: there are growth-rates, the sum of which must be negative. They are population, GDP and 'material-intensity'. The idea of the 'net material-intensity of utility' emerged as crucial.

Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, who is vice-president of the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, called for holistic research into the three complex non-linear interacting systems (ecology, society, economy) with a view to addressing the sustainability problem, which he quantified as the need to cut material use by a factor of two globally. Introducing an 'equity factor' of five, this means a factor of 10 in the Western developed world. The Austrian government, it seems, has shown signs of actually taking this on board.

The third group covered questions like transport, mobility and telecommunications. There were some case-studies of sustainable initiatives, including one in Hamburg. The problem of unequal development was addressed by a group from six widely differing countries.

The politics of sustainability was also addressed, as a challenge to the democratic process. The overall call was for greater participation of civil society in government, with enhanced roles for non-governmental organisations.

The fourth group, as well as addressing the nuclear weapons question, paid attention to the problems presented by the hundreds of 'small wars' which have taken place since 1945, of which about 90 are currently in progress. These were analysed by Dan Smith, of the Oslo Peace Research Institute, who came up with correlations with questions like external debt and the role of the World Bank. So-called 'ethnicity' is a bad measure of things. External media tend to brand wars as 'inter-ethnic' where there are usually many factors, like land, class, laws etc.

Small wars (in which the Northern Ireland situation is included) have come more to the attention of the media since the ending of the Cold War. An important issue is the role of the so-called 'nation-state', of which there are some 200 in the world, compared to thousands of identifiable'peoples'.

Many 'small wars' are a result of a thwarted demand by a fringe-group for participation in civil society within a State. The attempt to impose the Western European model of 'nation-state' building on ex-colonial countries has usually led to disaster, reflected in the emergence of ethnic-based political parties.

States need equal rights for all citizens, without 'inside tracks' for hegemonistic groups. Peaceful political processes need to be identified for enabling secessions to take place by people desiring statehood, with provision for equal citizenship. The Versailles Treaty model for the Balkanisation process needs serious revision, in the light of the Yugoslav disaster.

The e-mail address of the INES office is ines_nat@t-online.de. The Executive Secretary of INES, Johann Swann, is however based in Chalmers University in Sweden, from which he runs the virtual network. His address there is frtjs@fy.chalmers.se.

Note the fact that I have been from the start consistently promoting the utility of the use of e-mail in networking for legitimate purposes. The process has unfortunately been undermined by the growth of the population of spammers and virus purveyors.

Engineers' Journal October 1996: Some Sustainable Development Challenges

Increasing attention in being paid in some quarters to the need for socioeconomic development to be sustainable in the long term, but there is little evidence of this among governments. Scientists and engineers who understand what is involved in addressing the issue need to give a lead, and a beginning has been made by the International Network of Engineers and Scientists (INES) for Global Responsibility, which organised a 'whistle-blowing' conference in Amsterdam on August 22-25.

The scope of the conference attempted to be as comprehensive as possible. The conference broke up into 20 specialist workshops, the output of each of which attempted to be sets of concrete proposals for governments. This was not like the 'parallel sessions' approach, where participants pick a trajectory and move around. People identified their key area and stuck with it.

The workshops fall into four groupings:

(a) ethical foundations and peoples' attitudes to the problem,
(b) challenges to the economy and strategies for sustainable economics,
(c) the global development problem and its local and regional aspects,
(d) global safety and security.

Ethical Foundations

The programme covered historical background, energy and energy politics, material flows and the geochemical cycles, agriculture and forestry, clean technologies in manufacturing, transport and mobility, urbanisation, ethics, law. The contact-point for this programme is baltic.univ@uadm.uu.se.

Sustainable Techno-Economics

Pentti Malaska, who heads a Future Study Federation in Turku, University in Finland, identified 3 growth-rates, the sum of which must be negative. They are population, GDP and 'material-intensity'. The idea of the 'net material-intensity of utility' emerged as crucial. Contact Malaska@uti.fi.

Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, who is vice-president of the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, called for holistic research into the 3 complex non-linear interacting systems (ecology, society, economy) with a view to addressing the sustainability problem, which he quantified as the need to cut material use by a factor of 2 globally. Introducing an 'equity factor' of 5, this means a factor of 10 in the Western developed world. The Austrian government, it seems, has shown signs of actually taking this on board.

While the key contact would seem to be Wuppertal, there are several others, mostly in Germany and the Netherlands, with specific materials recycling concepts. I give brief summaries and contact addresses.

Ferdinand Beetstra from the Eindhoven University of Technology presented an analysis of sustainability in building, on the basis of objectively computable indicators, using an environmental life-cycle assessment methodology. His address is f.f.beetstra@bpu.tue.ni.

From the Leipzig UFZ Centre for Environmental Research Peter Boehm came up with a strategy for ecologically sound urban development, in terms of urban structural units. Inputs to the process include remote sensing and aerial photography. His address is pboehm@pro.ufz.de.

Ursula Tischner is a design consultant in Wuppertal; she came up with a paper on the design philosophy for consumer products, which emphasised the service component of overall utility, with the actual product playing a decreasing role, in line with the need for reducing the material-intensity. She is contactable on 101 233.3324@compuserve.com.

There was little attention given to the question of solid waste disposal. This may be attributed to the fact that most European countries have long since abandoned the crude 'landfill' approach with which we in Ireland are still burdened, and it is not perceived as a problem in itself. The emphasis instead in the above is on recycling and waste reduction.

There was however some attention give to the question of water resources, particularly in the context of the increasing number of third-world mega-cities. We are reminded that the problem is with us here by the recent foul ground-water episode in Nenagh. We ignore the question at our peril. There were several papers with primarily 3rd-world orientation, but a useful contact-point with the best European experience is a paper by Leuven et al from the Dept of Environmental Studies in the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Dutch experience in this area is undoubtedly to be respected.

This paper develops a methodology for determining the 'Environmentally Utilisable Space' in the context of a river estuary, applied primarily to the Rhine delta. The contact-point is rleuven@sci.kun.ni.

There was also work reported in the areas of sustainable agriculture, forestry, fishing and food processing, from centres of research in the US, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. This is of particular importance, in the context of the extent of loss of the world's topsoil, which is being substantially eroded even in China which has practised organic agriculture for millennia, with recycling of all waste. Development of regimes for the build-up and conservation of humus in soil is going to require top priority among agricultural scientists, who will need to shed their current dependence on agri-chemical quick-fixes.

The key contacts here are Lars Ohlander et al, in the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Their paper is question-posing and philosophical, but the questions need to be addressed. Contact Lars-Ohlander@vo.slu.se.

Another paper proposes a holistic and ecologically benign approach to animal-breeding; this is the output from a German 'Working Group of Critical Veterinarians in Hannover. The contact here is mmathes@zucht.tiho-hannover.de.

Global Development

There was however an important paper on 'integrated Urban Mobility Management in Berlin' by Stefan Bratzel of the Freie Universitat Berlin, which is aimed at the systematic reduction of commuter car use, and involves concepts like 'company-oriented mobility management'. The contact here is bratzei@zedat.fu-berlin.de.

Global Safety and Security

Small wars (in which the Northern Ireland situation is included) have come more to the attention of the media since the ending of the Cold War. An important issue is the role of the so-called 'nation-state', of which there are some 200 in the world, compared to some 1000s of identifiable 'peoples'.

The recipe for a 'nation-state' is often the hegemony of one dominant 'ethnic group', which attempts to unify the 'nation-state' in its own image. The cultural background of a people is not a long-term prison for an individual, who can make a rational choice regarding identity.

States need equal rights for all citizens, without 'inside tracks' for hegemonistic groups. Peaceful political processes need to be identified for enabling secessions to take place by peoples desiring statehood, with provision for equal citizenship. The Versailles Treaty model for the Balkanisation process needs serious revision, in the light of the Yugoslav disaster.

Conclusions

The e-mail address of the INES office is uphcol@uxpl.uni-dortmund.de

The Executive Secretary of INES, Johann Swann, is however based in Chalmers University in Sweden, from which he runs the virtual network. His address there is frtjs@fy.chalmers.se. Any engineer seeking to obtain any of the above material, and who has difficulty in making contact with any of the authors or contact-points, should contact the writer via roy@cxa.ie. I can in some cases suggest alternative channels.

Biotechnology and Sustainability

The writer has been concerned about this problem for most of his lifetime, having inherited a feel for it from his father Joe Johnston (1890-1972) who wrote extensively on aspects of the problem in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. My own concern has evolved along similar lines, and I am currently re-discovering the relevance of my father's earlier work, which was not as influential as it might have been, had the political environment been more receptive.

The problem needs to be looked at from several perspectives. Firstly, there is the question of agricultural organisation, and the aftermath of the Land League agitations which led to a pattern of isolated small-scale family farms as the accepted norm, and the managed large-scale labour-employing commercial farm as the exception. By analysis of the economics of a series of cases, my father showed that the latter was about twice as productive as the former, per unit of land area and per unit of labour.

He was a lifetime supporter of the Horace Plunkett / George Russell approach to agricultural organisation, and his vision was to promote what he called a 'rural civilisation' based on a combination of village and big-house, with the latter transformed into a centre of co-operative production management, and the former into a focus for local added-value labour-employing industrial development, and consumer co-operative retailing. He identified shreds of this vision here and there, but the overall integration of agricultural, industrial and commercial co-operation under local democratic management has never been achieved in the Irish political environment, which remains totally individualistic. He embodied his vision, adapting that of Richards Orpen, in a paper which he delivered to the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society, during George O'Brien's Presidency, An Economic Basis for an Irish Rural Civilisation which was published in JSSISI Vol xvii, p1, 1947-8.

He was thinking in terms of a central focal farm of the order of 1000 acres, embedded in a network of smaller farms over perhaps 20,000 acres, whose owners had agreed to participate in a large-scale managed system synergetically, making use of central management services. The farm network, and associated industrial and commercial village focus, would support perhaps 1000 families He developed this concept further in his book, published by Blackwell in 1951, 'Irish Agriculture in Transition'.

Such a system would lend itself to the sustainability principle, in that it would be feasible to make systematic local use of recyclable by-products, manure from stall-fed cattle being recycled into high-value market-gardening for home consumption and for export, livestock finished products exported as consumer-ready meat, bone-meal and rendered waste going back into the land as fertiliser, local production of fodder and concentrates, rostered calving and rostered management of dairy herds organised for year-round supply of milk processed into value-added products etc.

Agriculture organised in this way on this scale would deal direct with the urban retail trade, marketing high value-added products, and if the urban waste system were to be organised to recycle its organics via a suitable digestion process, the latter could supply most if not all of the required fertiliser inputs, lessening dependence on energy-intensive nitrogenous fertilisers, with some help from clover and legumes.

This vision in fact has never been achieved in full, due to our having become dependent like junkies on the products (eg artificial fertilisers) and services (eg road transport) provided by profligate use of cheap fossil fuel.

The identification of the socio-economic, socio-technical and political factors needed to encourage movement in the direction of such a vision is a problem requiring research attention. In other words, is the Russell-Plunkett model, as subsequently developed in the 1940s by Richards Orpen and Joe Johnston, a valid approach to the sustainability problem in a world situation increasingly dominated by scarcity of fossil resources?

The foregoing is the 'local level' perspective of the problem. Secondly, there is the global trade perspective, and how it impinges on developing countries in the post-imperial fringe. The problem here is over-production of low-quality agricultural products by industrial-scale farming in the developed countries, encouraged by volume-dependent subsidies, and with total dependence on artificial fertilisers and pesticides.

This in itself is bad enough, but the problem is made much more acute by the ignorant use of animal products in feed concentrates, leading to the BSE crisis ('converting ruminants into cannibals'), and the collapse of consumer confidence in European beef. Surplus products are dumped on the world markets, depressing the prices available to aspirant agricultural exporters outside the EU.

European agriculture in it current mode is non-sustainable, and it is to be hoped that the crisis will lead to a move in the direction of sustainable agriculture, perhaps on some version of the Russell-Plunkett model, Europe-wide, servicing an educated consumer market which is prepared to pay more for food it can trust, produced using sustainable organic principles. If this were to be coupled with an opening up of free trade in agricultural products, it would enable developing countries to earn money as sustainable suppliers of agricultural products complementary to what European agriculture can sustainably produce.

The research area here is what technically needs to be done to reform the CAP in this direction, and what needs to be done to get it accepted politically.

Thirdly there is the perspective of the biotechnological industry, which has been thriving on the promotion of herbicides and pesticides in support of chemically-enhanced industrial agriculture, and which has been promoting genetic modification primarily in order to sustain the market for their products.

The research area here is in the nature of a rescue operation for the people and skills concerned.

One could say, cynically, let them devote their skills to the production of nerve-gas and suchlike, in support of the military industrial complex, but this would not be helpful.

On the contrary, the research area is to identify areas where the products of biotechnology and chemistry can in fact be positively supportive of biological agriculture. Instead of killing a parasite chemically (and risking contaminating the food-chain), could a predator of the parasite be attracted by a suitable pheronome? Could a crop be rendered unappetising to a parasite by a GM process which would be friendly to the value of the crop as human food? Can a method of cultivation be devised which will make herbicides unnecessary?

Fourthly and finally there is the question of natural biological diversity of the food-crops, and its role as a strategic hedge against disaster. In proportion as local farmers adopt standardised high-yielding varieties, imported to replace their traditional landrace varieties, the latter fall into decline or even extinction, and are no longer available as breeding-stock. The extreme of this situation is a single world engineered variety, extremely productive but totally dependent on intensive cultivation with high fertiliser and pesticide inputs. A chance mutation then can perhaps generate a new disease or parasite, the result being global famine. This is a high-risk non-sustainable scenario.

The alternative is to encourage the development of local landraces, adapted to local conditions, accepting somewhat lower yields, with substantially lower inputs, the latter being locally produced. The research area here is how to encourage the market to favour the latter scenario, and to discourage the biotechnology companies from promoting the former.

Note on the author: Roy H W Johnston BA(Mod) BSc PhD FInstP has worked on computer-aided techno-economic and socio-technical evaluations of innovative systems since the 1960s, after an initial period during the 50s of research into the experimental technology of high-energy particle physics, followed by a period in industrial instrumentation. He published a weekly critical science and technology column in the Irish Times in the 1970s. He is currently working on knowledge-base architecture and indexing problems with a software house. He can be contacted at rjtechne@iol.ie.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999