Chapter 4
CROSS-CUTTING THEMES
The final panel session in the first workshop addressed the cross-cutting themes underlying the project focus: justice, sustainability, and governance, trust, and public engagement.16 Speakers articulated the diverse elements that make the definitions of these terms complex and contested, and examined how these concepts relate to climate change, engineered systems, and society and need to be given priority in education about the subject. Highlights from workshop presentations at the capstone workshop that address these themes are available at the end of this chapter.17 Deborah G. Johnson, Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics in the Science and Technology Studies Department at the University of Virginia, moderated this session.
Justice
Joseph DesJardins, associate provost and academic dean and professor of philosophy at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, considered historical and philosophical perspectives on justice, which may be helpful in the context of climate change impacts and decisions.
He began with John Rawls’ definition of justice as “the first virtue of social institutions,” involving basic liberties and fair access to primary goods (such as food, shelter). In this definition, justice or fairness can offer a modus vivendi for getting along when interests or ideals of the good life conflict. In contrast, in Book One of Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus’ view is that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger. DesJardins pointed to the siting of power lines as an example of Thrasymachus’ approach to decision making. In a recent case in central Minnesota, an administrative law judge approved the siting of a line to avoid the university’s campus and instead go through the farms of a less powerful group of constituents.
Thus, in considering decisions and political debates that affect social justice, the influence of political power needs to be recognized, although reason and rational public policy process should be the guiding principles in efforts to resolve questions of social justice.
Distributive Justice
Two modern theories illustrate differing views of what justice requires: libertarian theories, broadly defined here, define justice in terms of freedom from interference, DesJardins said, while egalitarian theories require consideration of the equal distribution of goods, particularly primary goods based on needs, not just the good of freedom.
Distributive justice concerns the allocation of benefits and burdens. There are going to be winners and losers; how should wins and losses be distributed? Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero taught that justice decides what each person is due and makes sure those benefits and burdens are distributed accordingly. But, DesJardins asked, What is to be distributed? According to what standard? And to whom—who counts?
Some classical Greek theories offer the following answer to the question of “what” is “due”: there is a good life that humans ought to live, and the attainment of that good life constitutes justice. These theories
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16 Slides from the workshop presentations are available at www.nae.edu/21302/47874.aspx.
17 Videos of these presentations and discussion are available at https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab2.aspx?EventID=1155563.
underlie many religious tenets. They contrast with more recent theories of justice that focus less on what people get than on how they are treated—disrespectful treatment is unjust treatment. Thus the shift was from what to how, from distributive to procedural justice.
In addition to these conceptions of justice, a third perspective has recently emerged in which justice requires the recognition of human capabilities to achieve wellbeing. Real freedom requires equality of capability to achieve well-being. Humans’ innate capabilities—their lives, health, senses, emotions, imagination, relationships—make them deserving of the “primary goods” of welfare, income, liberty, and respect. Justice therefore requires that people be accorded the necessary conditions to achieve well-being.
Who Counts?
Turning to the question of “who counts” in the allocation of justice, DesJardins reported that, historically, the range was small: males, the wealthy, and citizens. Then the exclusions diminished and women and minority citizens were added. Now philosophical questions have expanded to include other groups and even living beings that are not human. Now when we say “to each his or her due,” might “each” be an animal or other life form?
What about future generations? What is “due” to people who do not exist? DesJardins suggested that, in determining responsibilities to future generations, it is appropriate to consider justice for them. They should have the opportunity to live the same kind of lives as current generations—to pursue their own goals and meet their needs.
He invoked the Brundtland Commission, which defined sustainable development as “[meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.”18 He offered three specific ways to make the world “better than it would have been” for future generations: develop alternative energy, conserve resources, and limit population. He also cited the importance of preserving wilderness and animals for future generations.
Discussion
In the brief question and answer session, DesJardins noted that presenting justice in terms of a way to reconcile conflicting interests seems to work better with his business school students than more philosophically abstract approaches. Case studies also are effective. Audience members pointed out the importance of recognizing that artifacts or systems can enhance or curtail people’s rights.
Sustainability
Paul Thompson, W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University, began by suggesting that sustainability is an ideal in the same sense that justice might be an ideal, and that discussions of sustainability today resemble those about democracy when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams served under George Washington. The two men had very different ideas of what democracy was about, but both were committed to it and to working within a framework; they argued at length about what the framework and democracy should contain.
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18 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland). 1987. Our Common Future, chapter 2. Oxford University Press.
Historical Perspectives
Thompson reviewed the history of American thought about sustainability since the early 20th century and Liberty Hyde Bailey, the most famous agricultural scientist of his time and founding dean of Cornell’s College of Agriculture. Bailey was worried about the social sustainability of agriculture as he saw farms disappearing and circumstances undermining the stability of rural communities. Aldo Leopold was similarly concerned about game management, averring that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”19
With the beginnings of an environmental movement in the 1960s (following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962), sustainable agriculture began to be talked about in the 1970s. When Thompson started working in agriculture studies in 1980, there was a fairly robust debate about what sustainability might mean. That debate was overtaken in 1987 by publication of Our Common Future, by the Brundtland Commission. The definition of sustainability in that report still strongly influences the way people think about the subject, although it focused on sustainable development.
The Brundtland Commission report precipitated a decade or more of debate about what sustainability could be, winding up with what Thompson called “three circle” or “three P” sustainability: people (social justice), planet (functional integrity of the environment), and profits (resource sufficiency). He concentrated on functional integrity and resource sufficiency, but the discussion (summarized below) extended to the more recently recognized dimension of social justice (social movement).
Resource Sufficiency, Functional Integrity, and Social Movement
One way to think about sustainability is to consider a practice or system sustainable so long as the resources needed to sustain it are foreseeably available—that is, there is resource sufficiency. This way of thinking requires complex accounting methods to determine what is available, how quickly it is being used up, and whether there are replacements or ways to use less. Thus people who think about resource deficiency see sustainability as primarily an accounting problem, and appropriate policies or innovation practices follow from minimizing or overcoming the deficiencies.
A second way of thinking might be called functional integrity. A system or practice is sustainable if it is relatively invulnerable to the threat of internal collapse (i.e., something in its design or functioning that leads to its undoing). This way of thinking came primarily from ecologists but can be applied much more broadly.
Thompson illustrated with Leopold’s approach to game management. In terms of resource sufficiency, wildlife populations are sustainable if there are enough animals to shoot. In terms of functional integrity, wild game populations are sustainable if the ecosystem that regulates habitat and population levels is intact (that is, there is a balance between predator and prey).
To put these ideas in an engineering context, Thompson said that resource sufficiency considers whether the system is efficient, whereas functional integrity asks whether it is going to break or not. To take an example relevant to climate, biomass electrical generation might be deemed sustainable as long as it complies with regulations and there is enough wood waste (or other biomass) for future use (that is, there is resource sufficiency). In terms of functional integrity, biomass plants are sustainable if they do not threaten processes that stabilize climate and air quality or regeneration.
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19 Aldo Leopold. 1949. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press. p. 262.
The social movement aspect of sustainability relates to key goals and concerns—such as social injustice, imbalance of power, and lack of recognition—that are not accounted for in strictly economic or ecological approaches. A system or practice is unsustainable if it is generating acts of resistance, protest, and political change. This definition of unsustainability links the social movement dimension to the other dimensions.
Integrating Perspectives
Thompson pointed out that these different ways of thinking about sustainability rely on attention to systemic interactions, and discussed how scientific methods could incorporate the three approaches.
In terms of resource sufficiency, he posited that technology is good when it increases the efficiency of a production process or a consumption activity, or when it substitutes plentiful for scarce resources. It is bad when it increases total resource consumption. The “ethical maxim” is to find the optimal ratio between benefit and risk.
In terms of functional integrity, technology should not introduce fragility or brittleness into the system, nor should it create new sources of vulnerability. As a guideline he suggested a “precautionary approach”: lack of full scientific certainty about risks should not preclude taking precautionary measures.
Last, in the context of social justice, technology is good when it levels power relationships, bad when it strengthens or entrenches them.
The various perspectives do not compete with each other in quite the sense that Jefferson and Adams had competing notions of democracy, so much as they indicate areas of emphasis in people’s concepts of sustainability. Oftentimes, getting these values out on the table can lead to productive and complementary discussions about sustainability.
Discussion
Participants asked about the social movement perspective. Thompson explained that people involved in promoting sustainability seem motivated by social justice and even conflate the two. Why, then, use the term “sustainability”? To raise associated concerns about poor people getting pushed off their land in Africa, for example, by the rising costs of land and food and the push to develop biofuels. Such outcomes are not sustainable. Thompson agreed that it is important to talk about matters of social justice, as long as they are framed in terms of sustainability—that is, how they might lead to a social or political collapse.
Challenged to pursue this further, Thompson said he thinks the social movement perspective is problematic in two ways. On the one hand, it is not clear what the term “sustainability” adds to the discussion beyond that of “social justice”. On the other hand, people who tend to define sustainability in social terms do not necessarily ask critical questions about other aspects of sustainability. For example, when social issues arose in agricultural discussions, those involved did not examine problems of sustained yield but thought instead about the fact that rural communities were getting poorer, farms were going broke—a sort of “de-development” was occurring. Rather than debating sustained yield versus development, Thompson suggested that functional integrity versus resource sufficiency is a productive way to think about sustainability and that a rich, deep discussion of the subject requires both perspectives, in addition to consideration of social sustainability.
Governance, Trust, and Public Engagement
Susanne Moser, director and principal researcher of the Susanne Moser Research and Consulting Company and a social science research fellow at Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment, began with an engineering metaphor of Archimedes’ lever and fulcrum to put governance in context. The levers, the determinants of adaptive or mitigative capacity in response to climate change, are economic resources, technology, information, skills, infrastructure, institutions, social capital, and equitable access to all of these. The fulcrum, governance, is the decisions, actors, processes, institutional structures, and mechanisms involved in determining a course of action. Governance is more than government; it may involve government actors but also others such as market mechanisms and civic actors. Because there is always tension between governmental and other actors, decision makers play a central role.
It is useful to look at decisions and decision makers in new arenas, where policies, laws, regulations, and related structures and institutions are not in place—and breakthroughs can occur through individual action. The context of climate adaptation provides just such opportunities. It also demonstrates the challenges to engagement and action, such as persistent and growing gaps between rich and poor in every country, and significant societal vulnerability to climate extremes even in developed countries.
Research on social capacity to respond to climate change indicates many barriers to progress, ranging from lack of leadership and policy guidance to ignorance; problems of coordination, collaboration, and communication at any level of government; lack of information; lack of funding (a problem that is becoming more pervasive); competing priorities; and legal obstacles to change and innovation. These difficulties arise in every sector and at every level, and are compounded by a sense of urgency and pressure for action.
Governance
Governance is the art and skill of turning capacity into action and, when the capacity is not there, generating it. It requires dealing with institutional issues, managing the political calculus, and making leadership more effective. Leadership and organizational culture are crucial in getting people moving.
In many instances regional cooperation is necessary—for example, in water resource management and coastal management—but the mechanisms are not yet established. And efforts at governmental devolution (sometimes known as “new public management”) magnify the problem with unfunded mandates—asking more of local governments without providing the resources needed for implementation. Moreover, many US counties and communities no longer have planners, so the people with long-term perspectives who would be able to take action are simply not there.
Moser went on to observe that people who take action at the local or state level are usually not those with the best scientific knowledge or assessment. Rather, such leaders are creative and skillful in pulling together the necessary financial resources, and are persuasive or aware and strategic in handling social acceptability issues. She therefore believes that, as far as mitigation and adaptation are concerned, America is going backward right now. In her opinion adaptation plans are being developed in the absence of sufficient scientific information, and it would be very difficult to produce such knowledge fast enough to prevent some major maladaptations—efforts that will be insufficient, or have negative side effects or high costs, or even foreclose future options. In addition, constraints and failings in the current system may leave the country in a precarious position when catastrophes strike.
In light of all these concerns, the need for effective governance systems is only growing.
Trust
The perception of leadership is linked to trust, which Moser introduced with the example of a phone call she received asking whether she has diabetes. She put the question to the audience: If you were asked this question, would you answer it? The answer will depend on who’s asking—a telemarketer, or an insurance agent, or your doctor, or your best friend—and the level of trust in that relationship.
Trust is not a fixed entity; it depends on context (geographical, social, temporal, political, economic, cultural), what is being requested, the perceiver’s mental state (e.g., stable vs. paranoid), and past experience. Trust also depends on the scope and scale of the demand—or of the technology at hand. Questions of trust about, say, geoengineering are different from those associated with an immediate personal concern.
On climate change, studies show that Americans do not strongly trust any particular source of information, but somewhat trust numerous bodies, including federal and private scientific institutions. Opinions divide into six groups ranging from those most convinced and alarmed about climate change and most trustful of scientists and information sources, to those most doubtful. Trust in mainstream news media varies across groups but is lowest among the sources respondents were asked to rate.
For managing risk and communicating about it, trust is very much determined by perceptions of the communicators’ knowledge, openness, and care. These moral aspects may be more important than expertise. People assess trustworthiness based on commitment, follow-through on a “promise” (implicit or explicit), and whether people are forthcoming with risk information. In social interactions, people tend to trust those who are like them, with whom they have deep connections and frequent interaction. These things are important to keep in mind in efforts to create or foster trust between people who do not have it. More trust is needed the less communication and perceptions rely on well-established commonly accepted science, creating a potentially very difficult situation with future climate management decisions.
Public Engagement
Why engage the public? Moser listed three principled reasons:
- Governments can’t do it alone: achievement of major policy outcomes requires greater engagement and participation from citizens.
- Governments shouldn’t do it alone: there are strong moral and political arguments for protecting and enhancing personal responsibility.
- Cost savings in doing it together: involving the public in active implementation/behavior change can be significantly more cost-effective than traditional service delivery.
She then reviewed some approaches to risk communication and public engagement. The first was to have experts tell people what they should believe and do. When that didn’t work persuasion was tried, but that didn’t seem to work either. Now the paradigm is to develop public engagement through two-way dialogue, which has the following benefits: it can build mutual trust, stakeholders understand risk assessment and response options, and decision makers learn and take into account stakeholder concerns.
Climate change engagement may differ from engagement in other areas because of the skepticism and uncertainty so often put forward, and because in-depth knowledge on mitigation is lacking and adaptation is still unfamiliar. Educational challenges are greater than on other issues, and audience interest and readiness are not at all clear. Persuasion about the need for mitigation and adaptation is needed, as are ongoing monitoring, learning, and repeated engagement. Local and state government are limited in their capacity but must be brought into the conversations.
True two- or many-way dialogue is rare, and it is not clear which segments of the public should be addressed, although better matches are needed between those who communicate and those who will be mobilized or engaged, she said. Most plans for adaptation, mitigation, communication, and engagement need to be strategically developed, recognizing that different people may mobilize or be mobilized for different purposes at different times in a dynamic process.
The Way Forward
Moser concluded with a summary of the reasons public engagement is needed:
- Mass/one-way communication is not enough.
- Dialogue can help to transcend impasse on deeply polarized matters.
- Change requires social support.
But the need for forums for deeper social engagement, ongoing dialogue, and support and accountability go unmet. In addition, there remain lingering questions: What mechanisms are needed to link across fields? What is the best way to effectively represent views about geoengineering at a global level, where such decisions will be made? If pressed to choose speed or thoroughness of engagement in an emergency situation, which will work?
She articulated the following steps to prepare the way forward (those that mesh with the focus of this project are marked with an asterisk):
- Rapidly and substantially expand multidisciplinary climate change research and development.
- Build technical capacity in all sciences (especially social science) and among decision makers.*
- Expand the nation’s decision support capabilities.*
- Identify ways to provide financial and technical resources to governing institutions.
- Seriously engage the American public in the development and debate of a comprehensive climate risk management strategy.*
Discussion
In response to an observation about the difficulty of developing public confidence, given stakeholder fatigue, Moser explained that for people to remain engaged on an issue they have to view their participation as making a difference. She pointed out that social media might be very good for social mobilization around issues that can rally people quickly, but the level of engagement needed for an adaptation decision about where to site a windmill, for instance, would be different.
One participant asked about opportunities for engineers to engage with publics directly, rather than through local, state, or federal government institutions. Moser responded that although some governmental structures make public engagement difficult, there are often possibilities and even requirements for it. And engineers who work as consultants with any level of government or type of business are often involved in processes that engage the public as well as long as they adhere to procedural guidelines. In fact, more and more engineers and consultants are becoming involved in communication training because they see the importance of good communication. If staff are not trained to do effective engagement, a social scientist consultant can help.
The challenge is in bringing the parties together; facilitated dialogue and sophisticated help are needed to make constructive interaction happen. Moser said that the local officials she works with are often
frightened of dealing with emotions, but she believes they can be a good place to begin a conversation. Communication that has nothing to do with conveying or persuading can make a connection by listening to and affirming the person, who is then more likely to be open to considering various points of view. This facilitated approach to dialogue helps people to be more comfortable with emotions instead of throwing stones at each other about building a windmill or a seawall.
Establishing trust is a psychological challenge more than an institutional one. People in local government or in local communities live and go to church with each other, their kids are in the same class, and those relationships prevail.
Climate Change and America’s Infrastructure: Engineering, Social, and Policy Challenges
The capstone workshop revisited the project themes of governance, sustainability, trust and engagement, and social justice.20 Two panels addressed policy and governance issues and justice and human rights issues in the context of climate change and engineered systems. In the first panel, speakers focused on the vulnerabilities for which government action and responsiveness are required and illustrated challenges and opportunities; the second set of speakers delineated ethical challenges and educational and community programs that can identify problems and propose solutions. The summaries below highlight material that relates most substantially to the project cross-cutting themes, adding to the views expressed above. For readers interested in learning more about what particular speakers had to say about a given subject, the complete presentations are available in the online posting of the video proceedings.
Policy and Governance Challenges and Strategies
Elisabeth Graffy, professor of practice and senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University, introduced the session. She first stressed the need to figure out what to do when standard practices have not been working, in the face of social as well as environmental and physical challenges. Scientific findings can contribute to governance and management but do not provide answers. Important decisions must take account of political, social, and scientific differences. Systematic and generalizable knowledge about governance and management options, from researchers and practitioners, is also needed.
In addition, there is widely recognized value in identifying and examining community needs for infrastructure in efforts to address questions of climate, engineered systems, and society. And the notion of infrastructure can include engineered, social, and green infrastructures.
The three speakers in the panel provided specific examples of how localities and communities have responded and can respond creatively to the challenges that infrastructure needs pose to them.
The first speaker, Kristin Baja, hazard mitigation planner for the City of Baltimore Office of Sustainability, represented a city government perspective. She reviewed Baltimore’s Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3), which incorporates climate change challenges in its planning and involves both hazard mitigation and climate adaptation. Climate projections indicate significant increases in average annual temperatures and precipitation, sea level rise, and increased flooding and storms, all of which affect human health. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its Maryland partner as well as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources signed off on the city’s plan, which was developed by the Office of Sustainability in a broadly participatory process.
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20 Video and slides from the capstone presentations are available at https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab2.aspx?EventID=1155563.
In the next presentation, on “Tribal Governments, Climate Change, and Infrastructure,” Patricia Mariella, director of the American Indian Policy Institute, Arizona State University, talked about the need for advance planning and risk communication. The American Indian Policy Institute is tribally driven and integrative, and supports the community through, for example, a certificate program in tribal financial management. Mariella reminded the audience that tribes are governments and must respond as such. In Arizona, where much land is tribal and includes many mineral and other natural resources, tribes have water rights as well as opportunities in alternative energy, innovation, and regulation. Although much improvement is needed—for rivers, roads, and airsheds, for example—it can be achieved through multijurisdictional interaction. She finished by reporting what has been learned about communicating risks—and addressing fear and trust—with empathy and appropriately constructed messages.
Jennie C. Stephens, associate professor of environmental science and policy in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE) at Clark University, addressed the third topic, “Post-Sandy Discourse on Energy System Vulnerability and Smart Grid,” looking at the role of public discourse in creating conceptual connections between hazards, vulnerabilities, and climate change. The connections recognize human reliance on systems and infrastructures and the relevance of both mitigation and adaptation to that dependence. Her research results indicate that societal expectations (e.g., of reliable electricity), together with opportunities for technological upgrades and concerns about affordability, play an increasing role in public discourse. Government decision making should take account of the differences in perspectives and priorities revealed in such discourse.
Engineering, Justice, and Human Rights
Rachelle Hollander, director of the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society at the National Academy of Engineering, moderated this session and introduced the speakers.
Byron Newberry, professor of mechanical engineering at Baylor University, opened with a presentation on engineering challenges, in which he observed that attending to the priorities of people affected by catastrophe is a good place to start considering the challenges. Engineers need to recognize that people have a love-hate relationship with technological fixes, that populations include haves and have-nots, and that there will be difficulties in integrating diverse social aims and long-term risks in proposed technological solutions. He noted a number of pitfalls ranging from unanticipated failure modes and problems of physical or organizational interfaces and transitions, to poor communication, competing interests, and historical contingencies.
Barbara Rose Johnston, senior research fellow, Center for Political Ecology, University of California, Santa Cruz, focused her talk on “Climate Change, Human Rights, Justice.” She used water to demonstrate the multiple values, physical and social, of a resource and how threats to that resource can interfere with social and physical well-being. Resolution of the threats may benefit some, while displacing and impoverishing others. In her view, sustainability requires biocultural health. Development of effective solutions requires acknowledgement of indigenous peoples as rightsholders who must be involved from the earliest stages of project planning, share in the benefits, and have the power to say no. Such involvement often results in better stewardship of resources, although it may not result in the greatest economic gains.
In Summary
Presentations and discussion acknowledged that effective response to the challenges of climate change on infrastructure necessitate attention to issues of sustainability, justice, public trust and engagement, and governance. Developing effective responses also requires formal and informal educational activities to address those issues.
