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Volume 11 ● Issue 2 Journal Editor
Winter 2015 Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
Managing Editor
ISSN: 1548-7733 Brie Betz
Articles
A typology for complex social-ecological systems in mountain communities Mark Altaweel, Arika Virapongse, David Griffith, Lilian Alessa, & Andrew Kliskey, University College
London, United
Kingdom…………………………………………………………………………………………………….1
Sufficiency in social practice: searching potentials for sufficient behavior in a consumerist culture Melanie Speck & Marco Hasselkuss, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Germany…14
Closing the food loops: guidelines and criteria for improving nutrient management
Jennifer McConville, Jan-Olof Drangert, Pernilla Tidåker Tidåker, Tina-Simone Neset, Sebastien Rauch,
Ingrid Strid, & Karin Tonderski, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden…………………………33
Forum on Sustainability and the Library
Introduction to the Forum on Sustainability and the Library Amy Forrester, University of Tennessee, USA……………………………………………………………44
Archival adaptation to climate change
Eira Tansey, University of Cincinnati, USA……………………………………………………………….45
Growing our vision together: forming a sustainability community within the American Library
Association Beth Filar Williams, Madeleine Charney, & Bonnie Smith, Oregon State University, USA……...………57
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ARTICLE
A typology for complex social-ecological systems in mountain communities Mark Altaweel1, Arika Virapongse2, David Griffith2, Lilian Alessa2, & Andrew Kliskey2 1 Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY UK (email: m.altaweel@ucl.ac.uk) 2 Center for Resilient Communities, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844 USA (email: avirapongse@neoninc.org;
griffith@uidaho.edu; alessa@uidaho.edu; akliskey@uidaho.edu) Effective and standardized assessment of social-ecological systems is crucial for supporting increased resilience of human communities and for developing adaptation strategies. However, few analytical frameworks exist to assess the social-ecological resilience and vulnerability of different landscapes. To help fill the gap in this literature, we inves-tigated the utility of a conceptual social-ecological systems typology by assessing 21 mountain communities in the western United States. Our results show that larger cities or urban areas are generally more resilient than smaller communities, but the variation is not particularly notable. Resilience differences are found most often among com-munities of different population sizes. In our sample, no community was deemed to be highly vulnerable to social-ecological change. More broadly, development of standardized social-ecological systems typologies can be applied toward accommodating unique environmental niches while allowing for cross-comparisons among regions on a broader continental scale. KEYWORDS: classification, local communities, montane environments, ecosystem resilience, environmental sociology
Introduction
Classification of social-ecological systems is an
important first step for identifying and assessing fac-tors that affect resilience and vulnerability of commu-nities and their resources (Alessa et al. 2009; Ostrom, 2009; Ostrom & Cox, 2010) and determining poten-tial interventions, such as those intended to enhance a system’s resiliency (Cumming et al. 2005). A social-ecological system (SES) consists of human and bio-physical components that are interconnected and linked through complex system feedbacks and de-pendencies (Berkes et al. 2003). Mismatch in the scales of SESs, in whole or in part and ranging from community- to landscape-level systems, is often an obstacle to comparative studies (Cumming et al. 2006; 2013). Existing typologies focus on SESs at such a broad level that it is not clear if unique quali-ties of environmental niches and community specific-ity can be easily addressed (e.g., Alessa et al. 2009; Ostrom, 2009; Ostrom & Cox, 2010). Information derived from large-scale studies is often not informa-tive when assessing community resilience in specific regions, such as mountainous areas that are varying and complex landscapes characterized by large bio-physical gradients and great fluxes in resource quality and quantity. Without robust tools to comparatively assess the resilience of communities located in spe-
cific types of landscapes, it remains a challenge to sustainably manage available valuable natural re-sources and the social and environmental changes that are expected in the near future.
Typologies of SESs have been developed as practical tools that can be used to classify SESs by applying information generated through conceptual models and existing datasets. By testing such concep-tual models in the real world, typologies can help identify key characteristics, drivers, and dependen-cies within and among systems (Blair et al. 2014; Buergelt & Paton, 2014). Typologies allow for stand-ardized characterization by using specific metrics, so that characteristics (e.g., vulnerability to environmen-tal change) can be compared among communities and management decisions and planning can be conduct-ed with greater standardization. Standardizing the metrics used to assess SESs makes possible scaling up from community to landscape levels so that cross-comparisons can be conducted at broader scales. As an analytical framework, SES typologies are effective in contrasting communities located in specific land-scapes with shared biophysical features (e.g., moun-tains) as well as among landscape types (e.g., moun-tains and coastal areas) on much broader scales. To develop such a tool, existing SES typologies must be examined and refined in accordance with specific landscapes (e.g., Alessa et al. 2009; Ostrom, 2009).
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This article’s main goal is to evaluate the resili-ence of mountain-system communities using a modi-fied version of the “Messy SES” typology (Alessa et al. 2009) and to offer recommendations for further development of typologies as a framework. The unit of analysis used to characterize SESs is a community and its associated resources. We apply the typology in this study to evaluate the resilience of 21 mountain communities located in the western United States. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations for how the SES typology can be further refined for use in specific types of landscapes. With more enhance-ment and development, such typologies can be valu-able for conducting cross-comparisons among differ-ent landscapes so that assessments of SESs can occur on a continental and global scale. Background Why Typologies?
Human-environmental interactions are integral components of interconnected, large-scale systems—the “ecological macrosystem” (Brondizio & Chowdhury, 2013; Heffernan et al. 2014). Such mac-rosystem processes, for instance climate change, have been linked to accelerating rates of natural disasters, economic crises, and livelihood vulnerabilities (Alley et al. 2003; Skoufias, 2003). To improve social pre-paredness for large-scale change, scientists have for-mulated high-level frameworks to address communi-ty resilience in practice, such as toolkits that enable resilience self-assessment (e.g., U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit, 2015). Offering a more region-specific framework, typologies provide a template for researchers and managers to systematically identify resilience/vulnerability levels for communities in a comparable and scalable manner.
The most challenging aspect of developing an SES typology is to identify appropriate social, bio-physical, and integrated metrics for capturing resili-ence or vulnerability, as well as finding accessible long-term datasets to support such metrics. Typolo-gies for community-level resilience have focused on aspects of social metrics, such as change in settle-ment structure, institutions, and livelihoods (Carney, 1998; Berkes et al. 2003; Krausmann et al. 2008). They also can investigate relationships among stake-holders, decision makers, and sociocultural values regarding economic concerns (Wallace, 2007; Reed et al. 2009). Biophysical metrics used in typologies have included presence of different ecosystems, land-cover change, and availability of ecosystem services (Adger et al. 2002; de Groot et al. 2002; Lambin et al. 2003). Integrated metrics include activities of rural landholders and land use (Emtage et al. 2006; Nuissl et al. 2009). To address community-level adaptation
and resilience, different social scales (e.g., individual to community level; Buergelt & Paton, 2014), rela-tionships between governance and ecosystem ser-vices (Ostrom, 2005; 2009), and community size and resource connectivity (Alessa et al. 2009) are as-sessed and included in typologies. The applied typol-ogy considered here studies the heterogeneity that exists across SESs in their given landscapes by inves-tigating different SES elements. Mountain System Communities
Mountain SESs require special attention because of their position in the upstream-downstream gradi-ent, unique ecosystem characteristics, changing hu-man demographics, effects on resource and manage-ment decisions, and cultural and political aspects. As the location of intensive exploitation or as the source of renewable and nonrenewable resources—such as timber, minerals, and water—mountainous regions and their associated watersheds are critical for most societies (Messerli et al. 2004; Winkler et al. 2007; Emelko et al. 2011). As in other systems, mountain-based human communities are subject not only to pressure from macro-environmental drivers such as climate change, but also from human-driven factors such as population growth/decline, economic devel-opment, migration, and urbanization. In contrast to other types of SESs, however, extreme biophysical gradients within mountain landscapes can create unique vulnerabilities to disturbance, availability of ecosystem services, and patterns of ecological and natural-resource exploitation (MtnSEON, 2015).
Considered unique and understudied from eco-logical and biogeographical perspectives (Beniston, 2003), mountain landscapes are defined by high-contrast biophysical and ecological characteristics, such as steep physical gradients (e.g., elevation, pre-cipitation, temperature), ecotones (abrupt ecological transition zones), and highly varied ecosystems and physical characteristics (Haslett, 1997; Gardner & Dekens, 2007). Mountains have extreme and varying topographies along a large continuum; for example, consider the differences between Snowdon in Wales (high precipitation, heavily forested, anciently vol-canic, and standing 1,085 meters) and Mount Kili-manjaro in Tanzania (dry, sparsely forested, many endemic plants, actively volcanic, and standing 5,149 meters). Extreme, but local, spatial heterogeneity also differentiates mountains from surrounding lowland areas, so that mountainous regions are often defined according to relative prominence (vertical differentia-tion from surrounding landscapes). For example, the town of Browning, Montana (USA) is considered to be on the “high plains” at 1,334 meters; this can be contrasted with Mount Rogers in Virginia (USA), identified as a mountain at 1,746 meters, and the
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aforementioned Snowdon in Wales, unquestionably a mountain at only 1,085 meters.
High-contrast biophysical characteristics also subject mountain landscapes to hazards that are unique or more pronounced than in other landscapes. For example, landslides, avalanches, flash floods, forest fires, and extreme cold events are characteristic of mountain SESs, but largely absent from lowland temperate regions where most of the world’s popula-tions resides (Gardner & Dekens, 2007; Hewitt, 2014). Due to the great biophysical, microclimatic, and ecological variability of mountain areas, their ecosystems are reservoirs for biodiversity and highly vulnerable to global change. Prominence and separa-tion of peaks by lowlands with inhospitable biophysi-cal characteristics results in many mountains acting as ecological “sky-islands,” with unique fauna and flora that are susceptible to environmental and cli-mate change and physically unable to migrate to more suitable habitat as conditions change (Holycross & Douglas, 2007). Mountains also serve as refuges for many endangered species, such as large carnivores (Weaver, 2001). Global climate change is predicted to have greater effects on mountain ecosys-tems, and other high-latitude ecosystems, than on most landscapes (a prediction that is actually begin-ning to occur) (Kullman, 2004).
The biophysical and geographical characteristics of mountainous landscapes contribute to pronounced cultural, socioeconomic, and political diversity and significance for these regions. Mountain ecosystems, especially in Europe, have been modified, molded, and tended by self-organizing and self-regulating cultures at the fringes of larger polities and societies (Rescia et al. 2008). Due to historical patterns of for-est use and resource extraction in many mountainous regions of the world, mountain landscapes and asso-ciated communities experience (and in some instanc-es engage in activities that directly cause) more de-forestation, related flooding, and extreme erosion than comparably sized lowland SESs (Gibon et al. 2010). Mountain ranges have been used to define political frontiers between nations (Stoddard, 1991), and the enforcement of law and effective governance by states is typically weaker in mountainous regions (Ratner, 2000). Often, in mountainous areas minority groups are isolated (e.g., India), natural resources are heavily exploited (e.g., logging and mining), and military conflict persists (e.g., Afghanistan, Yemen; Blaikei & Sadeque, 2000). In addition, mountains regularly serve as sacred sites of cultural importance and these features have been correlated with higher biodiversity (Anderson et al. 2005). As a result of different or unique characteristics for mountain sys-tems and communities, researchers and stakeholders have suggested specific guidelines for protecting the
biological and cultural diversity of these regions (Wild et al. 2008).
Mountain systems are critical for understanding watersheds and their connectivity from high elevation to the sea (Kaneshiro et al. 2005). This importance is exemplified in the ancient Hawaiian managed land-scape, or ahupua’a, a land division stretching from upland mountains to the near shore that formed the basis for agro-ecological management and acted as a foundation for local cultural and political economies (Kamehameha Schools, 1994; Kliskey et al. 2009). In temperate environments, mountain-to-sea connectivi-ty has been extended to icefield-to-ocean linkages, given changes in elevation and moisture, similarly highlighting the critical roles of downstream connec-tivity, transitions, and gradients for mountain land-scapes in entire watersheds (O’Neel et al. 2015). Methods Analytical Approach
We use the “Messy SES” typology as a starting point to assess community-level resilience in the western United States mountain system (Alessa et al. 2009). Resilience and vulnerability are designated as two ends of a continuum in this typology, which em-phasizes community size, resource use, and commu-nity connectivity, acknowledging that SESs are inher-ently difficult to categorize or assess (Folke, 2006). In comparison to the SES typology proposed by Ostrom (2005; 2009), Alessa et al. (2009) requires fewer proxies, so it is more manageable in practice. Our analysis assessed the Alessa et al. (2009) typolo-gy to improve its utility for providing information helpful to making management and community-planning decisions. The unit of analysis in our study is a community, defined as an area and population associated with an organized and commonly gov-erned collection of households.
To assess the typology, we first selected 21 com-munities from the western mountainous region of the United States (Intermountain and Rocky Mountains) as a sample group (Figure 1). We defined a moun-tainous region as a landscape with significant promi-nence, sloping terrain, valleys, and human communi-ties. We studied communities located in such land-scapes in the states of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, with pop-ulation sizes ranging from 204 people (Washtucna, Washington) to 663,900 residents (Denver, Colora-do).
We next considered the eleven resilience proxies used in Alessa et al. (2009) and their relevance to our mountain-system communities (see the next section). Resilience proxies are diversity, distance, retention, distribution, persistence, collectivism, variability,
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substitutability, communication, and risk. We identi-fied specific metrics for each proxy (Table 1), based on the availability (e.g., open source, freely available) of quantitative datasets. Where possible, we identi-fied both social and biophysical metrics for each proxy. Metrics that were only available at large scales (e.g., state level) were scaled down to the community level based on population proportions. In other words, we took the state-level data and applied it to the community.
After all data were collated, we calculated the range for each metric for the sample group. We then divided the range into three parts (Table 1, column “Metric Defined”). Qualitative identifiers were given for each part (e.g., low, middle, high) to describe their relationship to the metric. These identifiers were then assigned numeric values that reflected the met-ric’s contribution to resilience. For most metrics, the transformation was 1 = low, 2 = middle, and 3 = high. Some categories, with more quantitative data that allowed for fine-scale treatment, also apply 0.5 intervals. For other metrics, an inversion was needed. For example, “distance to freshwater” was considered 1 = high, 2 = middle, and 3 = low, as a shorter dis-tance to water is associated with higher resilience. After all results were described numerically, data in each proxy were averaged. We then translated the averages into categories A, B, and C (resilient to vul-nerable, respectively), where the bottom-, middle-, and top-third of averaged results correspond to A‒C categories, respectively. Resilient communities (A) are those which are most likely to withstand disturb-
ance, transitional communities (B) respond unevenly to disturbance, and vulnerable communities are those least able to resist the negative effects of disturbance (c.f. Alessa et al. 2009).
Size (i.e., population) is considered separately from the proxies (Alessa et al. 2009), because the scale of social organization is a strong discriminator with respect to environmental change and response (Wilbanks & Kates, 1999; Marston, 2000). Size of-fers the opportunity to scale resilience assessments for cross comparisons among communities. For ex-ample, the number of residents is associated with aggregated benefits (e.g., tax revenue) and costs (e.g., resource use; Dasgupta, 1995). In mountain regions, size is particularly important because the human-carrying capacity is often limited by topography. Small communities are often located in canyons or on sloped land, with larger population concentrations situated in valleys or at the edge of mountainous are-as (Cohen & Small, 1998).
Our analysis defines community size by estimat-ed population, ranging from small (3 < 2,500), me-dium (2 = 2,500‒50,000), to large (1 > 50,000) ac-cording to the United States Census Bureau’s (2010a) urban-rural classification for towns (data are collect-ed from U.S. Census, 2015a). The resilience classifi-cation (A, B, or C) is combined with the size classifi-cation (1, 2, or 3) so that nine different categories for community resilience are possible (i.e., Types 1A‒3C).
Figure 1 Location and elevation of sample communities.
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Proxies and Metrics for the Typology The eleven proxies considered in the typology
are intended to capture a range of social-ecological factors affecting community-level resilience and vul-nerability (Alessa et al. 2009). Proxies address com-ponents of vulnerability including root causes (e.g., factors that produce unequal distribution of resources among people), dynamic pressures (e.g., processes and activities such as environmental change), and unsafe conditions (e.g., spatial location and the built environment; Wisner et al. 2004). We evaluated the
proxies according to: 1) relevance to mountain sys-tems and 2) metrics and available datasets to inform the proxy. Table 1 lists the specific proxies that we applied. A total of nineteen metrics and eighteen dif-ferent sources for datasets informed our typology. Table 1 also indicates the thresholds of metrics em-ployed to evaluate communities by identifying the range within the sample group (column “Metric De-fined”). We identified relatively informative metrics and good quality datasets for most proxies. Data were all derived from free, publicly available sources on
Table 1 Descriptions, definitions, and datasets for metrics used for each proxy.
Proxy Metric Metric Description1 Metric Defined2 Data Set Citation
Diversity Industry diversity
Range across percent of participation of top three industries of the town (%)
High (3) < 5, Medium (2) 5–10, Low (1) > 10, Range: 0‒15
U.S. Census (2013a)
Diversity Biodiversity Biodiversity of plants, fungi/lichens, animals, by state (number of species)
Low (1) < 6,915, Medium (2) 6,915‒7,827, High (3) > 7,827; Range: 6,003–8,739
Nature Serve (2013)
Distance Ocean distance
Distance from the ocean (km) Low (3) < 603, Medium (2) 603‒1,107, High (1) > 1,107; Range: 100‒1,510
Google Earth (2015)
Distance Water distance
Distance from main water source for community use (km)
Low (3) < 60, Medium (2) 60‒115, High (1)> 115; Range: 5‒170
Google Earth (2015); community websites
Retention Renewable energy use
Energy used from renewable sources (wind, solar, hydro, geo, biomass) by state (%)
Low (1) < 34, Medium (2) 34‒67, High (3) > 67; Range: 0‒100
USDOE (2013)
Retention Recycling activity
Number of people per recycling center (individuals/center)
Low (3) < 10,374, Medium (2) 10,374‒20,748, High (1) > 20,748, communities with no centers identified as “high”; Range: 0‒31,122
RecyclingCenters.org (2015)
Distribution Airport distance
Distance to international airport (km) Low (3) < 258, Medium (2) 258‒503, High (1) > 503; Range: 13‒748
Travel Math (2015)
Distribution Conduits available
Connection points to Interstate highways (Number of connection points)
Google Earth (2015) Google Earth (2015) Range: 0‒5
Persistence Establishment age
Founding year for community (year) Older (3) < 1,863, Medium (2) 1,863‒1,880, Young (1) > 1,880; Range: 1,847‒1,896
Wikipedia (2015)
Collectivism Union affiliation
Employed and salary workers with union affiliation by state (%)
Low (1) < 9, Medium (2) 9‒14, High (3) > 14; Range: 4.60‒18.40
BLS (2014)
Collectivism NGO participation
Number of people per NGO by community (individuals)
Low (3) < 153, Medium (2) 153‒256, High (1) > 256; Range: 50‒360
IRS (2015)
Variability Precipitation range
Range in precipitation record per year (inches)
Low (1) < 20, Medium (2) 20‒30, High (3) > 30; Range: 9.4‒41.7
Western RegionalClimate Center (2015)
Variability Population change
Change in community population from 1990 to 2015 (%)
Low (3) < 121, Medium (2) 121‒154, High (1) > 154; Range: 88‒187
City Data (2015)
Directionality Export-import difference
Difference between exported and imported goods by state (US$)
Low (3) < 8,944, Medium (2) 8,944‒23,774, High (1) > 23,774; Range: ‒5,887‒38,605
U.S. Census (2015b)
Substitutability Commuting activity
Change in daytime population due to commuting, by county (%)
Low (1) < 5.2, Medium (2) 5.2‒16.1, High (3) > 16.1; Range: ‒5.7‒27
U.S. Census (2010b)
Substitutability Growing days Number of growing days for cultivated plants per year by state (days)
Low (1) < 115, Medium (2) 115‒156, High (3) > 156; Range: 74‒197
Farmer’s Almanac (2015)
Communication Internet access
Percent of people with computer and Internet access, by community (%)
Low (1) < 81, Medium (2) 81‒85, High (3) > 85; Range: 8‒89
U.S. Census (2013b)
Risk Social Vulnerability Index
Vulnerability measurement 1‒4 Low (1) < 1.33, Medium (2) 1.33‒2.66, High (3) > 2.66; Range: 1‒3
HVRI (2013)
1 Qualitative description of metrics, including the scale of the dataset and unit of analysis (in parentheses). 2 Quantitative categorization of the metric, including a qualifier describing the town’s metric in relation to the sample group (low to
high); numeric designation describing the metric’s contribution to the town’s resilience (in parentheses, 1: negative, 2: neutral, 3: positive); and range of actual values within the sample group.
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the Internet. Diversity (the first of the eleven proxies), which
considers a community’s varying access to both local and distant resources, is a measure of a community’s social and biophysical options for meeting livelihood needs, such as mechanisms for accessing resources (e.g., livelihood activities) and availability of re-sources (e.g., timber, energy deposits). Economic di-versity, such as the presence of different industries, helps to inform how communities might adapt to shifts and stresses arising from evolving economic circumstances (Chapin et al. 2004). Diversification promotes livelihood security by helping households overcome crises and abrupt change (Shackleton & Shackleton, 2004). Similarly, biophysical diversity, such as biological, ecological, and natural resource diversity, offers a great range of options and alterna-tives for communities to be more adaptive to change (Adams et al. 2004, Reyers et al. 2012). In mountain systems, diversity is linked to distance and distribu-tion and provides different options for livelihood strategies.
Distance refers to the physical distance to essen-tial resources (e.g., water, goods, trade). For example, communities located near headwaters have great po-tential for environmental impact on downstream communities. Mountain communities are often iso-lated; steep gradients can cause distribution of re-sources to be more sensitive to change than in more homogeneous topography. Climate change, for ex-ample, is expected to affect mountain regions by making some natural resources either physically more distant, scarce, or no longer available (Hope, 2014). Therefore, distance is linked to the proxies of topography, diversity, and distribution.
Retention is defined as efficiency in resource utilization, such as through renewable and recycled materials. In mountainous regions in the western United States, renewable natural resources that con-tribute directly to livelihoods include, but are not lim-ited to, arable soil, trees and plants, fish and game, and wind for power generation. More varied and nu-merous renewable resources provide long-term secu-rity for mountain communities (Forman, 2008). Secu-rity can be measured based on how much renewable energy or how many resources are used in a commu-nity, including the capacity and infrastructure for recycling resources. Retention is linked to distance, as isolation can drive higher retention or prevent re-cycling of materials through lack of infrastructure.
Distribution is a measure of a community’s level of connectivity to a broader economy, such as through transportation conduits. In terms of infra-structural resilience, a community with easy access to highways, major airports, and rail interconnections is
more resilient than an isolated community (Cutter et al. 2010). Strong connections to surrounding com-munities and a broader region enhance community resilience by allowing more access to resources and emergency aid while being responsive to external factors or shocks.
Persistence is measured based on a community’s previous history in facing threats and overcoming and adapting to social-ecological stresses (Assche & Lo, 2011). Historical records can form a baseline indicat-ing how effectively communities have dealt with social-ecological stress in the past. For mountain communities, this is particularly important for antici-pating and adapting to natural threats, such as floods. This proxy helps to measure a community’s experi-ences recovering from major ecological disturbances such as pine-beetle infestations. As a metric for per-sistence, community age can be informative, with historical memory being preserved through records and traditional, generational knowledge.
Collectivism represents how community-driven processes and institutions, such as governmental, pri-vate, and public organizations, respond to social-ecological change (Buduru & Pal, 2010). This char-acteristic indicates how well communities are able to respond to endogenous or exogenous stresses through local cooperation and systems of organization. A high number of community-based programs and in-stitutions [such as labor-union affiliation and the presence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)] relative to population can determine if organizational systems enable resilience. High levels of collectivism help to shape more rapid and flexible responses among communities through such processes as adap-tive governance (Folke et al. 2005).
Variability refers to the consistency of environ-mental factors and resource availability for a commu-nity over time. Environmental variability, for ex-ample, has been identified as an important determi-nant of community vulnerability in traditional agri-cultural systems throughout the world (Altieri, 2004). Variability can be measured in several ways: the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), for ex-ample, has used change in precipitation, river dis-charge, and air temperature over a minimum of 30 years to monitor environmental variability. In moun-tain systems, variability is often determined by the location of a community along different gradients (e.g., elevation, location in watershed, slope). As cli-mate change begins to have greater effects on spe-cific landscapes over the next century, variability in environmental factors such as precipitation is ex-pected to increase, greatly affecting agriculture and other activities (Beniston & Stoffel, 2014).
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Directionality refers to the input or output of re-sources due to trade or environmental change. Some mountain communities are more self-sufficient due to local natural resources (e.g., timber), but industrial goods and services needed to capture more value from these resources may be outsourced to other lo-cales. For example, a mountain-ski town imports goods and services to earn revenue through visitors to the resort, gaining resources. A mining town, on the other hand, may extract and export natural resources (removing resources). Directionality informs how (negative or positive) communities are able to accu-mulate resources that promote resilience and adapta-tion related to proxies of distance, distribution, and retention (Carpenter & Brock, 2008).
Substitutability measures a community’s range of available resource options and gauges its ability to adapt under social-ecological stress by having access to redundant and multiple social-ecological resources (Folke et al. 2005). Metrics to inform this proxy can include the availability of nearby work opportunities (e.g., percentage of local residents that commute to jobs) and growing days for agricultural and cultivated plants.
Communication relates to a community’s ability to access knowledge to help promote resilience and adaptation, which can be in the form of mass media or social networks that spread ideas (Vogel et al.
2007). Quantifying the population’s level of access to the Internet and other communication (e.g., libraries, archives) informs this proxy.
Risk is important for determining how likely it is that communities will be affected by disturbance events (e.g., flooding, economic crisis, or disease out-break). Depending on their specific location, higher elevation communities may experience major shocks such as shifts in the quantity and timing of precipita-tion due to climate change, while lower elevation communities may be less affected. Meaningful risk metrics for mountain systems include predicted change in precipitation and snowpack, which can increase due to storm events. Distance from contami-nation sources, such as elevation and location along a watershed gradient, can affect pollution spread (Briggs, 2003). While ambient temperature generally varies with altitude and latitude, variation in meteoro-logical conditions due to climate change is expected to be inconsistent across time and space. The Social Vulnerability Index (HVRI, 2015) is a useful meas-urement of risk that considers susceptibility to envi-ronmental hazards by categories such as race, ethnici-ty, and age, as different cohorts may have greater risk due to socio-economic status.
Based on an SES science approach, all of the proxies inform and affect each other through feed-back loops. However, some proxies are more closely
Table 2 Values of the resilience proxy measures for the 21 sample communities, including size and analysis results. Resilience level category ranges are as follows: A = 3.0–2.4; B = 2.3–1.7; C = 1.6–1.0.
Community / Proxy Siz
e
Div
ersi
ty
Dis
tan
ce
Ret
enti
on
Dis
trib
uti
on
Per
sist
enc
e
Co
llec
tivi
sm
Var
iab
ility
Dir
ecti
on
alit
y
Su
bst
itu
tab
ility
Co
mm
un
icat
ion
Ris
k
Ave
rag
e o
f re
silie
nce
pro
xies
Res
ilien
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Denver, CO 1 2.5 2 2 3 3 2 1.5 3 3 2 2 2.4 A 1A Colorado Springs, CO 1 2.5 1 2 2.5 3 1.5 1 3 1.5 3 3 2.2 B 1B Durango, CO 2 2 2 2 1.5 1 2.5 2 3 1 2 3 2 B 2B Berthoud, CO 2 2 2 2 2 2 2.5 1 3 1.5 2 3 2.1 B 2B Orofino, ID 2 2 3 3 1 3 2 2.5 3 2 2 2 2.3 B 2B Salmon, ID 2 1.5 2.5 3 1 2 2 2 3 1.5 2 2 2.1 B 2B Blackfoot, ID 2 2 2.5 3 2 2 1 1.5 3 1 2 2 2 B 2B Boise , ID 1 1.5 2.5 2 1.5 3 1.5 1 3 1.5 1 2 1.9 B 1B Butte, MT 2 2.5 2.5 2 1.5 1 2.5 2 3 1 1 2 1.9 B 2B Arlee, MT 3 2 2.5 1 1 2 3 2 3 1.5 1 1 1.8 B 3B Tigard, OR 1 3 3 3 2.5 3 2 2 3 2 2 2 2.5 A 1A Vale, OR 3 3 3 3 1 1 3 2 3 2 2 2 2.3 A 3A Medford, OR 1 2.5 3 3 2 1 2.5 1.5 3 1.5 1 2 2.1 B 1B Monticello, UT 3 2.5 2 2 1.5 1 1 2 3 1.5 2 1 1.8 B 3B Salt Lake City, UT 1 2.5 2.5 2 3 3 2 2 3 2.5 2 2 2.4 A 1A Washtucna, WA 3 2 3 2 1.5 2 2.5 2 1 1.5 2 2 2 B 3B Spokane, WA 1 1 3 3 2 2 2.5 2 1 1.5 2 2 2 B 1B Bingen, WA 3 1.5 3 3 2.5 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 B 3B Cheyenne, WY 1 2.5 1.5 1.5 3 2 1.5 1.5 3 1.5 2 2 2 B 1B Baggs, WY 3 2 2.5 1 1 2 2 1 3 1 1 2 1.7 B 3B Cody, WY 2 3 2.5 1 1 1 2 2 3 1.5 1 3 1.9 B 2B
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related than others. Diversity, variability, distance, retention, distribution, and directionality are all based on a community’s physical features. Size, persis-tence, and collectivism focus on social aspects of local history and social organization. Risk stands alone because it is based on the prediction of future events, according to an analysis of all other proxies. Topography is not included as a proxy, although it affects many of the proxies, including size, distance, risk, and distribution. Results
Table 2 displays the size of the communities and aggregate measures of the metrics for each resilience proxy so that they can be compared across communi-ties. The table also shows the final combined size and resilience score for each community. Communities typed A to C are more to less resilient, respectively; community sizes 1 to 3 are large to small, respective-ly.
On the basis of our analysis (Table 2 & Figure 2), most sample communities are characterized as transitional (n = 17); however, four communities are classified as resilient. Large communities, or cities, are deemed to be either resilient (n = 3) or transition-al (n = 5). Medium-sized communities are all identi-fied as transitional (n = 7). The majority of small towns are transitional (n = 5). Using the framework provided by Alessa et al. (2009), none of the towns in our sample are classified as vulnerable, although Baggs, WY scores very close.
As an illustration of the assessment of SES resili-ence using the typology it is useful to consider the in-dividual measures for a single community. As an ex-ample, the town of Salmon, Idaho, is a small rural community of 3,112 residents located in the Salmon River Mountains of the American Continental Divide in central Idaho—rated as a medium-sized communi-
ty (Type 2). The town is situated at an elevation of 1,202 meters above sea level (ASL), immediately west of Continental Divide-mountain peaks that reach in excess of 3,000 meters ASL, and at the up-per headwaters of the Salmon River—a tributary of the Columbia River Basin, and 1,560 kilometers up-river from the Columbia River mouth on the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1). Salmon has a semi-arid climate with cold, dry winters and hot, slightly wetter sum-mers. Historically, the Salmon River valley is home to the Native American Lemhi Shoshone people and notable as the birthplace of Sacajawea, the Shoshone guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806, and the route taken by that expedition as they crossed the Continental Divide en route to the Pacific Ocean.
The overall diversity proxy for Salmon of 1.5 (medium) tempers a low industrial diversity, based on over 12% participation in lumber, ranching, and tourism as the top three industries, with a high biodi-versity, resulting from close proximity to relatively unmodified forest and riverine environments (Tables 1 & 2). The distance proxy of 2.5 (medium-low) combines a particularly large distance from the ocean (1,560 kilometers) at the very headwaters of the Co-lumbia River, and short distance from the town’s main water source—the entire town is within one kilometer of the Salmon River (Tables 1 & 2). The retention proxy of 3 (very low) combines low metrics for renewable-energy use and recycling activity (Ta-bles 1 and 2). The distribution proxy of 1 (very low) reflects Salmon’s single connection to Interstate 90 which is 226 kilometers away and accessible in Mis-soula to the north (Tables 1 & 2). Its persistence proxy of 2 (medium) mirrors the founding of Lemhi County and the City of Salmon in 1866 (Tables 1 & 2). The collectivism proxy of 2 (medium) reflects the combination of 12% of employed and salaried work-ers in union affiliation for Idaho and 165 people per NGO (Tables 1 & 2). The variability proxy of 2 (me-dium) indicates both a modest environmental varia-bility (range in annual precipitation) and a modest change in community population from 1990 to 2015 (+0.03%). The directionality proxy of 3 (low) for Salmon echoes relatively low self-sufficiency due to the importation relative to exportation of resources (Tables 1 & 2). A substitutability proxy of 1.5 (medium-low) reflects little change in daytime popu-lation due to scant commuting (the only other incor-porated city in the county being Leadore with only 105 residents some 74 kilometers away, and a medi-um number of growing days per year (Tables 1 & 2). Its communication proxy of 2 (medium) is due to a moderate percentage (83%) of the community pos-sessing computer and Internet access. And the risk proxy of 2 (medium) reflects a moderate social vul-
Figure 2 Typology results for the communities assessed.
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nerability index score (2.0) for the community (Ta-bles 1 & 2). The average resilience for Salmon of 2.1 is in the range of transitional resilience—an uneven response to disturbance resulting in an overall rating for the community as a type 2B transitional com-munity (Table 2 & Figure 2).
Discussion Benefits and Limitations
The Alessa et al. (2009) typology offers descrip-tions of proxies, but does not specify the metrics that should be used. The categories in the typology are not unique to mountain systems, but mountain char-acteristics such as precipitation, temperature, transport, and diversity of available resources do af-fect results by influencing resilience. As such, the ty-pology allows for flexibility to use different region-specific metrics for capturing resilience in mountain systems. By testing the utility of the typology with mountain communities, we were able to assess the challenges, benefits, and limitations of the typology, so that more robust taxonomies can be developed and data gaps identified. Our proxies were not weighted, as the intent was to identify the communities that showed more or less vulnerability within this particu-lar framework.
Datasets are generally available to capture the size and proxies for resilience reasonably well. Since each of our datasets came from a different source, it was time consuming to collect the appropriate data to inform each metric. As other SES studies have noted, the different scales used for each dataset (e.g., coun-ty, zip code, state levels) present challenges, because there is a need to scale down some datasets to the town level (e.g., per capita) (Cumming et al. 2006). To improve quantitative capacity to evaluate the re-silience of communities, datasets should be collected at the community level.
As an evolving field, resilience science continues to test conceptual SES models that identify metrics of resilience as well as relationships among metrics (Berkley & Gunderson, 2015). In the absence of guidance from a foundation of literature that defines specific metrics to be used in a typology, we select measures that are able to demonstrate the typology’s workability using publically available data. Among the proxies, persistence proves to be the least in-formative in our analysis, as all of the communities were established at roughly the same time. For varia-bility, we use population change from 1990 until the present, which demonstrates that communities can leverage human capital into infrastructure improve-ment (Short & Mussman, 2014). Although less than ideal, the data were readily available and could be used to highlight the relative ability of communities
to address variable resource or ecological conditions. We use the number of growing days for the substitut-ability proxy, as this shows the range of crops that can be grown given prevailing climatic advantage. While mountain communities in the United States are not often known for large-scale commercial agricul-ture, food production does enable local residents to provide for themselves during disruption. For our assessment of risk, we use the Social Vulnerability Index (HVRI, 2013), which we recognize does not include the biophysical aspect of vulnerability, but offers a straightforward way to differentiate risks among communities.
Our typology has potential to be more readily ap-plied using quantitative—rather than qualitative—data, as they provide values that can be directly trans-lated to resilience categories. However, some proxies like collectivism may best be informed through quali-tative documentation of activities conducted by gov-ernment, nongovernmental, and private-public part-nerships. The current typology framework is not very conducive for such qualitative datasets. To under-stand the context that underlies community resilience, better ways to assess qualitative data, such as through the deployment of historical perspectives, are needed to improve typologies. In addition, data sources for metrics are not available in a central repository, so time-consuming online searches in a dispersed and changing digital landscape are needed. We suggest that future typologies consider better ways to include qualitative datasets. While qualitative databases are often inherently difficult to work with, relative measures within such qualitative understanding can at least provide information on what is more or less important from the perspective of resilience.
In this study, we relied only on publically availa-ble data rather than community-based information (e.g., local knowledge, unpublished municipal man-agement information). These data, which are labor in-tensive to collect, could be used in analyses after spe-cific communities of interest have been identified through applying the typology. Depending on open-access data makes the typology useful for managers and planners, who can efficiently allocate their lim-ited resources by more quickly identifying vulnerable communities that may warrant further investigation. In our current study, we emphasize access to data over a more comprehensive approach because we believe that typologies must be easy to populate and implement to be useful in land, resource, and com-munity management. Science often fails to translate results into methodologies that can be utilized by managers and applied researchers, resulting in a research-implementation gap that this study attempts to fill (Walsh et al. 2014).
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Another limitation of our approach is that the metric scores are calculated based on our sample. However, we selected this approach because our main goal was to demonstrate the potential utility of the typology as one step in a more encompassing process toward vulnerability assessment of a large number of communities. One benefit of our approach, nevertheless, is that the resilience score is adaptable to changing circumstances within the sample itself. As new resilience typologies and assessments are developed and tested, more rigorous comparisons will be possible. This was attempted for this study but proved difficult for the given data values that were available. In any case, we contend that our analysis offers valuable perspective on advancing SES typologies.
Relevance of Results
Our assessed communities indicate that larger cities are slightly more resilient than smaller commu-nities, where Size 1 settlements average a 2.18 resili-ence score vs. 2.06 for all other settlements. On one hand, the higher resilience result could be because relatively larger communities generally have more diversified economies; more efficient connections to national and international transportation networks; use of resources; and ability to leverage social, knowledge, and financial capital. In advanced econ-omies, cities tend to have social and economic capac-ity to develop increasingly resilient infrastructures (Pretty & Ward, 2001; Vugrin et al. 2010; Walker & Cooper, 2010; Smith & Stirling, 2011). In compari-son to larger cities, smaller mountain communities, particularly those with populations of less than a few thousand, are slightly more vulnerable (Size 3 com-munities have a 1.98 resilience average). Interesting-ly, no communities are classified as Type C (vulnera-ble). There are a number of possible explanations, such as that no communities in the sample group are vulnerable, the United States is simply relatively wealthier and better able to address resilience, and the typology is not specific enough to inform the re-silience context of mountains (e.g., mountain system may represent a nested typology within the typology that we used). Instead of adjusting scores so that some communities are assigned to each of the re-silience categories (e.g., centering proxy scores at “2”), we chose to maintain the original protocol, so that the results could be comparable to future typo-logical analyses.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find many oth-er studies similar to the approach that we have em-ployed here, making comparison to previous work difficult. Pickett et al. (2014) propose some relevant ideas of urban adaptation and how it could benefit types (large to small) of communities, but this does
not include a practical implementation of a typology to case studies. Although comparable current re-search efforts have been produced to investigate cit-ies and their capacity for resilience (e.g., Arup Group, 2015; BRR, n.d.), we find that these studies do not account sufficiently for environmental, geo-graphical, or biogeographic effects.
Future Direction
This study offers yet one more step in improving typologies so that they can provide useful infor-mation for stakeholders seeking to make decisions regarding community- and landscape-level resilience. A next step entails more rigorous analysis and identi-fication of appropriate metrics. Even among monitor-ing initiatives, it is unclear what indicators should be assessed to support improvements in community re-silience (Carpenter et al. 2001), a situation that remains a major challenge for the broader monitoring community (Schimel & Keller, 2015).
We applied our typology to mountain communi-ties in the western United States, where data are more available than for less developed nations (Sunderlin et al. 2005). A major obstacle for all managers is data availability, which has led to advocacy for open-access publishing (Fuller et al. 2014). With a new push for large-scale, standardized, and publicly ac-cessible data around the world (e.g., observatories, census data, satellite maps), data will likely become more accessible in the future, making possible global-scale analyses. Remote-sensing data is another attractive and simple resource useful for providing quick proxy measurements until more adequate re-sources are obtained from ground-based sources.
Based on our experience, we have some concrete recommendations for the next steps needed to devel-op an effective and useful SES typology. Researchers should strive to:
Develop a portal that assembles datasets for met-
rics in one place, so that the mining of data can be made more efficient.
Define best practices, particularly in regard to the unit analysis and scales used among different datasets, so that the data can be more interopera-ble and easier to use.
Increase testing of SES and resilience science theories, conceptual models, and typologies to better define the metrics and relationships among metrics.
Increase the sample size used to test typologies to better define the range and thresholds for met-rics.
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Test the limits of the typology in other mountain systems, ecosystems and landscapes, and geopo-litical and sociopolitical contexts.
Foster better partnerships with data- and informatics-science communities to help over-come data challenges in the typology, such as the need to identify better ways to include qualitative data and community-based data.
Conclusion
We present an application of the Alessa et al. (2009) SES typology to evaluate its utility for as-sessing resilience of communities located in moun-tain landscapes. We offer suggestions to further re-fine a conceptual SES typology so that better assess-ment of the resilience of communities in specific landscapes can occur. With such refinement, SES typologies can provide useful information for region-al planners, for instance at the state level, as a way to compare vulnerability of multiple communities. For researchers, typologies offer a useful tool and ap-proach to better evaluate conceptual SES models and to analyze patterns and causes of resilience or vulner-ability to change. Efforts to standardize data and ana-lytical approaches for SESs and resilience science will help to advance these fields toward new frontiers and increase their application in practice.
Our study offers a starting point for further de-velopment of typologies. Taxonomic tools are critical for identifying communities and regions or geograph-ic areas that are more or less resilient, but these pro-vide a coarse-level diagnostic, so that more compre-hensive assessment and data collection can be applied more efficiently. With growing global population, changing climate, and increasing pressures on limited natural resources and infrastructure, an SES approach is needed in land and natural resource management, so that the landscape and its components can be treat-ed as an interconnected system with shared goals toward greater resilience. Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Mountain Social Ecologi-cal Observatory Network (MtnSEON; NSF award #DEB 1231233), the Dynamics of Coupled Natural Human Sys-tems: Water-use Decisions in a Dynamic Environment Pro-ject (CNH; NSF Award #BCS 1114851), and the Idaho EPSCoR Program (MILES; NSF award #IIA-1301792). The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the funders. We also express our gratitude to Kacy Kreiger (University of Alaska Anchorage) for the carto-graphic design on Figure 1.
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Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy | http://sspp.proquest.com Fall 2015 | Volume 11 | Issue 2
ARTICLE
Sufficiency in social practice: searching potentials for sufficient behavior in a consumerist culture Melanie Speck & Marco Hasselkuss Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, Doeppersberg 19, Wuppertal, North-Rhine Westfalia 42103 Germany (email: melanie.lukas@wupperinst.org; marco.hasselkuss@wupperinst.org)
To live a life of sufficiency in a consumerist culture may be one of the most ambitious experiments an individual could undertake. To investigate this challenge, we employed a social-practice approach. This article is based on 42 qualitative interviews asking respondents why and how they acted in a sufficient way within a Western infrastructure and culture. The results indicate that sufficiency-oriented people draw on particular meanings in everyday-life practices when adopting relevant resource-extensive actions. These understandings encompass an amalgam of environmentally friendly attitudes, positive social intentions, and/or personal commitments to thriftiness. We further identified a set of specific practices—including sharing, recycling, and reusing—as useful for the adoption of a sufficient lifestyle. For our respondents, many of these sufficiency practices occurred regularly in daily life and were rarely questioned. Using an additional survey, we show that these routines lead to less resource-intensive lifestyles and demonstrate how a small group of people has been able to habitually adopt sufficiency practices. However, the majority does not see a need for more frequent implementation of such routines because daily decision-making processes are widely focused on the consumption of products. KEYWORDS: consumerism, social practice, sufficiency, consumption, behavior, social impact, environmental impact
Introduction1
After decades of industrialization and globaliz-
ation, advanced economies have become significantly
more efficient in their use of materials despite
mounting environmental pressures (Meadows et al.,
2004; Princen, 2005; Rockström et al. 2009). While
prior to the Industrial Revolution, people lived more
sufficiently, industrialization triggered exceptional
levels of wealth and luxury and enormous increases
in the volume of private consumption, leading to
accumulating environmental stress. In short, “current
consumption patterns are simply unsustainable”
(Assadourian, 2010), to the extent that changes in
consumer behavior are crucial to sustainable
development (Sanne, 2002; Shallcross & Robinson,
2007; Alcott, 2008; Bliesner et al. 2014). However,
such strategies are likely to be ineffectual in the
absence of substantial reorganization of society and
its sociotechnical regimes, for instance in introducing
product-service innovations (WBGU, 2011; Rohn et
al. 2013).
To ensure protection of the global environment,
households in developed countries will need to adopt
new consumption routines (Spangenberg & Lorek,
2002; Fuchs & Lorek, 2005; Osterveer & Sonnenfeld,
1 The article is partly based on the PhD dissertation written by Melanie Speck née Lukas.
2012). Our current sociotechnical regime strongly
promotes efficiency and consistency, while usually
excluding sufficiency due to its assumed unattract-
iveness and conflict with the economic system, which
depends on consumers’ purchasing power (e.g.,
Defila et al. 2012). As with more radical
sustainability strategies such as degrowth or
downshifting, sufficiency suffers from both low
salience and disregard. The idea of absolute reduction
in material use faces strong resistance in
industrialized countries.
Sustainability scientists contend that, depending
on the field of activity, a 40‒80% reduction of
current consumption levels is required (Lettenmeier
et al. 2014). This level of attenuation is not possible
unless we begin to consider more radical strategies
premised on notions of sufficiency (Buhl, 2014). A
change in mobility is needed as well as a reduction in
housing, nutrition, and leisure practices. Within these
considerations, the level of consumption has to be
tempered using strategies such as sharing, recycling,
and repairing, as well as renunciation.
This article seeks to advance understanding of
why people adopt resource-light, or even sufficient,
lifestyle routines, despite what can be construed as a
generally hostile social context regarding sustainable
consumption. The following sections focus on
everyday practices that have been at the center of
recent research on sustainability (Cohen et al. 2013).
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We explore some of the most important social
practices in the field of sufficiency, remaining aware
that the normative notion of sufficiency still suffers
from a lack of empirical data. In addition, there is
insufficient appreciation regarding practical strategies
to improve contemporary consumer culture (Schneid-
ewind & Zahrnt, 2013).
This article draws on work from two so-far
mostly separated research areas—social practice
research and sufficiency. On one hand, we turn to the
broad field of inquiry on social practices, which takes
a micro-consumer perspective to investigate the
challenges of achieving a cultural transformation
toward sustainability (Halkier & Jensen, 2011;
Hargreaves et al. 2013). The concept of social
practices, as developed primarily by sociologist
Elizabeth Shove (e.g., Shove et al. 2012), has not
been deployed to explore issues pertaining to
sufficiency; however, we reconsider this framework
from the angle of sufficient behavior in daily life.
Our objective is to empirically ground the notion of
sufficiency in terms of social practice theories of
consumption. After drawing an intermediate
conclusion regarding the integration of these two
concepts, the second section introduces our
methodology to empirically integrate sufficiency into
a social practice framework. We use a grounded
theory approach based on 42 interviews to define
characteristics of sufficiency. In the third section, we
present the results by focusing on activities in the
domains of mobility, nutrition, housing, and leisure.
The conclusion discusses aspects of change that
consider sufficient social practices and identify
avenues for further research.
Theoretical Background
Social Practice: Leading Change on a Micro-Level
In recent years, theories of social practice have
gained considerable attention in research on
consumer behavior (Gronow & Warde, 2001;
Reckwitz, 2002; Shove & Pantzar, 2005; Røpke,
2009; Brand, 2010; Shove et al. 2012). These
perspectives derive largely from sociological theories
developed by Anthony Giddens (1984) and Theodore
Schatzki (1996), who put social practices in the
center of their theoretical conceptions. Reckwitz
(2002) later aimed to integrate these perspectives into
a more cohesive framework that advanced a practice-
centered sociological approach based on the original
idea of duality of structure. He accordingly identified
social practices as the location of the social, where
action and structure are mediated.
We concentrate here on the question of
sufficiency in the sense of engaging in less resource-
intensive modes of consumption (or even non-
consumption) since more attention is needed to the
link between practices and consumption (Sage, 2014;
Strengers & Maller, 2015; Lukas, 2016). Warde
(2005) argues that consumption is not a practice
itself, but rather an assemblage of many distinct
practices. Accordingly, approaches for studying
practices should emphasize the ordinary and
unreflected occurrence of consumption in most daily
routines, shifting attention away from individual
actions to the organization of practices and the level
of consumption that they entail. For example, jogging
is not only related to the actual performance of
running but also to other practices, like taking part in
competitive sporting events or engaging in
consumption decisions favoring the purchase of
breathable clothing or specialized shoes. Thus, these
so-called side events also increase an individual’s
resource use in practice (see Backhaus et al. 2013;
Lettenmeier et al. 2014).
Particular styles of consumption are interwoven
with social practices of certain activities, as well as
with daily household activities (Brand, 2010). The
interdependency among routines, technological
artifacts, social acceptance, and norms is therefore
closely linked (Reckwitz, 2002; Jackson, 2005a;
Warde, 2005; Røpke, 2009). Consumers then
combine a number of practices related to nutrition,
mobility, and so forth and assemble them into
lifestyles (Spaargaren & Vliet, 2000; Spaargaren,
2003; 2011). Lifestyles can be understood as a bundle
of practices that actors adopt as part of a reflexive
project of the self (Giddens, 1991), even though we
should not neglect the social shaping of the elements
of practices or the often substantial barriers to
individual change.
Further condensing the theoretical work, Shove
et al. (2012) identify three elements of practices and
show the aspects behind these elements: meanings
(mental activities, emotions, motivational know-
ledge); materials (objects, infrastructures, tools,
hardware, body) and competences (understanding,
practical knowledgeability). Shove and her
colleagues also demonstrate how different social
practices might be interrelated by having a similar
element in common. For instance, driving and
repairing cars share a common image of masculinity
(see Figure 1).
Within the environmental social sciences, a
growing number of authors deploy various practice-
theoretical approaches to analyze the greening of
consumption in the new global order of reflexive
modernity. Practices are key methodological units for
research and governance and provide ways to avoid
the pitfalls of individualist paradigms that have
tended to dominate studies of sustainable
consumption (Spaargaren, 2011). Previous empirical
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work on consumption and social practices has shown
the methodological challenges of such approaches
(Evans, 2011; Halkier & Jensen, 2011; Hargreaves,
2011; Sahakian & Wilhite, 2013). For instance,
Halkier & Jensen (2011) describe two advantages of
a construct-ivist approach to social practices in terms
of 1) understanding consumption as entangled in
webs of social reproduction and changes rather than
focusing on individual consumer choices, and 2)
viewing ways of consuming as continuous relational
accom-plishments in “intersectings of multiple
practices” (Halkier & Jensen, 2011). Here, the
concept of duality of structure and agency that is
inherent in practice theories offers important insights.
Using such an understanding, Evans (2011) shows
that food waste is not a consequence of immoderate
consumer choices but rather a matter of managing the
multiplicity of everyday practices and contingencies.
A problem of a purely constructivist perspective, as
promoted by Halkier and Jensen (2011), however, is
to foreground the discourse and negotiation of
normative elements in consumption among
practitioners at the expense of downplaying factual
knowledge about boundaries or indicators.
Practice-theoretical research pertaining to
sustainable consumption thus highlights the social
embeddedness of consumption, the negotiation that
takes place within social networks about normative
elements, and the acceptability of practices, power
relations, and intersections of different daily routines.
Nevertheless, to date most of these studies lack a
clear concept of sustainability and fail to analyze
practices in the most environmentally relevant fields
of activity (housing, food, and mobility; see
Lettenmeier et al. 2014).
The following sections explain sufficiency and
how it is actually performed, using different
strategies from the perspective of social practice. It is
important to consider another point of differentiation,
namely that between practices as performance (i.e.,
tangible, observable actions, different skills,
knowledge and competences that actors need to
engage in practices, as emphasized by Reckwitz,
2002) and practices as entities (representing a
concept of social structure related to Giddens’ idea of
rules and resources as stressed by Schatzki, 1996).
The latter represents institutionalized social practices
that are similarly (re)produced by a large number of
actors in a social system bridging time and space.
This also accounts for individual deviation in practice
performance without any effect on practice as entity.2
Figure 1 illustrates how Shove et al. (2012)
conceptualize links among different practices, for
instance through similar meanings connected to
various practices in a related field of action (in this
case automobility). In Figure 2, we adopt this idea to
show how a specific meaning to avoid unnecessary
consumption can link different social practices as
exemplified by home heating and cooking.
Based on the results and concepts of previous
work (most prominently Shove et al. 2012; see also
Stengel, 2011; Liedtke et al. 2013), we propose that
meanings are the most important element in implem-
enting change and further claim that a specific
constellation of meanings is a linking element among
various practices in different fields of activity (e.g.,
mobility, nutrition, housing) when consumers
perform actions considered as sufficient. Speaking of
a currently dominant consumerist society, the linking
element among almost all institutionalized and
routinized practices, involving some kind of
consumption, is a meaning associated with material
wealth as accumulation of goods and with ownership
2 In the terminology of social practice theories, performance refers
to a set of practices that are considered within the context of daily frameworks.
Figure 2 Meanings of sufficiency linking the performance of consumption to engagement in social practices, for example, cooking and heating (adapted from Shove et al. 2012).
Figure 1 The concept of meaning in two related practices (adapted from Shove et al. 2012).
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as a central orientation. This is not to say that all
consumers are oriented toward a “simple” or “more is
better” logic. Rather, at least in some sociopolitical
contexts, the contrary is increasingly the case, since a
number of developments have sensitized consumers
to the environmental and social implications of their
consumption. For example, organic food and fair-
trade products have gained visibility among the
general public. We should nonetheless differentiate
consump-tion patterns between a shift to consuming
the “right” goods (such as organic food) and
voluntary downshifting (which we here consider as a
form of sufficiency motivated by a desire to avoid
consumption deemed as unnecessary) (Schrader &
Thøgersen, 2011; Schrader et al. 2013).
We therefore take an empirical approach and
analyze the meanings that respondents associate with
their social practice performances. Also considered
are the barriers and other contingent factors that they
experience when experimenting with sufficient
modes of consumption, as well as the strategies that
they adopt to overcome these obstacles. We are thus
able to identify strategies that support larger scale
changes of social practices. Our study aims to
encourage practice reconfiguration and eventual re-
institutionalization at the level of practice as an entity
(cf. Cajaiba-Santana, 2014).
Social practice approaches are limited, however,
in that at first sight they focus on routines and social
reproduction rather than change. More recent theories
of practices have sought to overcome this limitation
by focusing on the alteration of elements or links
among different practices. Shove et al. (2012) suggest
that the dynamic and recursive interrelation between
practice-as-performance and practice-as-entity is
useful to show how innovation in practices occurs by,
for example, forging new relations among elements.
Shove et al. (2012) further discuss how these new
connections can evolve into enduring changes at the
level of practice-as-entity. It is, though, still
problematic to explain when or under what
circumstances actors are more likely to deviate from
routine practices or which competencies require
change.3
Sufficiency: Leading Transformation in Practice Sufficiency has unfortunately come to be seen as
a mediating strategy, one regularly considered as a
3 The Research Group on Sustainable Production and Consumption
at the Wuppertal Institute is developing a model for research and transformation of social practices toward sustainable patterns of
production and consumption (Liedtke et al. 2013). By integrating
social practice theories with models from environmental psychology and transition theory, this work aims to establish a
theoretical basis and methodological framework for research and
design of transforming social practices toward resource-light patterns within a social innovation framework.
focus for research, but is less dedicated to exploring
daily life (Princen, 2005; Stengel, 2011). In science,
the strategy is meant to develop behavioral
approaches to guide consumer choices, but too often
fails due to its lack of empirical grounding (Linz,
2012). According to Princen (2005), the principles
and strategies that accompany sufficiency also
employ self-management to avoid overconsumption.
The concept asks whether products or goods deliver
an additional benefit and which aspects increase
utility and which do not (Liedtke et al. 2013).
Sufficiency requires social learning and is less about
losses and restraints than striving to maintain, or even
to increase, individual welfare, which can be seen as
the easiest solution for daily life.
Popular media today has shown interest in
minimalist lifestyles, both with and without reference
to sustainability. For instance, widely disseminated
magazines regularly investigate the consequences of
less materialistic lives, including cases where young
people own little more than a computer and a few
everyday objects (Der Spiegel, 2014). Nevertheless, a
sufficient lifestyle goes further since it is less about
the reorganization of private consumption patterns
and more about the philosophical question of “a good
life.” “Sufficiency” as a term tends to be excluded
from debates about the sustainable transformation of
behavioral patterns. Despite general acceptance, at
least in some quarters, of claims that a shift in
consumption patterns is necessary to reduce dramatic
disruption of ecological systems, concepts such as
“downshifting” (Schor, 1998; Hamilton & Mail,
2003) and “non-consumption” remain confined to
peripheral niches (see Black & Cherrier, 2010;
Cherrier et al. 2011; Cherrier & Gurrieri, 2013).4
When consumption is reduced, for instance, the
outcomes usually include monetary savings or co-
benefits such as improved health for those with low-
resource mobility (Stengel, 2011; Lukas et al. 2014).
People often employ sufficient practices without
conscious awareness, and within this lifestyle social
practices are frequently modified (e.g., vegetarian
diet, holidays without long-distance travel, mobility
without using private cars). There is thus a strong
connection to downshifting. Downshifters often
modify their regular lifestyle to spend more time with
their families or toward less materialistic and more
sustainable modes of living, as well as a reduced
workload (Hamilton & Mail, 2003; Liedtke et al.
2013). Moreover, sudden events such as a severe
illness, the death of someone close, or a marriage
breakdown influence the decision to downshift in a
4 The German academic understanding of sufficiency is rather wide
and often includes the notions of simplicity, anti-consumerism, and nonconsumerism.
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way that can be equivalent to the theoretical construct
of sufficiency. Thus, strict downshifting may be seen
as a radical strategy to implement sufficiency in daily
life (Alexander, 2011). Further research activities
coinciding with anti-consumption and non-
consumption might intersect with a sufficient
lifestyles (Cherrier et al. 2011; Cherrier & Gurrieri,
2013).
Based on these findings, sufficiency is defined
by tangible behavior patterns and is not necessarily
linked to a moral concept of “less is enough”
(Schneidewind & Zahrnt, 2013). Across the board,
we assume that the reduction of ecological and social
impacts is the most important element of a
sufficiency strategy in everyday life (Stengel, 2011).
Sufficient actions are certainly linked to notions of
sharing, reusing, recycling, repairing, or changing
behavior to prolong the lifespan of goods. Further,
sufficient action is connected to a partial
abandonment of goods and services with high
resource intensity. A sufficient way of living includes
ecological and socially fair practices. This may
encompass abstaining from overseas travel or
keeping a personal car, but also voluntary restrictions
pertaining to plant-based foods or housing in a small
apartment, preferably either in or proximate to a city.
A sufficient lifestyle may include restriction on
certain leisure activities or the avoidance of
functional or cultural obsolescence (Tukker et al.
2008; Lukas et al. 2013; Lettenmeier et al. 2014;
Liedtke et al. 2014), as well as the reduction of
working time (Müller & Paech, 2012; Paech, 2013).
In sum, adequate competences and moral
concepts are irreplaceable for a sufficient lifestyle.
Consistency of action and knowledge, with a
distinctive orientation toward social and
environmental issues, are likewise important, as
Kleinhückelkotten (2005) proposes. However, it has
to be emphasized that moral concepts (as part of
meanings) and competences in social practices are
socially constructed and not simply opinions learned
or held individually. The challenge is to examine
competences at the level of practices that could be
useful and practicable.
Based on the research reviewed above, we
propose the following working definition of
sufficiency, which we apply to our qualitative
research. Sufficient behavior implies reducing
environmental and social impacts that go along with
daily routines and behaviors. These arrangements
include classical actions of consumption schemes
such as shopping for food or clothes in conventional
supermarkets and stores, alternative behavioral
schemes such as repairing or recycling, and the idea
of waiving some consumption practices. Therefore,
sufficiency at the level of household implementation
indicates modified cultural techniques (social
practices) in as many household consumption areas
as possible but generally encompassing mobility,
nutrition, housing, and leisure.
Intermediate Summation: Linking the Concepts
Drawing on these findings and descriptions, we
derive a qualitative comparison scheme of consump-
tion patterns displaying several everyday practices
that enable comparisons of sufficient and
nonsufficient behavior. Table 1 describes
conventional and sufficient behavioral patterns
through the lens of practice performance, and thus
includes several exemplary practices in the fields of
mobility, nutrition, housing, and leisure with
categories inspired by Spaargaren (2011). The aim is
to establish a starting point for classifying interview
statements since in daily activities consumers do not
consistently act sufficiently.
From our perspective, it is important to define
sufficient practice performance in the context of real-
world conditions. This understanding is based on a
conceptual approach that examines and integrates
sufficient actions in a consumerist culture without
provoking a break with daily narratives and
meanings, thus creating a concept of sufficiency that
fits into daily life. Bringing together both concepts of
social practice and sufficiency makes obvious the
need for an empirical data set to embed and develop
the theoretical approach in everyday consumption.
Table 1 uses a basic matching scheme to
interpret the extreme poles of practice performance
between conventional consumption and sufficient
behavior. The table also serves as an ideal lens to
assess our interview results. In reality, such behavior
should be understood as a continuum. Thus, within
the same household, a variance between different
activities can be expected. For example, consumers
might show sufficient practice performance in the
field of nutrition but not in mobility.
As outlined above, we propose that a specific
constellation of meaning is a linking element between
different social practices in different fields of activity
(e.g., mobility, nutrition, and housing that is
considered sufficient). In the next section, we apply
this scheme and the conceptual approach to systemize
the empirical interview data and to analyze the three
dimensions of social practices. After introducing the
methodological study design, we focus on sufficient
actions in daily life and their meanings, competences,
and practice performance. We analyze the interviews
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Table 1 Performances in conventional and sufficient behavioral patterns
Framework Mobility Nutrition Housing Leisure Vision of Individual
Consumption Behavior
Conventional consumption [no restriction]
Using all mobility infrastructures without limitation, primarily individual cars
Buying discount and retail products, only conventional food, regularly using takeaway offers
Living in old buildings without restriction on space, partial energy saving in heating, electricity, water
Using full range of travel possibilities (skiing, Caribbean cruises)
Focus on “conspicuous consumption” and buying durable goods only in specific areas of consumption
Sufficiency [Restriction at the level of individual actions up to time-consuming behavior changes]
Primarily traveling by train and public transport, using a bike, not owning a car
Exclusively buying seasonal and organic food, maintaining a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Inner-city, energy-efficient buildings, medium size of dwellings (maximum 30 square meters per person), collective usage of basic commodities, strong energy-saving for heating, electricity, water
Shifting holiday destinations to regional level, travelling by bicycle or train, maximum of 1–2 trips per year
Often using second-hand goods, online exchange platforms, sharing services, generally avoiding new goods
Based on: Gregg (1936), Leonard-Barton (1981), Jackson (2005a), Princen (2005), Schor (2011), Stengel (2011), Alexander (2012), Lettenmeier et al. (2012), Müller & Paech (2012), and Lettenmeier et al. (2014).
to identify the main categories that respondents use to
frame their daily routines related to the different
fields of consumption and show which
circumstances they perceive as helpful or unhelpful.
We present examples from the material for the main
categories, themes, and sub-themes that emerged
from coding the interviews and analyze them through
the theoretical lens provided by the three elements of
social practices.
Primarily to underline our results and argument-
ation, we conduct a model calculation of resource use
for a sufficient lifestyle, matching it with the
assumptions of a resource-light lifestyle (Lettenmeier
et al. 2014). Finally, we consider the following
research question: What is the most important
element to cause social practices to become more
sufficient?
The Study: Describing Sufficiency Using an
Empirical Data Set
To identify sufficiency in everyday practices and
their linked performances, competences, and
meanings, we studied typical consumers. The
research used a grounded-theory methodology to
gather and analyze a qualitative data sample (Glaser
& Strauss, 1967; Corbin & Strauss, 2008). A first
feature of this approach was that the respondents
should have a “regular” approach to life with no
special commitment to sufficiency, for example to
downshifting.5 Second, we sought interviewees that
5 For this article, we focus on a group of sufficient respondents (n
= 7) and on the group of moderately sufficient interviewees (n = 30) so as to highlight the results of these two groups.
lived in a conventional German suburban or urban
setting within the common consumer society. In other
words, radical downshifters who had moved to a
wooden house and tried to live autonomously were
not part of the sample. Similarly, individuals who had
lost a job and were forced to drastically reduce their
consumption were excluded from the study.
Respondents were recruited through universities,
virtual social networks and, to reach seniors, clubs
for the elderly. The participants were sought out
using a widespread pyramid scheme. The elderly
people were all contacted in clubs, while the middle-
agers who had responded to announcements in virtual
networks were also asked for suggestions for other
participants, and the same was done with the
students. Thus, one interview led to another.
Prior studies using a practice-theoretical
approach have encountered methodological obstacles
both in data production and in generalizing results
(Evans 2011; Halkier & Jensen 2011). Concerning
data collection, Evans (2011) favors a research
strategy of participant observation that focuses on
actions as demanded by practice theory. Given the
challenges of conducting ethnographic research with
private households, the preferred strategy is for the
investigator, at least to some extent, to join in
activities of the respondents. Such a research design
is demanding and often necessarily entails scaling
back the number of participants so as not to exceed
available resources. Consistent with Halkier & Jensen
(2011), we assume that all qualitative data can be
treated as enactments and performances of social
practitioners in different contexts and therefore opted
for interview data.
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The empirical analysis in this article is based on
42 interviews. The sample consists of participants
varying in gender and socioeconomic status from
three different age groups—young adults, empty
nesters, and golden agers—to generate different
perspectives on daily consumption and schemes of
sufficient action.6 All respondents lived in Germany,
but the sample is mixed, with the majority from the
western part of the country.7 Interviews were
conducted using a problem-centered protocol
(Witzel, 2000). The focus was on everyday
consumption and participants’ concept of
consumption, as well as attitudes toward
environmental and social issues deemed to influence
consumption patterns and decisions. The interviews
averaged sixty minutes in duration and were digitally
recorded and transcribed for analysis using the
software package ATLAS.ti. Following the
grounded-theory approach, we first investigated each
interview transcript in detail to generate a general
understanding of every respondent’s experiences and
the influences on their consumption in different
phases of life. Second, a constant comparative coding
and cross-comparison of interviews was carried out
to form categories. Finally, these categories were
formed and summarized into key and subcategories.8
We analyzed the interviews using an inductive
strategy of creating main categories and subthemes
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Corbin & Strauss, 2008)
(Table 2). The outcomes presented here are the result
of a year-long examination of all interviews using the
grounded theory approach and associated coding
system. The respondents have a robust connection to
consumerism due to their social settings—the
majority was middle-class Germans.
The sample enables us to understand social
practice in the context of sufficiency and provides the
evidence base to identify the opportunities and
barriers for a sufficient way of life. By now, the
sufficiency strategy is, from our perspective, more
often integrated in actions and practices than current
science is able to prove. Regarding the ability of
practice research to make generalizations beyond
methodological individualism (Halkier & Jensen,
6 We actively excluded potential respondents in early parenthood,
since Jaeger-Erben’s (2010) work was devoted to such individuals. 7 We acknowledge that some of our results may be particular to the circumstances of our study, which focused on respondents with
German cultural backgrounds. Consumption styles might differ
elsewhere. 8 We note here that the interview responses were strongly related to
sufficient practices. This may suggest that a majority of
respondents acted sufficiently, but in fact the largest share were classified as non- or slightly sufficient. Therefore, the selection
discussed in this article refers to the smallest part of the sample,
namely the participants who were identified as strongly sufficient. See Lukas (2015) for further details.
2011), we build types not to categorize consumers
individually or by lifestyles but to find relatively
stable meanings in certain sufficient practice
performances.
During the course of the coding process, we
identified meanings in the participants’ description of
their practices-as-performance. Meanings at the level
of actual practice-as-entity could be found by
identifying common aspects across cases and by
drawing on existing literature.
We assembled the quantitative results to
calculate the resource use into a spreadsheet with
several closed questions conducted by six persons.
This survey was done after the main interview.
Questions included “How often do you eat meat per
week?” (Possible answers: I eat meat one/two/three
times per week or more than three times; I am
vegetarian; I am vegan) and “Do you have a car?”
(yes/no). This part of the study was carried out by
telephone only with respondents who agreed to
complete the second questionnaire. The method of
utilizing a spreadsheet to calculate the resource use in
several fields of action such as nutrition, mobility,
housing, and leisure is based on Wiesen et al. (2014).
Findings and Discussion: Sufficient Action in
Everyday Life
In this section, we analyze our sample to provide
an overall outline on several important themes,
following grounded-theory methodology. The sample
was screened to examine daily social practices that
are compatible with a sufficient lifestyle. Thus,
consumers can usually be regarded as partly
sufficient, or even only sufficient in a few fields of
actions. With the help of the following main
categories, we map various impact factors and
decision-making structures, but first we point out the
resource intensities of different lifestyles.
Matching Lifestyles and Resource Use
9 Within debates and analyses pertaining to
sufficiency, commentators frequently ask what
constitutes a “better” lifestyle. In our case, we follow
a descriptive approach of empirically classifying
sufficient performances of everyday social practices
and link our results to research and policy discussions
about quantifying the resource use of specific
activities without rendering any assessment about
“better” or “worse” lifestyles. This connects to
overlapping considerations about “environmental
space” (Spangenberg & Lorek, 2002) and “safe
economic operating space” (Rockström et al. 2009),
9 This section is based on calculations from Lukas (2015).
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to which we add the self-descriptions of respondents
about their voluntary sufficiency.
For this reason, we analyzed the resource use of
various lifestyles using a material footprint-calculator
method (Wiesen et al. 2014). Based on the
interviews, we selected from our sample one
individual deemed to live most sufficiently and a
counterpart from the opposite end of the spectrum
who had the least sufficient (or most conventional)
lifestyle. Using the interviews described above, as
well as a second short interview done in 2014, we
calculated footprints, showing that car ownership and
diet are consequential factors. The results
demonstrate that the resource use for a conventional
consumer is three to five times greater than for a
strongly sufficient consumer, although this depends
on the field of action (Figure 3).
The differences are obvious. In comparison to
suggested magnitudes of resource use (the so-called
recommendation level, proposed by Lettenmeier et
al. 2014), even the most sufficient consumer had
higher resource use in nearly every field of
consumption.10
Interestingly, nutrition (the daily diet)
is the only area where this respondent was able to
meet the ideal typological assumptions. Nonetheless,
the comparison shows that a more sufficient way of
living is far less resource intensive than a
conventional lifestyle. This underlines the potential
impact of sufficient practices, for which we next
present detailed descriptions derived from the
qualitative study.
10 Lettenmeier et al. (2014) propose a sustainable lifestyle that on the level of practices entails the following: a vegetarian diet, a
small suburban flat (< 25 square meters per person), regional
holidays, and an individual mobility strategy based on public transportation, biking/walking, and avoidance of air travel.
Behavioral Orientations in Daily Life In the field of sustainable consumption or
sufficiency, key studies try to analyze the
improvement of knowledge about the ecological and
social consequences of certain consumption habits
and possible alternatives. However, other research
over the last few decades, especially in
environmental behavior, has found low correlations
among knowledge, attitudes, and behavior (e.g.,
Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1992; 1998; Alcott,
2008; Bamberg, 2013). Current findings in
environmental psychology indicate that changes in
attitudes and behavior are mediated through a multi-
stage process where orientations, social norms, and
shared beliefs highly influence personal doings. This
problem is often referred to as the knowledge-action
gap (see Matthies, 2005; Möser & Bamberg, 2008;
Bamberg, 2013). As we discuss, due to special
meanings that undergird the practices, the former
may change or even shape the latter (Shove et al.
2012). Furthermore, our research makes clear that
group dynamics often influence attitudes. Thus, the
social settings and surroundings are important for the
output of consumption strategies or orientation
toward a change (Thøgersen & Ölander, 2002). As
presented above, a broad range of attitudes exists; we
therefore examine the most important practice
performances as a way to generate a guiding
orientation.
Everyday consumption practices are heavily
driven by convenience, habits, monetary value,
personal health concerns, and social and institutional
norms. But even more importantly, practices are
likely to be resistant to change (Vermeir & Verbeke,
2006). The idea of consuming less is necessarily
based on different strategies, basically reusing,
reducing, recycling, repairing, or sharing (Lukas,
2013). The implementation of these action patterns is
ultimately based on practices, especially in private
households. Therefore, we analyzed how these tactics
are expected to shape everyday routines, even in a
consumerist culture where the previously cited norms
have been adopted in daily life.
A sufficient lifestyle coincides with the idea of
consuming less, or even virtually nothing. In the
sample, many respondents living in a consumerist
culture described that they experience property as
“ballast.” For instance, one respondent stated that he
was always worried about his car. He had to repair it
on a regular basis and at great expense. After coming
to terms with his situation, he adapted to life without
a personal automobile and instead relied on shared
cars,
Figure 3 Comparison of resource use (material footprint) of two relevant consumers in comparison with the suggested target level
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Table 2 Selected study participants
Person groups
Number of persons
Age Gender Professions (examples)
Status Persons’ Net-
Income in € ($) per month
Youngsters 17 22–29 10 (F) 7 (M)
Students and trainees Single or in
relationships 500–1500
(542–1626)
Empty nesters
12 49–65 7 (F) 5 (M)
Research fellow, teacher, social worker, bakery shop assistant, engineer, early-retired
persons
In relationships, Married, divorced, all with children, even
grand-children
1250–3000 (1355–3253)
Elderly persons
13 63–92 10 (F) 3 (M)
All retired workers and housewives
Married, divorced, widowed, all with children and even
grandchildren
1250–2000 (1355–2169)
which were much easier for him to manage.
With respect to their level of consumption, the
respondents reflected that they kept owned goods to a
necessary minimum for everyday life, a pre-
disposition maintained by their prevailing attitudes.
Younger participants were especially connected to
environmental and social justice without desiring a
high level of property.
The seven most sufficient respondents acted in a
very different manner, compared within the sample
of interviews, to reduce or avoid consumption, both
consciously and unconsciously. Their motivating
meanings in detail, which might be embodied as well
in the overall meaning, extended from saving money
and health concerns to flexibility. In general,
sufficiency-oriented patterns of action also correlated
with meanings of anti-materialism, reduction of
consumption, and belief that property increases
lifestyle rigidity, as described above. However,
sufficiency also addressed quality aspects connected
to resource consumption.
So I think I’m frugal when I compare myself
to others, but I’m somehow not a miser. So I
give in then…so I also invite people. So it’s
not like I invite everyone, at least not
voluntarily, that I count every Euro and so
on. So yes, somehow I’m thrifty. Then I do
not buy the cheapest stuff; actually I rather
buy the higher quality things, because I find
if it needs a repair...also because of resource
consumption anyway (Nathalie, age 30).
The respondents demonstrated that a sufficient life is
not strictly related to austerity, but can also be about
looking for durable products or connected to a
willingness to spend money on quality. The next
sections provide three guiding principles that were
found to inform decisions in daily life.
Guiding Principle: Doing Without The respondents that defined property as
“ballast” were often not striving for a great change in
life, such as a higher income or even a larger
residence. Their meaning was more focused on being
frugal and easily satisfied within their daily life. They
were trying to manage within their own space and to
cover their own needs. Following the approach of
Opschoor (1995), the majority of participants in our
study already defined their own needs in their current
phases of life using the individual environmental
space within which they acted rather than following
the latest consumption trends. Of course, they saw a
need for basic equipment in every household, but
nothing lavish. One of the older respondents,
Heinrich, age 83, did not gravitate to more household
goods, saying it will “only end up in a bin” after his
death.
These respondents thus viewed owning many
goods as unnecessary in their lives, or even as
disturbing. The reasons for this view varied and were
by no means only associated with anti-consumption
attitudes. Rather, this meaning corresponded to
different life phases and attitudes regarding whether
further consumption was necessary. One of our study
participants summarized it this way.
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I always really feel material things as
ballast. And I think it’s great if you have
only a little room full of stuff and you can
pack anything quickly in a box somehow
and can move with it (Sabrina, age 27).
Our sample offered a wide range of doing
without and illustrated how meanings assimilate into
practices and competences. Starting from typical
ideas of brand avoidance or nonconsumption (Lee et
al. 2009) and going as far as the dissemination of
clothes or tools, another respondent displayed how
the special meaning was adjusted in performance and
competences.
Yes, somehow I am quite militant. For
example, my mother once gave me a car and
then it was standing next to our front door
for two weeks and then I went to her house
and I said, “Mother sell it.” Yes, at that time
it was 1984. Because, if you have lived
without a car for a while, you won’t miss it.
It’s all easier without a car. And that is quite
an amazing experience. We have actually
even rented a car, to go on holiday…the car
was not needed (Markus, age 65).
In this case, rejection of material goods was
supported by an overall meaning and its strong belief.
In the special field of mobility, evasive strategies are
necessary, for example, to go by train or walk.
To summarize, such purposeful reflection on
consumption behavior against generally effective
norms of consumerism, or an orientation toward
owning few but high-quality and durable goods,
provided another general meaning associated with
sufficient practice performance in different fields of
consumption. It guided and supported performances
considered sufficient such as repairing and sharing
and thus doing without excessive material goods.
Guiding Principle: Establishing Islands of
Enjoyment Another practice set, “establishing islands of
enjoyment” (as one respondent called her own little
escapes from daily obligations), coincided with an
individual definition of rejection and reduction in
daily life and was strongly linked to the performance
of “doing without” that guided everyday actions.
Within this category, the idea of a sufficient life was
already adopted by acting restrictively in everyday
consumption. People may reject a holiday or be
vegetarian or otherwise reduce consumption
activities. By establishing certain so-called islands of
enjoyment, our interviewees demonstrated that they
were searching for possibilities to act completely
contrary to their personal conviction of restrictions
for a short time. These behavioral expectations
opened up space to “escape” from regular activities
and to allow one afterward to re-appreciate everyday
routines.
I think the more consciously we restrict, the
more we have to look out for creating a
feeling of happiness or satisfaction by doing
other things (Eveline, age 53).
The imposed restriction was generally balanced
by several competences and practices. Our sample
offered a wide range. These islands could be either
real or imaginary. Reading a book could be an island
of enjoyment, as could dining at a restaurant. Inter-
estingly, these islands were frequently linked to
practices demanding no or few materials, for
example, gardening or hiking. As Sabine (age 49)
proposes,
I also sometimes have weekends where I
read no newspaper, watch no television, just
go into the garden and do not want to think
about the world.
However, these meanings required a certain kind
of reflection on one’s own needs and the critical
analysis of possibilities and potential islands of
enjoyment. Of course, all respondents live in a
contemporary consumerist culture (Warde, 2005).
Accordingly, many of them share consumerist values
or attitudes and invariably consume to find meaning
and satisfaction in life (Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006).
Consumerism has emerged as part of a historical
process that has created mass markets,
industrialization, and cultural dispositions to ensure
that rising incomes are used to purchase an ever-
growing output. However, the insight that consumer
classes all over the world are no longer finding
happiness in ever-growing consumption is gaining
attention (e.g., Jackson, 2005a). It thus becomes more
likely that people could increase their quality of life
by reducing and critically scrutinizing their
consumption levels (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005).
Guiding Principle: Linking Daily Alternative
Consumption Strategies with Personal Benefits The most common everyday-life strategy to
reduce personal consumption levels seems to be to
reuse goods by extending their use phase and by
sharing. Very often, these strategies were explicitly
linked to specific fields of action. Furthermore, in
Germany there is great disparity across age groups.
To differentiate demographic groups by their habits,
older persons very often engage in sewing and
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repairing clothes, empty nesters invest their personal
resources in repairing goods, and younger people
emphasize sharing goods and using second-hand
clothes. Regarding household management, a
majority of respondents tried to maintain goods for as
long as possible. Moreover, among them it was
common to pass on items, especially clothes, and
particular children’s apparel, to other people, often in
the same neighborhood. This performance coincides
with a welfare orientation.
Sharing goods had great interest among the
respondents, depending on the field of action. Thus,
only a minority would share a car. Often, the fear of
losing flexibility was the leading reason to avoid this
kind of sharing, particularly for older people.
Although younger respondents had a high acceptance
rate regarding sharing everyday objects—especially
if they lived in a shared apartment—the empty
nesters were more skeptical, even if some saw great
opportunities. Older respondents were, though, more
open-minded about the sharing of gardening tools
and similar materials. Particularly in Germany, the
sharing of goods in younger stages of life is quite
widely accepted, while with increasing age the
demand for convenience has been partially, but
continuously, growing, even if people reflected on
their own prosperity and realized “how much less”
they needed. Among those surveyed, sharing and
reusing goods were not strictly linked to
environmentally friendly meanings. Saving money
was the main reason, while eco-friendliness was
often appreciated as a cobenefit. Further advantages,
such as healthfulness and well-being, also influenced
individual choices.
We point out sufficient strategies that are part of
daily structures and especially linked to individual
benefits. Especially in the field of mobility, money-
saving strategies and health concerns are leading
motivations. Several respondents, independent of
age, tried, for example, to bike and walk short
distances. Thus, they integrated multiple benefits into
their actions. Interestingly, due to their own beliefs
and convictions, the respondents did not worry about
any discomfort.
I used the tram for commuting. And now for
about a year I’m not doing this anymore, I
walk now. Very consciously, I do this for
me, and also for the environment. In order to
increase my daily fitness and since I am
used to it, and now I feel stressed by all
these underground stations with the constant
delays and afterwards I always feel nervous.
If I make the journey on foot, I calm down
(Beate, age 53).
As several studies have shown, a sufficient
behavioral pattern is linked to a set of meanings, a
notion displayed in the sample (Stengel, 2011;
Liedtke et al. 2012). Overall meanings previously
discussed, such as the definition of property as ballast
or the experience of islands of enjoyment, interacted
with other daily meanings that were connected to
flexibility, expenditures, environmental protection, or
health concerns. This was exemplified for the
practice of mobility, where different meaning
structures and performance patterns (at the level of
individual practice performance) led to the outcome
of using a bicycle instead of a car (see Figure 4).
A practice, which may go along with a sufficient
lifestyle, was typically formed through different
meanings. Whereas Simon and Hugo used their bikes
as easy-going vehicles, when allowed by learning and
infrastructural conditions, Ruth and Markus rode for
the benefits of health and well-being. The data show
that different meanings can overlap and still lead to
the same kind of practice performance, in this case
using a bicycle instead of a private car (e.g., due to
budget considerations, ease of use, environmental
considerations, health issues). When meanings
pointing in the same direction overlap, we can
assume that the kind of practice performance (biking)
is more established as a routine. We can thus classify
such meanings as valuable in the context of
sufficiency since they can lead to a valuable output.
Furthermore, the meanings that are subsets of the
overall meanings defining property as ballast while
searching for islands of enjoyment may be very diff-
erent, even if there is overlap. In particular, the
meaning of “environmental friendliness” does not
have to be at the center of the leitmotifs to lead to
sufficient actions.
Figure 4 One practice, several meanings
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Barriers and Obstacles Recent studies have discussed various obstacles
to sustainable consumption and a more sufficient life
(Alexander, 2012; Schäfer et al. 2012). The lack of
suitable public transport, employment, product
information, social activities, and housing, combined
with a surfeit of consumer temptations, may
significantly impede effective changes toward more
sufficient behavior, unrelated to country differences.
Constraints seem to include the fear of a loss of
opportunities, habit, and status, as well as failure
anxiety, uneasiness, social disintegration, lack of
knowledge, and unwillingness to move away from an
acquired consumption and comfort level. Considering
our respondents, Figure 5 provides an overview of
the various barriers, as highlighted in our interviews.
In the following sections, we show how these
obstacles are connected to daily performances and
how the participants managed them or even bypassed
them altogether (the category “other” includes, for
example, personal inadequacies).
Figure 5 Mentioned barriers in the context of a sufficient lifestyle (multiple answers possible)
Infrastructure and Time Availability
Infrastructure and daily necessities from
everyday life were mentioned as obstacles when
developing a sufficient lifestyle. Strategies such as
reducing distances and limiting mobility were
explicitly linked to this objective. To remove these
barriers, low-impact lifestyles require one to, for
example, change his or her transportation behavior.
The question of mobility is an instance of “how
structure can lock people into high impact
consumption” (Alexander, 2011). Correspond-ingly,
depending on infrastructure and a daily schedule,
sufficiency seems impossible for many participants,
even if they would like to implement substantial
changes. Especially in more rural areas, a car is
necessary, particularly if one has to care for children
or grandchildren. Respondents thus managed their
transportation and followed the meaning of saving
money, but saw additional benefit to the natural
environment.
At home and here in the city where I work, I
partially go by bike and partially bus. But I
am strongly involved in politics in my
county, and there the public transport is
partly unreasonable; for example, if I have a
meeting, then I’m going to my working city
by car…I have to do that to be on time. But
my first priority is using my bicycle, then
train and bus, and then car (Sabine, age 49).
It is obvious that Sabine handled the problem of
infrastructural binding to extant transportation
systems by staying creative and setting her own
priorities. She dealt with the given structure, tried to
make the best of it, and remained flexible. Thus, she
individually reduced the constraining effects of the
infrastructure, because if she had the choice, she
would have used the most environmentally friendly
solutions. Further, she was trying to create her own
mobile space—she had her own bike in the city
where she worked and tried to stay adaptable by
using it.
Clearly, the meanings of flexibility and creativity
helped respondents to overcome obstacles and to
arrange for sufficiency-oriented performance with
their own individual changes, but without a wider
social change. The decisive difference between
conventional and sufficient shaping of practice
performance was that the former acquiesced to
perceptions of infrastructural barriers as
insurmountable and definitions of one’s own routines
of, for example, using a private car as unavoidable,
given the prevailing transportation system. By
contrast, sufficient performance was linked to
accepting the challenges of the mobility system, but
nonetheless riding a bicycle or using public
transportation. Meanings associated with these
practice performances can be shown to conflict and
using a car is even perceived as a form of discomfort,
while conventionally oriented consumers feel the
opposite way. Effects of barriers are, thus, also
shaped by meanings.
Routines, Habits, and Convenience As Jaeger-Erben (2010) contends, habits are an
essential obstacle to the promotion of sustainable
everyday-consumption patterns. This was noticeable
in our sample, but routines were also very important
when considering sufficient behavior. Habits and
convenience could be anti-drivers for sustainable
behavior, but in light of our results, they were also
supportive elements toward a more sufficient
lifestyle. Habits, which could be understood as
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sufficient behavior patterns, could be influenced by
other circumstances, such as phase of life or
infrastructure, and implemented without any special
orientation. Often, the respondents defined their own
meaning regarding “level of convenience.”
This was expressed in different fields of action,
but routines could be either very sufficient or a very
nonsufficient, especially in the field of mobility. The
following excerpts indicate the impact of routines.
I really only drive my car because it is a
pure luxury item and that is what I enjoy.
But this is also the only thing where I treat
myself (Joachim, age 50).
[B]ut the bike has also influenced me. I’ve
always done it, even as a teenager, I have
always used the bicycle. And it’s easy. So
why would you go the two kilometers to the
city center by car and look for a parking
space? (Hugo, age 62).
The mobility habits of our respondents seemed
essentially guided by the meaning “level of
convenience” and individual demands. While
Joachim regarded his private car as a luxury item,
Hugo assigned more negative impacts to an
automobile and implemented his mobility preferences
by not using the vehicle. Again, as the example for
infrastructure and time availability shows, some
flexibility and reflection is present in more sufficient
behavior patterns. Further, Hugo subscribed to the
idea of simplifying his everyday practices. Hence, the
concept of Fischer & Grießhammer (2013) of several
steps toward sufficiency is the one to consolidate.11
The solution that was understood as relatively more
sufficient was, in the eyes of the beholders, the easier
one. Within this practice, minor side effects, such as
the search for a parking place, which may be time-
consuming, were present for Hugo. Thus, if routines
are to follow the meaning of the “easiest solution,”
and this is linked to the overall consideration of the
specific convenience level, sufficient solutions could
become more attractive to the individual.
Habits and their meanings provide an important
avenue for changing to a more sufficient society. At
this stage of our research, it is only possible to
consider, especially in the field of mobility, why
people develop such disparate meanings. Particularly
in this case, several factors, such as living in a rural
area, in contrast to a city or a different experience of
11 For instance, if consumers have a refrigerator at home the most sufficient way of acting would be to remove it and try to do
without such an appliance. A less radical way of sufficiency would
be to reduce the size of the refrigerator and buy a very energy-efficient one.
the socialization process, come into play. It is thus
necessary to examine life conditions in greater detail,
such as influential life-course transitions that may
indicate several meanings.
Major Practices in a Sufficient Life
The question arises as to what needs to change
for people to conduct themselves in a more sufficient
way. To begin to formulate an answer, it is necessary
to identify specific social sufficiency practices. For
this purpose, we screened in detail seven interviews
with respondents categorized as having a strong
orientation toward sufficient action. This selection
process was designed to identify practices carried out
by a majority of our interviewees that were, at the
same time, relevant to the wider public.
In the field of nutrition, our analysis shows that
sufficient social practices are performed in the main
areas of procurement, preparation, and disposal. The
seven respondents explained that they purchased
groceries at weekly markets where they were able to
buy regional organic products or to shop in organic
supermarkets or health-food stores. They tried to
follow their conceptions of “less artificiality”—
products should be as basic and entail as little
processing as possible. Our respondents also often
cooked within their daily routines. To expand their
knowledge and techniques, they collected culinary
information or tried new foods and learned new
preparation techniques.
The respondents were also open to the notion of
a primarily vegetarian diet. However, often they did
not go completely in this direction, but returned to a
“Sunday tradition” of eating meat. Even though less
sufficient people often emphasized budget
restrictions as a rationale not to shop for organic
food, five respondents here—after changing their
shopping routines—did not question their decision.
None of our interviewees returned to buying cheaper
food in a discount store even if their monthly budget
was limited. This was underlined by one of our
respondents:
You can cook organic food on a low budget,
but you have to change your cooking
routines. A piece of meat, etc.—this food is
much more expensive. If you buy more
grain and seasonal vegetables, etc., you may
save a lot—and it is not expensive; you have
to do some rethinking of practices (Marie,
age 54).
A drastic change in food choice and preparation
practices had occurred over time. Consumers might
need to process products on their own—for example,
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grain needs be ground. This requirement coincided
with increased time for preparation and information
gathering, activities that less-sufficient people
generally sought to avoid. Over the longer term,
however, these new practices became routinized and,
thus, relatively easy. In general, all of the practices
that our respondents described are well-known and
did not require new technologies or entail significant
costs.
Regarding mobility, one decisive aspect of
mainstream practices is the “material” element of
actually owning a private car. Two of the seven
sufficient subjects completely abstained from
automobiles; a third respondent owned a personal
vehicle but shared it with other users in the
neighborhood. Yet another individual owned a car
with a natural-gas engine. Decisions about mobility
practices were strongly dependent on the available
options, as Sabine stated. She used her bike for short
distances, or walked. For commuting to work, which
required four trips each week, she used a regional
train as often as possible, at least two to three times
each week. Upon arrival, she used her bike to travel
the last three kilometers to her workplace. In general,
she used the car once a week, which was justified by
the fact that she did volunteer work and these dates
were always in the evening when she was not able to
go by train.
In the example, Sabine tried to meet her own
ideas of mobility. She also had very definite
conceptions regarding transportation and expressed
herself quite clearly:
But first priority is to ride a bicycle, then
train and bus and car (Sabine, age 48).
Markus, however, deliberately rejected owning a
car, primarily because “in the city” it was not
necessary and he appreciated his daily strolls and
bicycle routes. Further, the social environment can
influence mobility practices, as related by another
respondent.
[Twenty years ago], I had three children,
was employed and we were living in the
countryside; now we are more centrally
located, we live near the city center. There
were times to use the car, it was necessary
and I believe that if you have an everyday
schedule which is absolutely packed with
little time resources, I’ve experienced
myself, so at times I tried to save or to fight
for leisure, even if you have an
environmental awareness...it was harder, so
now in this phase of life, I find it’s easier to
say, now I go by bike and just go shopping
because I might not have to be back in
twenty minutes (Eveline, age 53).
Thus, the decision to choose one mobility mode or
another usually depended on life phases or job
situations.
Housing did seem particularly important to many
of our seven respondents and only one of them had
undertaken renovations in recent years. Of the other
six individuals, two owned a house, two owned an
apartment, and the others were tenants. Thus, the
majority had not considered an investment in
renovation. However, all seven respondents indicated
that they used resources such as water, electricity,
and natural gas very sparingly, but did not evince any
special practices.
Moreover, it appears that sufficient people put
more emphasis on social or voluntary activities, as
well as on less materialistic hobbies. For example,
Markus participated in a sports program every day by
bicycle and emphasized that for him cycling was a
pastime even though he did not care about wearing
multifunction clothes or other paraphernalia. He
enjoyed cycling outdoors and rejected all practices
that required acts of consumption such as becoming a
member of a fitness club. Sabine spent her free time
reading or gardening. Marie was active in art and
tried to work with recycling old materials. All seven
respondents declared that they loved to go on
vacation, but that there was no need for a “great
holiday.” Many of our interviewees preferred “nearby
destinations” in Germany or Europe that could be
reasonably accessed by train. The majority liked to
go camping as well.
Conclusion
Both an analysis of dynamics in social practices
and a differentiation of sufficiently sustainable
actions in private households are necessary to build a
model of target-oriented sufficient behavior (Liedtke
et al. 2013; Lukas et al. 2013). To do so, in this study
we integrated concepts of social practice theory to
explore sufficiency practices in daily routines. From
our perspective, social practices must be regarded as
an important part of contemporary debates on
sufficiency. They are cornerstones for
implementation and provide a framework to assess
changes in consumption routines at a micro-level,
even though without further synthesis of evidence it
remains uncertain whether the study of social
practices is useful.
We have sought to demonstrate that sufficient
consumption patterns can be traced to social practices
of everyday actions, avoiding normative prescriptions
or moralization of consumption behavior. Instead, by
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screening an empirical data set, we have examined
how the concept of sufficiency is presumably linked
to everyday practices and that it may be easily
integrated into lifeways if a person subscribes to an
underlying philosophy that shapes behavior. We have
investigated changing procedures along the three
dimensions of social practices—meanings,
competences, and materials—that can provide
starting points for changing practices toward
sufficient patterns. Our data and analysis show that
sufficiency, while often marginalized in debates over
sustainability strategies, can lower individual
environmental impacts when defined from empirical
grounds as a strategy for action and rooted in
personal settings. For different reasons, we can
assume that high environmental awareness leads
people to restrict their consumption level and,
contrary to some critiques, reduction is not primarily
motivated by personal budget limitations. At the
same time, we have aimed to avoid a purely
constructivist analytical perspective that over-
emphasizes the social construction of what can be
regarded as sustainable. Rather, the empirically
grounded practices of sufficiency should be analyzed
together with sustainability impacts on an analytical
level, both to account for findings within the field of
sustainability science and to support clearly defined
sustainable changes of practices (as entities) toward
resource-light living.
The notion of meaning is a critical anchor—
different competences and practices will derive from
this point. Interestingly, pioneering examples are
found in the fields of nutrition and mobility. Nutrition
especially seems to be a domain that facilitates many
changes and possibilities to act sufficiently. For
instance, an organic diet often precedes an altered
meaning that then manifests itself in everyday-
practice performances. These, in turn, lead to
changing competences, for example, cooking skills to
serve a nutritious meal that is not based on animal
protein. Further, guiding meanings are especially
prone to being linked to several motivations and
competences that are not strictly connected to a
sufficient lifestyle, such as health concerns or saving
strategies.
Based on these results, we emphasize that
previously proposed sufficiency priorities (e.g.,
Kleinhückelkotten, 2005), such as the attitude of
thriftiness, should not be used as guiding principles
for further motivating sufficiency. More or less,
sufficiency is about the quality aspects of products
(e.g., durability) and the idea of using fewer goods.
Furthermore, strategies such as sharing, repairing,
and reusing should become an increasingly common
part of life and have to be supported socially as well
as through infrastructure (Leismann et al. 2013,
Schäfer et al. 2012).
Our main point is that sufficiency occurs in
everyday practices, a more attractive principle than
social science currently considers. We do not know if
sufficient behaviors are intentional or if they are side-
effects of other goals, such as the realization of a
healthy lifestyle or a synergy to save money. In the
end, this does not make any difference for lifestyle
changes. From our point of view, enabling alternative
practices toward a more resource-light society can
have an impact.
Nevertheless, sufficient lifestyles may encounter
infrastructural barriers arising from, for example,
dependencies associated with the time regime of
social practices that are individually unchangeable at
first glance. Still, science and politics need to focus
on enabling conditions to support the spread of
sufficient practices. Key among these are recycling,
reusing, and sharing, or more specifically repair cafés
or sharing stations. The idea is that if more and more
possibilities exist in daily life to guide sufficient
practices these practices will become routinized.
Our study provides a framework to work toward
such a goal and tries to re-evaluate sufficient
practices. The practice-theoretical framework
suggests equal treatment of structural features and
agency. To sum up, the advantage of using practice
theory for our analysis is twofold: 1) it is useful to
empirically locate sufficiency at the level of action
and not moral considerations alone and 2) it helps to
overcome the perspective that, for a more resource-
light society, all individuals need to be persuaded to
make different choices, that is change their values
and consumption decisions. Rather, when
modifications in the elements of practices become
effective (taking on a different meaning) at the level
of practice-as-entity, currently “normal” per-
formances will become delegitimized and
subsequently disappear for the broad majority of
practitioners.
Even though we have been primarily interested
in forms of agency toward shaping a sufficient
lifestyle, we emphasize that structural features are
equally important and go beyond simple individual
responsibility. Policy goals also need to be designed
to change practices, including infrastructure for
sustainable systems of provision and developing
competences, as well as the formulation of policies
supporting sufficiency (Schneidewind & Zahrnt,
2013; Walker, 2015). Making use of practice
theories, however, means showing how agency is
performed despite the social norms of consumerism
and infrastructural barriers. Respondents who may be
characterized as sufficient act within their daily
limitations of time regimes and infrastructure in a
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relatively resource-extensive way. Thus, a change
toward sufficient living is not solely linked to societal
changes. Everyone is able to act within his or her
daily limitations in a relatively more sustainable way
without completely rejecting consumption or waiting
for political or infrastructural change, which may be
slow to arrive.
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33
ARTICLE
Closing the food loops: guidelines and criteria for improving nutrient management
Jennifer McConville
1, Jan-Olof Drangert
2, Pernilla Tidåker
3, Tina-Simone Neset
2, Sebastien Rauch
4, Ingrid
Strid5, & Karin Tonderski
6
1 Department of Architecture, Chalmers University of Technology, Sven Hultins gata 6, Gothenburg, SE-41296 Sweden (email:
jenmcc@chalmers.se) 2 Department of Thematic Studies-Environmental Change, Linköping University, Linköping, SE-581 83 Sweden (email:
janolof.drangert@gmail.com; tina.schmid.neset@liu.se) 3 Swedish Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, Box 7033, Uppsala, SE-750 07 Sweden (email:
pernilla.tidaker@jti.se) 4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, SE-412 96 Sweden (email:
sebastien.rauch@chalmers.se) 5 Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 7032, Lennart Hjelms väg 9, Uppsala,
SE-750 07 Sweden (email: ingrid.strid@slu.se) 6 Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Linköping University, Linköping, SE-581 83 Sweden (email: karsu@ifm.liu.se)
As global consumption expands, the world is increasingly facing threats to resource availability and food security. To meet future food demands, agricultural resource efficiency needs to be optimized for both water and nutrients. Policy makers should start to radically rethink nutrient management across the entire food chain. Closing the food loop by recycling nutrients in food waste and excreta is an important way of limiting the use of mineral nutrients, as well as improving national and global food security. This article presents a framework for sustainable nutrient management and discusses the responsibility of four key stakeholder groups—agriculture, the food industry, consumers, and waste management—for achieving an effective food loop. In particular, we suggest a number of criteria, policy actions, and supporting strategies based on a cross-sectoral application of the waste hierarchy. KEYWORDS: Food processing industry wastes, agricultural wastes, waste utilization, food additives, material balance
Introduction
The global population has grown sharply over
the last century, placing increasing burdens on the
natural resources that provide us with food, energy,
and shelter. Roughly one third of food internationally
produced for human consumption, equivalent to 1.3
billion tons per year, is lost or wasted (Godfray et al.
2010; Gustavsson et al. 2011). Estimates of the vol-
ume of food wasted along global supply chains, from
agricultural production to final human consumption,
range from 25–50%. There are great differences
among regions in the amount of food lost and in
terms of where the losses are most pronounced
(Mena et al. 2011). In all regions, however, there is
growing recognition of the need to improve agricul-
tural resource efficiency with respect to both water
and nutrients (Foley et al. 2011). Increasing access to
fertilizers, particularly locally produced agricultural
additives, and improved soil-nutrient management
are critical in assuring global food security (Chen et
al. 2011).
Increased productivity since World War II has
been achieved through application of chemical ferti-
lizers, pesticides, and irrigation, yet the contemporary
global environmental situation and growing con-
straints in resource availability challenge us to take a
more sustainable approach. The production of chemi-
cal fertilizers relies on limited sources of phosphorus
and energy-intensive nitrogen fixation. Both nitrogen
and phosphorus cycles have been identified as critical
planetary boundaries for maintaining a balance in the
Earth’s biophysical processes (Rockström et al.
2009). Currently, cycles for these two elements are
under threat in many parts of the world where reac-
tive nitrogen from fertilizer production ends up pol-
luting waterways or is released as a greenhouse gas
(nitrous oxide), and excessive use of phosphorus not
only reduces access to this limited resource, but
phosphorus runoff causes eutrophication of lakes and
puts oceans at risk for anoxic events. Better manage-
ment of these macronutrients is needed both from an
agricultural perspective in terms of, for example, re-
ducing fertilizer runoff and with respect to the global
environment by managing material flows of these
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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elements. At the same time, it is important that we
devote more attention to the role of micronutrients
and soil organic carbon in enhancing productivity.1
Studies show that an increased soil organic-carbon
pool can influence yields (Lal, 2006) and that many
micronutrients enhance disease resistance and toler-
ance (Dordas, 2009). The recycling of organic waste
has the potential to return both carbon and nutrients
to soils.
The planetary boundary for nitrogen has already
been exceeded and that for phosphorus is threatened
(Rockström et al. 2009). It is time to radically rethink
nutrient management across the entire food chain.
Scientists see recycling of nutrients in food waste and
excreta, for example, as an important way of limiting
the use of mineral nutrients as well as improving na-
tional and global food security (Cordell et al. 2009),
particularly if such measures can balance local and
regional nutrient flows. Improving global nutrient
management will require a holistic approach that
includes the entire food cycle from production and
distribution to consumption and resource recovery.
There is a need for guiding principles and actions that
reach a broad spectrum of stakeholders in diverse
sectors and unite them in a global vision for sustaina-
ble nutrient management. Taking this broader ap-
proach means linking material flows and manage-
ment sectors that today are generally managed on a
separate basis, such as food-processing plants and
wastewater-treatment facilities.
This article aims to influence policy develop-
ment by presenting a working framework for sustain-
able nutrient management based on multi-stakeholder
collaboration. Current models for sustainable waste
and material-flow management highlight the need for
waste prevention, recycling, and life-cycle perspec-
tives. Building on the popular waste hierarchy, while
recognizing the need to focus on waste minimization
(Price & Joseph, 2000), our framework is based on
two key principles: 1) increasing the effectiveness of
nutrient use in the overall provisioning system (i.e.,
minimizing waste flows) and 2) closing the loop on
fertilizing nutrients (i.e., reuse & recycling). The sec-
ond principle also entails ensuring that nutrient-flow
streams are kept free from contaminants so that the
constituent resources can be reused. This article pre-
sents a number of criteria, policy actions, and sup-
porting strategies, for stakeholders at all levels of the
food chain, for achieving the goal of sustainable nu-
trient management. The text explains the theoretical
framework based on a multi-sector approach to food
1 Micronutrients are those elements essential for plant growth that
are needed in only very small quantities, as opposed to macronutri-
ents (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sul-fur) that are required in larger quantities.
loops and the waste hierarchy. The framework is then
presented with discussion of the roles of each sector.
Finally, specific policy strategies and methods for
enabling change are discussed.
Theoretical Framework
The sustainable management of nutrients means
achieving a balance between the removal and addi-
tion of organic and mineral material. Such practices
also entail avoiding the net accumulation of heavy
metals and other undesirable compounds, such as
medical residues and pesticides, in soil. This article
uses a framework based on three concepts that aim to
capture the complexity associated with the formula-
tion of sustainable solutions: food loops, a multi-
sector approach, and the waste hierarchy.
Food Loops To maximize resource efficiency, it is necessary
to adopt a life-cycle perspective with respect to nutri-
ent flows within the food system. Closing food loops
means the nutrients are recovered and returned to
agriculture to the greatest extent possible (Figure 1).
Food loops exist at several levels and may connect
one or more sectors. For example, the internal agri-
cultural loop returns manure and harvest waste to the
fields, while other loops transport food products from
fields to consumers and on to waste-treatment plants.
However, each sector tends to focus on its own
agenda and thus cross-sectoral collaboration for nu-
trient management is a weak point in many policies
Figure 1 Food Loops: from agricultural production and processing to consumption and collection/treatment of food waste so as to return valuable organic and mineral compounds to agriculture. Note to readers: this article focuses on the larger loop in which food passes through all four sectors.
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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today. Therefore, this article focuses on the larger
loop in which food passes through four key sectors
(further explained in the section below).
From an environmental perspective, closing
loops is best done at a local scale to avoid unneces-
sary transport and associated energy costs (Tidåker et
al. 2007). However, we recognize that global popula-
tion distribution and local food production capabili-
ties can make it difficult, and perhaps economically
inefficient, to maintain a completely local food loop.
Thus, there will be tradeoffs to consider when deter-
mining the optimal scale of this system. For example,
it is unreasonable to expect that large cities can be
completely supported by urban and near-urban agri-
culture. The optimal scale of the food loop for a par-
ticular city will depend on the consumption patterns
of the city and local agricultural conditions.
Multi-Sector Approach Four key management sectors are involved in the
direct handling of nutrient flows within the larger
food loop shown in Figure 1: agriculture, the food
industry, consumers, and waste management. Stake-
holders in each of these sectors play a vital role in
achieving balanced management of nutrient flows.
There are, of course, other important stakeholders
such as regulators that can affect nutrient manage-
ment. However, since these stakeholders often influ-
ence actions in more than one sector, their role is
discussed below in the section about enabling
change, along with institutional structures and regu-
lations.
Agriculture in this context is defined as primary
food producers. The food industry includes manu-
facturers and processors, distributors, and wholesal-
ers. Consumers comprise households and restaurants,
as well as local food retailers such as grocery stores
which we deem employ similar nutrient-management
strategies. The waste-management sector, generally
including solid-waste and wastewater-management
organizations, is responsible for the collection, treat-
ment, and disposal of solid and liquid wastes. It
should be noted that these sectors are dependent on
each other and thus management measures are inter-
dependent and linked across sectors.
Waste Hierarchy The management framework that we formulate
in this article is based on the waste hierarchy com-
monly used in solid-waste management (European
Commission, 2008; ARCADIS, 2010). Indeed, varia-
tions of the generalized “reduce, reuse, recycle”
model are common and the basis of waste manage-
ment in many countries (Sakai et al. 2011).
1. Reduce a) waste generation and b) harmful con-
tents in products
2. Reuse the waste more or less as it is
3. Recycle the waste as input to new products (in-
cluding biogas production)
4. Incinerate
5. Dispose
From a nutrient-management perspective, the
above steps are interpreted as follows. Reduction
aims at preventing the generation of waste containing
nutrients and thus the need to tap mineral nutrient
reserves. This includes (Step 1a) reduced volumes
and, perhaps more importantly, (Step 1b) minimizing
harmful and unwanted contents in products and mate-
rials. If the nutrients are not mixed with contami-
nants, they can be recovered and (Step 2) reused
without treatment beyond sanitization (WHO, 2006).
If the food-waste material is not safe or not in a state
that allows for direct reuse, treatment processes can
recycle it into new products (Step 3).
The final two steps of the waste hierarchy are of
less interest for purposes of nutrient management
since opportunities for nutrient recovery are small.
Incineration (Step 4) of food waste is an option, as
both the emissions and the ashes contain a variety of
plant nutrients, including phosphorus and potassium.
However, all carbon and nitrogen are lost and the
amount of plant-available phosphorus in ashes is re-
duced (Zhang et al. 2001). Incineration is therefore
mainly used to reduce the volume of solid waste and
to recover energy. Finally, the waste hierarchy rec-
ommends (Step 5) disposal, most often landfilling,
only for material that cannot be used in the previous
four steps. We focus on the first three steps as the
most effective for improving nutrient management.
Strategy Framework
This article presents a number of functional crite-
ria (Table 1) that may guide technology and policy
development within key sectors to improve nutrient
management. Criteria selection is a sensitive issue,
since it often reflects decision-maker preferences.
While aware of this inclination, we carefully devel-
oped sustainability criteria through a series of work-
shops and meetings with a multi-disciplinary group
of researchers.2 The criteria presented here should be
at least partially measureable and should guide policy
makers and technology developers in system im-
2 A summary from the initial workshop supported by the
SanWatPUA network can be found at http://www.urbanwater.se/
sites/default/files/filer/sanwatpua_p-workshop_summary.pdf. The
table presented in this article was developed in subsequent meet-ings and refined through an iterative review process.
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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provement. The following sections provide support-
ing arguments for selecting the functional criteria.
Agriculture Farmers around the world have typically used lo-
cally based food-loop strategies for generations. Op-
timizing internal recycling of organic material at the
farm level should, of course, be encouraged. The cri-
teria presented here focus on what the agriculture
sector (primary producers of crops and livestock) can
do to enable wider food loops in connection with
other stakeholders.
A primary concern is, of course, that agriculture
should not become a dumping ground for society’s
waste. Therefore, the first priority should be efficient
use of fertilizers and minimization of hormone and
chemical additions to the soil. Use of harmful chemi-
cals, including those in recycled food waste, should
be discontinued to avoid long-term contamination of
soils. The second priority strategy should be to reuse
food waste directly on the farm. This includes using
unprocessed urine as fertilizer and giving food waste
directly to livestock. Export of manure from areas
with abundant livestock to crop-intensive areas is a
reuse option that may need wider stakeholder collab-
oration. It requires dewatering of the manure to
achieve the most cost-effective transport, and thus
there may be advantages for tighter collaboration
with the waste-management sector that regularly uses
dewatering technology (UWE, 2013). Finally, food
waste that cannot be directly reused should be recy-
cled into fertilizers or fodder whenever safe and fea-
sible.
Maximizing the return of food-related material
flows to agriculture in this way, particularly at a local
scale, can greatly reduce nutrient losses to water and
air, as well as improve soil conditions. However,
these strategies require that farmers know about op-
timal fertilizer and chemical dosing to prevent over-
fertilization or accumulation of other toxic com-
pounds. In particular, information about the fertiliz-
ing values of potential reused and recycled food
wastes needs to be documented and disseminated, as
different wastes have different characteristics and
thus differ in expected fertilizer effect (Delin et al.
2012). The same applies to using food-waste prod-
ucts as fodder, which can be encouraged through
formalization and product marketing to assure quality
Table 1 Functional criterion for improving nutrient management in the food chain. Supporting guidelines and policy documents are shown in Table 2. Arrows indicate direction of material flows.
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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and content standards. Implementation of these strat-
egies will require guidelines for application of a vari-
ety of food-waste products, both those produced di-
rectly at the farm and those from other sectors. This
should include standardization and reference values
for element balances for a variety of nutrients and
organic carbon substrates (Öborn et al. 2003). One
move in this direction is the quality certification rules
for biowaste digestate from the Swedish waste-man-
agement authorities, which requires that levels of
nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur,
and calcium must be declared (SP, 2013).
Food Industry The food industry has a critical role to play con-
cerning efficient use of nutrients, particularly food
additives, and reducing waste in the food chain. Food
industry waste-reduction measures can range from
improving transport and handling infrastructure, in-
cluding better coordination with suppliers and con-
sumers, to increasing the lifespan of food through
proper storage and packaging. For example, a recent
study in Sweden found that 20–25% of household
food waste could be related to packaging that was
either difficult to empty or too large (Williams et al.
2012). New packaging standards could reduce food
waste, for instance through hydrophobic lining for
better emptying of containers or by designing pack-
aging to match consumer eating habits (e.g., avoiding
extra-large portions that often spoil).
In addition, improving efficient use of nutrients
requires minimizing unnecessary use of food addi-
tives. For example, use of phosphorus-containing
additives in processed food and animal feed has in-
creased in the last few decades, contributing to the
increased demand on mined phosphate. These com-
pounds are used as dietary supplements and for func-
tional purposes such as emulsifiers, stabilizers, or
preserving moisture and color. Winger et al. (2012)
refer to several studies which estimate that up to 50%
of the daily phosphorus intake in affluent countries is
from food additives. Medical knowledge has linked
higher blood-phosphorus levels to significant health
risks, including cardiovascular disease, deterioration
of kidney function (e.g., Dhingra et al. 2007), and
bone disease (e.g., Sax, 2001). The development
trend toward using phytase enzymes in animal feed
can significantly reduce the need for phosphorus ad-
ditions and dietary supplements.3
Food additives and packaging material (which
contain compounds that may migrate into food)
3 Phytase is an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of indigestible
organic phosphorus, releasing usable forms of inorganic phospho-
rus. Its use in animal feed can enhance the nutritive value of plant material.
should also be free from toxic and persistent sub-
stances because they can make it difficult to later
reuse and/or recycle food. Although outside the spe-
cific context of food loops, it is, of course, advanta-
geous to minimize the amount of packaging and de-
sign it for material recovery. The recovery rate of
nutrients in food waste can only be improved if the
waste is uncontaminated, with chemical and pathogen
concentrations close to or below background levels.
For example, some plastic packaging may contami-
nate the food content by releasing Bisfenol A and
phthalates, two hormone-disturbing chemicals linked
to a number of diseases (Rudel et al. 2011). Avoid-
ance of such substances in food and packaging would
improve public health and facilitate the design of
more effective food loops.
The food industry also has the potential to de-
velop internal strategies to maximize recovery of
food residues for direct reuse and/or recycling into
new products. Mena et al. (2011) identify a number
of areas where lack of communication and waste
policies cause food waste in the food industry, such
as lack of information sharing causing forecasting
difficulties and poor ordering, or lack of monitoring
routines for measuring waste creation. There are op-
portunities to realize economic gains by optimizing
the efficient use of food resources. For example,
slaughterhouses and fish industries can grind bones
and sell the meal as fertilizer (Jeng et al. 2006). Ad-
ditionally, green technologies are increasingly pro-
moted as a means of extracting valuable chemicals
from food residues, such as turning citrus waste into
limonene (Luque & Clark, 2013).4
Consumers Consumers, including local food retailers, can
play a major role in preventing food waste and re-
ducing contamination of nutrient-rich waste streams
so that they can more easily be recovered. In indus-
trialized countries, the share of food waste is signifi-
cantly higher in the consumption phase of the supply
chain, estimated to be approximately 95–115 kilo-
grams (kg) per capita/year in Europe and North
America compared to 6–11 kg per capita/year in sub-
Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia
(Gustavsson et al. 2011). A recent study estimates
that about 40% of household-food waste in the UK is
due to cooking and serving more food than can be
consumed (Quested & Johnson, 2009). Better plan-
ning in food purchasing and creative use of leftovers
by households could significantly reduce this volume.
In addition, consumers can reduce waste through
proper storage, attention to expiration dates, and
4 Limonene is used in food manufacturing, medicines, cosmetics,
insecticides, cleaning products, and solvents.
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more careful preparation (e.g., cutting and properly
cooking food). Restaurants and caterers can track
food frequently left uneaten or sent back by custom-
ers and modify the menu based on this information.
Reduction of food waste can result in direct eco-
nomic gains for consumers. Policy measures like the
imposition of fees for trash collection and disposal
can be effective in reducing consumer waste.
From environmental and nutrient-management
perspectives, lower consumption of meat and dairy
products would also significantly reduce the need for
input of external nutrients into the food loop. For
example, a meat-based diet requires approximately
three times the phosphorus as a vegetarian diet and
results in more nitrogen excreted by humans into the
wastewater system (Cordell et al. 2009). Thus, re-
duction of meat and dairy products in the diet would
substantially lower the need for chemical fertilizers.
Consumers can also pave the way for increased
nutrient recovery through proper management of
household waste. This includes separation of organic
waste from other items. Placing left-over medicines
and harmful chemicals into separate waste streams,
for example, can significantly reduce contaminants in
wastewater, making it easier to recycle sludge and
water back to agriculture. Similarly, the diversion of
fats, oils, and grease from wastewater flows can in-
crease the efficiency of associated systems. Fats can
be captured at home or public kitchens and either
recycled into composts or collected by the waste
sector for processing into biofuels, soaps, and other
products.
In addition, consumers can be encouraged to
practice reuse and recycling, for example by food
donations or composting. There is an increasing trend
toward redistribution of surplus from catering and
retail sectors to human consumption, largely through
soup kitchens and food banks (Alexander & Smaje,
2008). In many countries there are “Good Samaritan”
laws that protect donors from liability. Feeding do-
mestic animals with food scraps and leftovers is an-
other option. For example, hog farmers have tradi-
tionally relied on food scraps to sustain their live-
stock and in some areas may provide storage contain-
ers and low-cost pick-up service. Of course, consum-
ers need to be aware of what types of scraps are ap-
propriate for animal consumption and sort waste
properly. Composting can be done on-site at the
household level or off-site, often in collaboration
with the waste-management sector.
Consumers can also influence the food loop
through their shopping choices by minimizing pur-
chases with unnecessary food additives and increas-
ing consumption of products that contribute to nutri-
ent recovery in the food loop. Informed decisions,
however, require knowledge. Information dissemina-
tion and proper training in how and why to buy food
that is easily recovered will play an important role in
mainstreaming these practices.
Waste Management Waste management is defined here as the col-
lecting, transporting, processing, recycling. or dis-
posing of waste materials (Demirbas, 2011), includ-
ing solid and liquid wastes from households and in-
dustry. The standard has until now been focused on
infrastructure for managing linear waste flows, gen-
erally from waste production to landfills or incinera-
tors. However, significant volumes of nutrients end
up in solid and liquid wastes. The waste-management
sector can therefore play a crucial role for improved
nutrient recovery and reuse through three important
activities: 1) implementing nutrient-focused waste-
management systems, especially in urban areas; 2)
acting as a watchdog to minimize contaminants in the
food loop; and 3) producing nutrient-rich waste prod-
ucts that are acceptable for both farmers and consum-
ers.
To efficiently recycle nutrients, the waste-
management sector should minimize the dilution of
nutrients and reduce the amount of hazardous chemi-
cals in waste flows. With respect to nutrient-rich
waste in urban areas, human excreta is the single
largest source (Cordell et al. 2009) followed by food
waste (Gustavsson et al. 2011).These nutrients are
more easily accessed if they are collected in separate
flows not polluted by chemical substances. In the
wastewater sector, minimizing excess water (e.g., in-
leakage from pipes or stormwater) can significantly
reduce treatment costs and simplify the extraction of
nutrients. Systems that separate human excreta from
other household wastewater (i.e., greywater) are even
better from a nutrient-recovery perspective, as the
nutrients are then concentrated in smaller volumes
and a majority of contaminants are removed with the
greywater.
Food wastes should also be considered sepa-
rately. Today, they are usually mixed with other
wastes and either incinerated or landfilled. However,
systems do exist when they are separated, as in Swe-
den, where approximately 60% of municipalities
collect food waste to produce the nutrient-rich ferti-
lizer digestate as well as biogas by anaerobic diges-
tion. Experience shows that implementing a well-
functioning food-waste collection system for house-
holds can take several years, as it requires planning,
adequate personnel resources, information, and
follow-up (Avfall Sverige, 2013).
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Waste and wastewater utilities are strategically
positioned to become watchdogs over harmful waste
that can hamper nutrient recovery. The European
Union (EU) estimates that some 140,000 substances
are currently registered in products (Environment
Directorate General, 2007) and very few of them
have been properly tested for impact on humans and
the environment (although several hundred chemicals
are on a watch list). Capture and removal of all such
substances from waste flows would be extremely
costly, if not technically infeasible. However, waste
managers can post warning signals for products that
pose a risk to reuse and recycling. They can work
closely together with manufacturers, environmental
organizations, and chemical agencies in such matters.
Manufacturers could be approached from two sides:
legal restrictions on use of certain substances and
consumer boycotts of household products with un-
wanted content.
Waste-management agencies can also produce
nutrient-rich waste products and thus be key players
in creating a viable market. A number of techniques
are available to recover nutrients from waste streams;
ranging from low-tech solutions, such as direct use of
urine, to high-tech extraction of nutrients from mu-
nicipal wastewater (e.g., struvite production). Trans-
parent management and certification processes, pref-
erably in close dialogue with farmers and consumers,
can ensure acceptable and high-quality products.
Sweden, for example, has implemented certification
of solid waste-derived fertilizers and sewage sludge
to reduce discharges of heavy metals and organic
pollutants in the raw wastewater, improving the
quality of waste-derived fertilizers for agriculture.
The waste-management sector should also establish
measurable standards and organizational norms that
maximize potential for recovery of nutrients from
food-derived waste and their return to agriculture.
Policy Strategies
This section provides suggestions for how the
criteria presented in Table 1 can be translated into
policy (Table 2). Many of the actions suggested here
are guidelines, standards, and certification systems,
some of which are sector-specific, but several that
require input and action from multiple sectors (high-
lighted in bold in Table 2). For example, a register of
safe agricultural fertilizers and chemicals (including
those produced from food waste) will require infor-
mation from other sectors regarding the contents of
these products. The information to create many of
these guidelines already exists, but needs to be syn-
thesized into more readily accessible platforms.
In the agriculture sector, farmers are primarily
concerned about the quality of products applied to
their fields (and potential negative consequences) and
the potential to sell their produce. They need infor-
mation regarding the contents of recovered food
waste and guidelines on how to best apply these
products. To eliminate harmful chemicals in the food
loop, a register of safe fertilizers and chemicals for
agricultural use should be developed through collabo-
ration of agricultural and food/drug specialists. Fi-
nally, quality certification of products from “reuse”
agriculture can build consumer acceptance and in-
crease the number of farmers adhering to such prac-
tices. Such a certification process would, of course,
require collaboration with stakeholders across the
entire food loop.
As the food industry comprises a diverse and
complex network of actors involved in transporting,
processing, packaging, and wholesaling, a unifying
vision is needed that outlines a holistic perspective
regarding nutrient management, particularly high-
lighting potential areas for stakeholder collaboration.
Such a vision needs to include policy documents and
guidelines for minimizing food waste, limiting addi-
tives, and recovering food products within the indus-
Table 2 Supporting guidelines and policy actions that should be developed for improving nutrient management within key sectors based on the waste strategy that they support. Points highlighted in bold will require collaboration across sectors.
Agriculture Food Industry Consumers Waste management
+ Register of safe agricultural fertilizers & chemicals (including those from food waste)
+ Guidelines for reuse/recycling food waste within agriculture
+ Certification of “reuse” agriculture products
+ Vision for food-loop management, including collaboration points and standards for reuse/ recycling
+ Register of food additives, including nutrient content, toxicity, persistence, and health effects
+ Certification & product labeling to promote reuse/recycling
+ “Sustainable lifestyle” guidelines, including advice on purchasing, preparation, & storage
+ Incentives for household-level reuse/recycling of food products
+ Guidelines for home reuse, separation of food waste & safe disposal of harmful chemicals
+ Technical standards & organizational norms for designing systems for nutrient reuse/recycling
+ Monitoring standards & norms for tracking nutrients and harmful chemicals in waste
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try. A register of food additives containing infor-
mation on nutrient content, toxicity, persistence, and
health effects would add transparency to negotiations
between industry partners and provide consistent
information to consumers. An industry “reuse stand-
ard” would also strengthen intra-industry cooperation
and build consumer acceptance of products with re-
covered nutrients.
Product labeling by the food industry would also
assist consumers to make informed choices, as would
“lifestyle guidelines,” which include purchasing rec-
ommendations, as well as advice on purchasing,
preparation, food storage, and home reuse. Further
guidelines for home reuse, separation of food waste,
and proper disposal of chemicals are also needed.
These guidelines could be distributed by a number of
different agencies, for example, grocery stores, mu-
nicipalities, and housing companies. Of course, in-
formation dissemination by itself will not signifi-
cantly change consumer behavior. Incentives are
needed to encourage consumer reuse/recycling, in-
cluding financial incentives/rebates and construction
of supportive infrastructure that makes it easy to
practice reuse.
As noted earlier, the waste-management sector
has a critical watchdog role to play. This role can be
strengthened by establishing monitoring standards
(locally or nationally) for harmful chemicals in waste
flows. In addition, the sector can work to establish
technical standards and organizational norms for nu-
trient reuse/recycling. Standards for sewage sludge
recycling, for example, are a step in this direction.
Enabling Change Achieving the criteria outlined in this article will
require large changes in how stakeholders behave and
interact. The change required must go beyond policy
documents to result in action and ultimately changes
in infrastructure and institutions. Numerous cross-
cutting issues can act as barriers or drivers for
change. Many of these issues deal with anchoring the
functional criteria within society, legitimizing ac-
tions, and monitoring side effects. We identify the
following issues, further discussed below, as critical
for enabling transitions within the food loop and al-
lowing for implementation of the functional criteria
(Storbjörk & Söderberg, 2003; Bergek et al. 2008;
Fam & Mitchell, 2013):
Institutional capacity for system management
Effective collaboration between sectors
Supportive legislation
Transparent system for monitoring and quality
control
Reliable data and evidence-based cost-benefit
calculations
Knowledge and incentives for action
One of the most critical issues is the institutional
capacity to manage nutrient flows throughout the
entire loop of food production, processing, consump-
tion, waste collection and treatment, and back to the
fields. If the entire system is to function properly, a
clear division of roles and responsibilities among
stakeholders is necessary to assure cooperation and
minimize conflict. Although food loops are ideally
closed at a local level, institutional support for this
work can be established at multiple levels, including
internationally. In fact, national and international
actors likely have the best capacity to initiate policy
strategies and lead collaborative action.
Providing an arena for communication and col-
laboration among stakeholders at an early stage of
policy implementation increases the potential for a
well-functioning recovery system, both from an or-
ganizational and environmental point of view
(Jönsson et al. 2010). A number of the policy actions
outlined in Table 2 can act as starting points for es-
tablishing the necessary collaboration across sectors.
For example, the development of certification sys-
tems or “lifestyle guidelines” can bring multiple
stakeholders together to work on a concrete task. Co-
operation in the development of such specific docu-
ments, perhaps facilitated by national or international
actors, may pave the way for further collaboration.
A related issue is the need for supportive legisla-
tion that encourages nutrient recovery. Today, one of
the major stumbling blocks for nutrient reuse and
recycling is legislation that directly or indirectly dis-
courages such practices. Waste flows containing nu-
trients are often regulated under different and some-
times conflicting statutes—water, health, environ-
ment and so forth—which makes interpretation of
laws difficult for local authorities. Negative percep-
tions of human excreta also affect regulations. For
example, human urine and feces are currently not
permitted by EU regulation for organic farming,
which means that farmers using them cannot be certi-
fied as organic (Johansson & Kvarnström, 2005).
This exclusion is considered a cultural construction
rather than a scientific distinction. Current legislation
needs to be reviewed to ensure that it does not inhibit
nutrient reuse/recycling.
In addition, a transparent system for monitoring
and quality-control should be developed for mapping
nutrient flows and certifying products. Expanding the
concept of the phosphorus footprint is one possibility
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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(Lott et al. 2009; Metson et al. 2012).5 Such a system
would allow for monitoring of quantifiable goals and
assure quality of recycled products. Various sectors
would have a role, with a need for coordination
among monitoring systems. It has been suggested
that the waste-management sector be responsible for
developing a monitoring system, but specific stake-
holders involved will likely be context specific.
A monitoring system needs to be based on relia-
ble data and evidence-based cost-benefit calculations.
Calculating accurate costs and benefits requires a
system perspective so that nutrient recovery does not
lead to excessive energy use or result in substantial
increases in the release of greenhouse gases when
fulfilling the functional criteria. Thus, it requires a
broad data set, some of which is currently missing or
under-researched. However, research is ongoing in
this field, largely based on substance flow analysis
(Cordell et al. 2012), and new data should soon fill in
missing pieces.
Many of the functional criteria are dependent on
stakeholder knowledge of waste products and their
willingness to reduce the use of nutrients and/or in-
crease the use of recovered products. For this to hap-
pen, an active information and dissemination pro-
gram is needed that targets all stakeholders. Of
course, the message has to be adapted for each stake-
holder group, for example through better fertilizers
for farmers and environmental stewardship for con-
sumers. In addition, local conditions, such as popula-
tion density and environmental awareness are im-
portant factors to consider when designing infor-
mation campaigns.
Finally, economic incentives for all stakeholders
are needed. This requires establishing markets for
reused/recycled products and calculations of local
nutrient costs. An example of a recent initiative to
create a market for recycled nutrients as a commodity
is the Dutch Phosphate Value Chain Agreement (Nu-
trient Platform NL), founded in 2011 by the Dutch
State Secretary for Infrastructure and the Environ-
ment and the national farmers’ organization (LTO
Nederland). It includes more than 35 Dutch compa-
nies, research institutes, governments, and nongov-
ernmental organizations (NGOs) working to create a
market for recycled phosphate.6 Policy development
will play a critical role in defining economic incen-
tives, especially since the costs for redesigning sys-
tems do not always fall on the same sectors as those
receiving the benefits of reuse. Polluter-pays princi-
5 The phosphorus footprint is a calculation of the average amount
of mined phosphorus required to produce the food consumed per
capita per annum. 6 See http://www.nutrient platform.org.
ples or “quality” certification can be effective tools
for balancing costs and benefits among sectors.
Conclusion
This article provides vision, criteria, and sup-
porting strategies for improving nutrient management
in the food chain. It presents a framework for closed-
loop nutrient management based on a multi-
stakeholder approach to the waste hierarchy. It out-
lines the roles of four key sectors (agriculture, food
industry, consumers, and waste management) in re-
ducing, reusing, and recycling nutrients within the
food loop. The functional criteria outlined in this
framework (Table 1) aim at minimizing food waste
and harmful chemicals in food and waste products.
They also aim to maximize the recovery of nutrients
in food waste through reuse and recycling of waste
flows. The criteria presented here should be seen as
starting points for the development of measureable
indicators which can help policy- and decision-
makers monitor progress toward improved nutrient
efficiency. Effectively closing the loop on nutrient
flows will require action by all stakeholders. This
article has also highlighted examples of actions that
each sector can take and suggested several policy
documents that should be developed (Table 2).
A number of positive examples exist of policy
aimed at food-waste reduction and recovery. For ex-
ample, the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) and the United States Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (USEPA) are collaborating on poli-
cies to reduce and recover food waste. The United
States food waste and recovery challenges invite ac-
tors throughout the food chain to disseminate infor-
mation about best practices and set specific quantita-
tive food-waste goals (mostly related to waste reduc-
tion). These challenges may be a good platform for
implementing the framework outlined in this article,
which could help these programs shift their focus
from waste reduction to holistic material flow man-
agement and bring onboard the non-consumer sectors
that are currently poorly represented. Another posi-
tive example is Sweden where the EPA has recom-
mended national goals of returning 40% of phospho-
rus and 10% of nitrogen from wastewater to agricul-
ture; managing manure so that nutrient additions bal-
ance depletion; and treating at least 50% of food
waste so that nutrients are recovered
(Naturvårdsverket, 2013). As these recommendations
are still new (and not yet official), there are few
practical guidelines for how to achieve them. Again,
the framework in this article may provide guidance.
Implementing the approach outlined in this arti-
cle will require widespread cooperation and possibly
new organizational structures. However, concerns
McConville et al.: Guidelines for Closing Food Loops
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about food security and the need for more sustainable
management of nutrients may provide a common
cause for uniting diverse stakeholders. It is our hope
that the criteria and suggested policy actions can
serve as points of departure for local champions to
initiate the necessary dialogue. Stakeholders need to
agree on a common vision. The one presented here
may provide a starting point. Closing the food loop is
possible if all stakeholders apply thinking from the
waste hierarchy, minimizing waste within their own
sector and assuring that waste flows to other sectors
are in optimal condition for reuse. No sector can do it
alone, but together we can achieve sustainable nutri-
ent management.
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Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy | http://sspp.proquest.com Fall 2015 | Volume 11 | Issue 2
INTRODUCTION
Introduction to the Forum on Sustainability and the Library
Amy Forrester School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37916 USA (email: aforres4@vols.utk.edu)
I have had the great fortune to be involved with
the development and growth of Sustainability: Sci-
ence, Practice, & Policy since its inception. The jour-
nal’s decade-long tenure is a testament to the impera-
tive for scholarly cross-disciplinary discourse on sus-
tainability problems and solutions that is open and
freely accessible. In my final term as Managing Editor
of SSPP, I had the opportunity to concurrently pursue
a new personal endeavor into the field of Information
Sciences. As such, I took the initiative to bridge the
two activities as the coordinator of this Forum on Sus-
tainability and the Library.
Modifying the environmental, social, and eco-
nomic requirements of the contemporary world in a
way that does not harm future generations is the prem-
ise of sustainability. The library and information sci-
ences (LIS) community is recognizing its role in this
mission by being both a change leader and educator.
Libraries have a rich history of innovative practices,
services, and engagement in mitigating change. For
example, they have been for some time now incorpo-
rating disruptive technologies into their mission as ma-
jor information providers and delivering their services
to an increasingly diverse user-centered population.
The accompanying Forum comprises two timely
and important contributions. In the first article, Beth
Filar Williams, Madeleine Charney, and Bonnie Smith
discuss how library professionals are a “natural fit for
advocating and promoting sustainability.” They de-
scribe the response of the LIS community through the
American Library Association’s adoption of a sustain-
ability-focused national group for professionals to fos-
ter dialogue and collaboration. This is a critical step in
assessing and developing the strategic role of library
and information science in sustaining environmental
protection, social equity, and economic development.
Many LIS professionals understand that they have
the unique advantage of addressing sustainability is-
sues both from the physicality of the library and intel-
lectually as information and knowledge managers. Cli-
mate change, a factual mediator of sustainability, can
pose a major threat to both objectives. In the second
article in this Forum, Eira Tansey explains how cli-
mate change effects the continuity of records and re-
positories. She challenges the American archival pro-
fession to preemptively consider the risks and prepare
for the impacts of climate change on repositories, the
livelihoods of archivists working in vulnerable loca-
tions, and the public’s ability to access vital records.
These two topics are illustrative of the scholarship
emerging out of the nexus of LIS and sustainability re-
search. I look forward to continued discussion as LIS
professionals and academics continue to advance this
interdisciplinary pursuit and chart a course for the next
generation of effort and solutions.
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy http://sspp.proquest.com
2016 Tansey CC-BY Attribution 4.0 License. Fall 2015 | Volume 11 | Issue 2
ARTICLE
Archival adaptation to climate change Eira Tansey University of Cincinnati Libraries, PO Box 210113, Cincinnati, OH 45221 USA (email: tanseyem@ucmail.uc.edu)
Discussion of the likely impacts of climate change on archives is significantly deficient in the archival profession. Ar-chives hold rare and unique materials that are irreplaceable and institutional adaptation to climate change is critical to the survival of these resources. The earliest effects of climate change are likely to be increased weather events that threaten the physical safety of holdings. Hurricanes, floods, and fires pose particular risks to archives due to potential damage to buildings as well as from limitations of local infrastructure to rapidly respond to disasters. Disaster prepar-edness for archives needs to include planning responses to a wide variety of situations that threaten holdings. As societies begin to adapt to climate change, archivists should consider how values of sustainability and resiliency might inform archival practice. KEYWORDS: archives, archivists, preservation, cultural heritage, climate change, sea-level rise, climate adaptation, resilience
Introduction
According to the National Climate Assessment,
the United States will in future years likely experi-
ence an increasing number of climate-change related
trends that will influence residential patterns, agricul-
ture, natural resources, and future investments in in-
frastructure. Many of these changes will be due to
increasingly severe weather and rising sea levels that
will pose significant dangers to most of the popula-
tion in the country (USGCCRP, 2014).
Climate change is one of the greatest contempo-
rary threats to archival repositories and the records in
their custody. Increasingly severe disasters like hurri-
canes, floods, and wildfires pose immediate dangers.
At best, archives affected by such events may be able
to evacuate certain holdings, to move collections to
safer parts of buildings, or to salvage materials using
disaster-response teams. At worst, a disaster may
result in total loss, with collections of records or even
a repository’s entire holdings damaged or lost beyond
recovery. Longer-term trends such as human migra-
tion and rising sea level may necessitate decisions
concerning the geographic relocation of archival rec-
ords.
Despite these mounting threats, the American
archival profession has to date not demonstrated
significant interest in addressing the likely impacts of
climate change on archival repositories, the liveli-
hoods of archivists working in vulnerable locations,
and the public’s ability to access vital records threat-
ened by severe weather. To the extent that risks to
archival holdings have been considered, it has pri-
marily been through the lens of disaster planning and
management, which emphasizes emergency response,
but does not address long-term adaptation for
repositories in geographically vulnerable areas
(Gordon-Clark & Shurville, 2010). However, a
significant body of literature has examined the effects
of climate change on long-term viability of other
areas of cultural heritage, such as monuments and
architecture (Holtz et al. 2014; UCS, 2014; O’Brien
et al. 2015). This work has significant value for
archivists who are only beginning to consider similar
questions.
As archivists adapt to meet the challenges of
climate change, they can draw inspiration from pre-
vious shifts in theory and practice. Revising tradi-
tional archival methods to meet contemporary chal-
lenges is familiar to most practitioners. Archivists
have responded to the processing demands associated
with increasingly large collections of modern paper
and electronic records by embracing new processing
and cataloging practices that recognize limited insti-
tutional resources. These techniques have been de-
veloped in recent decades to help archivists make
more records available to users. This may be con-
strued as a sustainability response, albeit from a labor
and resource-allocation perspective, rather than an
environmental one. Embedding responses to climate
change in long-term planning for stewardship of rec-
ords is a path toward developing a professional cul-
ture of sustainability and resiliency. Current archival
practice emphasizes access for researchers in the
foreseeable future, but overlooks major shocks out-
side the control of archivists.
Archivists will have to meet the challenges of
climate change on two fronts: interim protections and
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long-term planning. Interim protections, such as insti-
tutional disaster-response plans and choices about
processing materials, are easier to implement since
this work can be done at the local level and is based
on existing guidance. Future planning for these
issues is more fraught, as long-term archival
adaptation to climate change calls for more research
and coordinated efforts between archives and parent
organizations, as well as among archivists across the
profession. Decisions on interim protections and
long-term planning must also be worked through
within the local contexts of individual repositories
(e.g., archives that are part of a larger organization,
such as a university, government agency, or
corporation), within larger emergency response and
adaptation frameworks at state and federal levels, as
well as across the archival profession. Values of
sustainability and resiliency must inform archival
adaptation to climate change.
This article primarily focuses on the challenges
that American archives are likely to encounter when
seeking to adapt to climate change and does not sig-
nificantly address similar threats to archives in an
international context. However, American archivists
must consider that climate change crosses national
boundaries and colleagues in other countries face
similar issues that may require a multinational re-
sponse.
Cultural Heritage and Climate Change
Archives are often grouped with other cultural
heritage organizations such as libraries and museums
(sometimes referred to as LAMs) and are similar to
these institutions in that they preserve cultural herit-
age. Moreover, archives maintain the “materials cre-
ated or received by a person, family, or organization,
public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and
preserved because of the enduring value contained in
the information they contain or as evidence of the
functions and responsibilities of their creator” (SAA,
n.d.a). The LAM community has developed over the
years a significant body of disaster planning, prepara-
tion, and management guidance. The following dis-
cussion is not a comprehensive review of this materi-
al but rather provides a brief appraisal of recent lit-
erature and resources pertinent to archives and cli-
mate change.
There is little professional discussion or guid-
ance that specifically considers the major threats
posed by climate change to the continuity of records
and repositories. A rare exception is the work of Aus-
tralian archivist Matthew Gordon-Clark, who has
researched rising sea-level threats to the national ar-
chives of Pacific island nations (Gordon-Clark &
Shurville, 2010; Gordon-Clark, 2012). This work
examines particular national archives that face the
greatest danger, as well as the political and access
problems associated with the possible transfer of rec-
ords to other national jurisdictions. He concludes that
archivists in developed nations have an ethical duty
to assist with the threats and that more research must
be done to formulate potential long-term solutions.
American archivist Casey Davis (2015) present-
ed a four-item activist agenda for archivists interested
in climate change during a 2015 regional archives
conference. Davis has gone on to found
ProjectARCC (Archivists Responding to Climate
Change), an advocacy group of mostly American
archivists examining the intersections of climate
change and archives. ProjectARCC’s (n.d.) four
committees reflect the four-item agenda called for in
Davis’ original presentation. The four committees are
dedicated to examining the threats of climate change
to archives, to considering the carbon footprint of ar-
chival repositories, to promoting climate-change
related collections, and to working with climate-
activist groups to preserve organizational records. In
addition to ProjectARCC, another professional
organization has recently signaled interest in how
climate change may adversely affect archives. The
Disaster Planning and Recovery Subcommittee of the
Regional Archival Associations Consortium
announced that their 2015‒16 focus will be on
climate change (Labinsky, 2015).
Although they exist primarily as institutional
planning documents, two federal entities with signifi-
cant archival holdings, the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA) and the Smithson-
ian Institution, have developed climate change-adap-
tation plans required by recent executive orders
(NARA, 2013; 2014; Smithsonian Climate Change
Adaptation Working Group, 2013; Smithsonian
Institution, 2015). Between 2009 and 2015, the
Obama administration (2009; 2013; 2015) issued
three executive orders concerning federal agency
adaptation to climate change, requiring development
of plans that incorporate sustainability and resiliency.
In its 2014 plan, NARA acknowledged the risks
posed by climate change to its facilities, but stated it
did not yet have enough local data to implement spe-
cific regional facility-adaptation plans (NARA,
2014). In contrast, due to a 2005 comprehensive risk
assessment of multiple threats to its operations, the
Smithsonian has more data concerning climate-
related threats and vulnerabilities to its facilities, but
to date has not released extensive local facility-adap-
tation plans (Smithsonian Climate Change Adapta-
tion Working Group, 2013; Smithsonian Institution,
2015).
While not explicitly addressing climate change,
preservation and conservation professionals have
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developed many tools to promote disaster mitigation
and effective emergency management for archives.
These tools have significant value for archivists
working in areas increasingly vulnerable to severe
weather events precipitated by a changing climate.
The Coordinated Statewide Emergency Preparedness
(COSTEP) framework may be the most comprehen-
sive. Developed by the Northeast Document Conser-
vation Center in cooperation with several other li-
brary and archives organizations, COSTEP is a guid-
ance document that institutions can adopt and use to
encourage coordination of archival disaster responses
with existing state and local emergency-management
infrastructure (NEDCC, 2009). For example,
Massachusetts began implementation of COSTEP in
2007 and over the course of several years has
successfully integrated dozens of cultural heritage
organizations within the larger infrastructure of Mas-
sachusetts state emergency-response measures
(Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners,
n.d.).
In addition to the archives profession, resources
from allied fields may be valuable to archivists.
Preservationists have long been the primary
advocates for disaster preparation and management
within the broader cultural heritage sector. The
American Institute for Conservation of Historic &
Artistic Works (AIC) maintains a special team known
as the National Heritage Responders for conservators
responding to disasters. The team formed in response
to the aftereffects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,
which dramatically affected the holdings of many
libraries, archives, museums, and historic buildings
(AIC, 2015).
Heritage Preservation, an organization in the
process of dissolving and transferring many of its
programs to AIC, previously hosted the Heritage
Emergency National Task Force. Between 2005 and
2011, the group gathered information on massive
weather disasters affecting cultural heritage in-
stitutions, primarily in the United States. Previously,
several regional emergency-response networks exist-
ed as a result of workshops offered through Heritage
Preservation’s Alliance for Response program in the
early 2000s; however, many now appear to be de-
funct (Alliance for Response, n.d.; Heritage
Preservation, 2015).
Heritage Preservation also conducted the Herit-
age Health Index survey in 2004, the first compre-
hensive survey to examine the preservation condi-
tions of collections held by American libraries, ar-
chives, museums, and other cultural heritage institu-
tions. Over 3,000 institutions responded, with over a
quarter of them reporting a lack of environmental
controls for humidity and temperature and more than
half indicating water/moisture damage to holdings
(Heritage Preservation & IMLS, 2004). Since then,
efforts to coordinate centralization of cultural
heritage disaster response have been proposed
without apparent implementation (Silverman, 2006).
There has been much discussion but little action. It is
unclear why this is the case; however, any
centralization of cultural heritage disaster response is
challenging due to the proliferation of professional
organizations that do not always work together and
the nature of librarians, archivists, and museum
curators who have different disciplinary training and
professional networks. In the last four years, an
increasing number of cultural heritage and
preservation events have focused on climate change
and this may finally provide the impetus to centralize
cultural heritage disaster response (NARA, 2011;
Metropolitan New York Library Council, 2014;
Newport Restoration Foundation, n.d.).
Other cultural heritage sectors that focus on the
built and natural environment have made far more
progress on climate-change adaptation, particularly
its effects on buildings and monuments, archaeologi-
cal sites, and historical landscapes (Holtz et al. 2014;
O’Brien et al. 2015). This is understandable, as the
holdings of libraries, archives, and museums are less
geographically bound and can be migrated to safer
locations. While individual monuments can some-
times be relocated to a safer location, most buildings,
sites, and landscapes are indelibly tied to their physi-
cal location (Cazenave, 2014; Neuhauser, 2015).
Historic preservation professionals are reckoning
with the fact that difficult decisions may be needed
that involve extensive heritage-protection plans or
letting a site be destroyed (Craig, 2015; Veerkamp,
2015). In cases where a heritage site is left unman-
aged against the forces of climate change, the archiv-
al record of that place through extensive documenta-
tion may be all that survives (Melnick, 2015).
Even if the planet manages to stay below the
widely-recommended 2ºC target in global tempera-
ture warming, sea-level rise is expected to affect over
100 World Heritage sites designated by the United
Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-
tion (UNESCO); a temperature increase of more than
4ºC would affect over 140 sites (Marzeion &
Levermann, 2014). In a 2005 survey conducted by
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, 72% of respond-
ents reported that “climate change had an impact on
their natural and cultural heritage” and that 125
World Heritage sites were specifically affected
(Jigyasu et al. 2013). Many of these sites contain
irreplaceable archival records.
Cultural heritage professionals challenged by
climate change may find guidance from organizations
dedicated to emergency response in regions affected
by armed conflict. For example, Blue Shield Interna-
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tional works to protect cultural property as defined in
the 1954 Hague Convention and coordinates with
emergency-response organizations and other cultural
heritage organizations to safeguard cultural heritage
sites and objects. Blue Shield (2014) is monitoring
the current civil war in Syria to identify particular at-
risk heritage sites. Climate change’s effects can have
grave implications for security risks, as the 2006
Syrian drought is widely recognized to have contrib-
uted to the region’s destabilization (Gleick, 2014;
Kelley et al. 2015). In many areas of the world, cul-
tural heritage may be threatened not only by disas-
trous weather, but by armed conflict that scarce re-
sources or weather damage could trigger.
Embedding Sustainability and Resiliency in
Archival Practice
It is important to consider the challenge of ar-
chival adaptation to climate change through the lens
of sustainability and resiliency. Sustainability is
commonly defined as “Development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs”
(WCED, 1987). Resiliency considers the ability of
systems, organizations, and individuals to survive
and recover from major disruptive events (Zolli,
2012). Mounting comprehensive archival adaptation
to climate change requires efforts that incorporate
both sustainability and resiliency.
Sustainability is not just about building design or
waste streams—it is also about the acquisition, ap-
praisal, processing, and outreach choices archivists
make on a daily basis as part of professional practice.
Sustainability and resiliency in an archival context
form a complementary relationship. Sustainable
choices enable archives to be resilient in the face of
climate-change threats. Sustainable archival practice
means making present-day archival choices that ena-
ble future archivists to carry out their jobs and en-
sures survival of cultural heritage.
Of the thin amount of literature that addresses
(either directly or indirectly) climate-change impacts
on archives, much of it focuses only on the sustaina-
bility question (Abbey, 2012; Wolfe, 2012). In con-
trast, disaster-preparedness literature clearly
promotes resilience, but it tends to treat disasters as
“acts of God” as opposed to advocating creation of a
long-term resiliency framework for a changing
climate.
Like cultural heritage organizations around the
world, most archives in the United States are under-
funded and understaffed. As archives adapt to climate
change, they must consider how choices around re-
sources and high-priority activities support sustaina-
bility and resiliency of the parent institution. Archi-
vists that concentrate their adaptation efforts on, for
instance, acquiring sustainability certification for new
or renovated facilities will find that these projects do
not prepare them to recover from the shocks of a
massive disaster. Archivists must find a way to inte-
grate sustainability and resilience planning both to
reduce institutional contributions to climate change
and to protect their repositories from climate-change
threats.
The next two sections consider the types of sus-
tainable and resilient choices archivists can make in a
changing climate.
Revisiting Traditional Archival Practice
Issues of sustainability in the literature pertaining
to archives and libraries often reference the notion of
“scalability,” the ability to perform at maximum ca-
pacity over the long term, with respect to economic
or social sustainability, rather than environmental
sustainability (Rieger, 2011; Vinopal & McCormick,
2013). It is common for archives to engage in a new
activity (e.g., rapid digitization of analog content for
online access) but then to find that the activity does
not scale, due to understaffing and underinvestment
by the parent organization, and therefore is not “sus-
tainable.” Within the archives profession, much of
the work on sustainability has examined processing,
digitization, and digital preservation practices intend-
ed to lead to economic sustainability, given the pre-
carious budget and staffing of most archives.
Much of the sustainability activity in the LAM
sector focuses on building, energy, and material-pur-
chase contributions to carbon emissions (Henk,
2014). However, few archivists have examined how
archival practice itself can be adapted in response to
climate change. An exception is Mark Wolfe’s
(2012) argument that reliance on building controls
does not address the environmental impact of ar-
chives as well as rethinking archival practice through
a framework of sustainability does.
In the face of rising risks from climate change,
archives in the United States face threats comparable
to other American communities: increasingly severe
disasters that jeopardize the built environment, such
as floods and hurricanes, as well as rising sea levels
that endanger many of the country’s coastal popula-
tion centers. Most archives are part of a larger parent
institution, such as a university, corporation, local or
state government, or museum. Therefore, any plans
for adaptation or preparation must occur within the
context of larger organizational structures. Many of
these entities do not have adaptation plans in place,
severely compromising their resilience capacity.
Fewer American cities are engaging in adaptation
planning activities (58%) compared with all interna-
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tional cities (75%). The United States also has the
highest proportion of cities of all countries focusing
exclusively on emissions-mitigation efforts without
including resiliency or adaptation initiatives (Aylett,
2014). Less than half of all American states have
climate change-adaptation plans and there is little
information on the overall adaptation efforts of the
private sector (Bierbaum et al. 2012).
Consistent with disaster-preparedness recom-
mendations, archivists should ensure that they have a
disaster plan in place that includes “policies, proce-
dures, and information that direct the appropriate
actions to recover from and mitigate the impact of an
unexpected interruption of operations, whether natu-
ral or man-made” (SAA, n.d.b). However, it is criti-
cal that they shift their treatment of disaster prepara-
tion from a stand-alone activity to a set of procedures
that is woven into the rest of archival practice to in-
crease professional resilience. Treating disaster prep-
aration as separate from the rest of the archival enter-
prise often means it is relegated to the bottom of a to-
do list, or the sole responsibility of one person, in-
stead of the shared obligation of an archives staff.
Disaster plans are susceptible to a lack of testing,
such as practice drills, to assess effectiveness before a
true disaster hits (Muir & Shenton, 2002). Centering
a mindset of preparedness in all facets of archival
practice can ensure a new form of social, economic,
and environmental sustainability within archival
work.
To envision how archivists could shift to sus-
tainable and resilient practices that incorporate disas-
ter awareness, it is worth revisiting several core ar-
chival practices:
Appraisal and Acquisition: The process refers to how
archivists evaluate the informational and research
value of a body of records and the ways in which an
archival repository takes physical and/or intellectual
custody of the records through their transfer from a
donor or originating office (i.e., accession). In the
post-custodial model, archivists may work with indi-
viduals or organizations that will continue to manage
their own records (i.e., no process of acquisition).
This article primarily considers the traditional custo-
dial work of archives.
Arrangement and Description: This refers to the pro-
cess by which archivists physically arrange and gen-
erate descriptive information documenting the con-
tent of records and preserve the intellectual relation-
ships among records in a given collection.
Preservation: A multifaceted approach to ensuring
the continued integrity of archival records. Preserva-
tion encompasses practices such as monitoring envi-
ronmental conditions of storage areas (e.g., tempera-
ture and humidity levels), as well as conservation
calling for physical interventions with respect to rec-
ords at risk of damage or loss (e.g., removing mold
from water-damaged documents).
Reference and Access: This core practice refers to the
processes by which archivists connect users to ar-
chival resources. Unlike libraries with browsing
stacks, archives store records in closed areas for secu-
rity purposes (archives are by definition irreplacea-
ble). By making catalog records available online and
answering questions, archivists help users identify the
records they need to use. Digitization of analog rec-
ords and the rise of electronic records bring signifi-
cant access challenges. Digitization is a time and
resource-heavy activity, so not all materials can be
easily digitized. Electronic records often exist in
formats that are no longer readable by current
computing systems. Depending on the records,
archivists may make these freely available online or
may restrict access to them based upon certain donor
or intellectual property conditions.
Outreach and Advocacy: Archivists are often called
upon to advocate for their archives within their parent
organization, but also for the larger archival profes-
sion. Archivists also value identifying and cultivating
new audiences through outreach efforts, realizing that
a strong base of users is one of the best ways to en-
courage continued investment and support by parent
organizations.
In typical archival practice, disaster preparation
is most strongly associated with preservation.
However, positioning disaster preparation along one
single aspect of professional functions leaves it vul-
nerable to marginalization. Disaster preparation may
be reconceived in a new framework, by considering
how seemingly unrelated archival functions support
preparedness.
Sustainable Choices that Support Resiliency
Responsible archivists will not support transfer
of records to archival custody unless they reasonably
expect that the materials can be adequately cared for,
processed, and made accessible to users (barring do-
nor or institutional restrictions on access). Most ar-
chives have some form of collection policy regarding
the records that they will accession into their custody.
However, the reality is that many archives sometimes
take collections at odds with their own collection
policy, even if they lack sufficient storage space or
staff to process the records. This may be due to
parent-institution politics, or because many archivists
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cannot say “no” to new accessions (whether because
of legally mandated records transfers or the goodness
of their hearts). Over the last several decades, as the
cost to produce analog and electronic information has
declined, there has been an explosion of records,
leading to unsustainable archival acquisition practices
in which archivists acquire more records than they
can reasonably process and make available for public
use (Wolfe, 2012). A combination of reluctance to
apply stringent appraisal practices, overreliance on
traditional processing methods, and understaffing has
resulted in most archival repositories attempting to
manage extensive backlogs of unprocessed materials.
These collections often lack physical and intellectual
control, meaning they may be housed in unsuitable
containers (e.g., acidic boxes, rusting filing cabinets),
and have little to no documentation (e.g., a finding
aid or inventory) identifying the contents. Unpro-
cessed collections are a particular liability when dis-
asters strike since they are more likely to contain
unidentified fragile materials and lack documentation
establishing intellectual control.
A critical part of disaster response is having a
clear idea of what was damaged in order to triage
materials and prioritize recovery efforts. When un-
processed collections become impaired, an already
difficult process of recovery becomes harder to man-
age. As archivists appraise collections, they should
take care to realistically consider how long the mate-
rials might be part of a backlog. Unprocessed collec-
tions often occupy an “out of sight, out of mind”
space. Lack of documentation about the volume and
locations of backlog collections is common in archiv-
al repositories. This has grave ramifications if a dis-
aster hits these materials before they have been fully
processed and documented. Insurance companies and
disaster agencies (e.g., Federal Emergency Man-
agement Agency, state and local departments of
emergency management) may require documentation,
such as inventories, finding aids, and catalog and
accession records to process claims for recovery
work.
The mainstreaming of More Product, Less Pro-
cess (MPLP) processing (an approach to minimal
processing popularized in the early 2000s) arose spe-
cifically as a response to growing backlogs (Greene
& Meissner, 2005). The MPLP procedures have been
celebrated for their emphasis on increasing access.
Some argue that MPLP has helped readjust the un-
reasonable labor expectations of overstretched archi-
vists, while others believe that the emphasis on expe-
diency undercuts their intellectual work (Meissner &
Greene, 2010). Other archivists note that adopting
MPLP implies a higher degree of reliance on exten-
sive climate-control systems to passively perform
preservation functions that were previously actively
done under traditional and more extensive processing
methods. For example, archivists may forego
stabilizing fragile forms of paper during processing,
under the assumption that a resource-intensive
building climate-control system will regulate tem-
perature and humidity enough to make up for the lack
of item-level handling while processing. This could
have countervailing effects on repositories seeking to
reduce their carbon emissions (Wolfe, 2012; Jones,
2014). From a disaster perspective, any level of
processing that establishes a degree of physical and
intellectual control over an unprocessed collection as
soon as possible is worthwhile.
As of 2004, 70% of American archives did not
have an emergency plan with trained staff prepared to
execute it (Heritage Preservation & IMLS, 2004).
State archives have made a particular effort to in-
crease disaster preparation since Hurricane Katrina;
between 2006 and 2014, the number with an emer-
gency plan in place increased from 14 to 43 (CoSA,
2015). Even fewer repositories have identified the
records that are most vital or should have highest
priority in the event of a disaster. A 2007 survey of
state archives and records programs showed that not
all programs had identified vital records in their
emergency plans (CoSA, 2007). Archivists frequently
note that archives are, by definition, difficult to in-
sure since they are irreplaceable. However, if archi-
vists have warning about a looming disaster, they
may have a short time in which to evacuate or move
records. Archives with an institutional collecting
mandate (e.g., government archives, corporate ar-
chives, university archives) may place the highest
value on records such as articles of incorporation,
deeds, and building plans. Like a family’s birth
records and marriage certificates, these vital records
of a parent organization are critical to ensuring
operational continuity in the event of a disaster. Loss
of these records can severely stymie recovery efforts.
Records with historical value but not critical to
continuity of operations may have less priority in an
emergency.
Archives that do not contain parent-organization
vital records still need to identify high-priority collec-
tions as well as internal documentation supporting
collections. Characteristics of high-priority records
include 1) the archival repository’s own internal ac-
cession, donor, catalog, and inventory records; 2)
collections with extremely high research value; and
3) collections with a large quantity of fragile
materials that, if damaged, may be totally lost (e.g.,
film and audiovisual collections). At first glance,
these criteria may seem to encompass virtually all of
an archive’s holdings—after all, if a collection has
made it into an archive, it should have high research
value. However, even among extremely valuable
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collections, there may be portions not worth
prioritizing, such as newspaper clippings and printed
ephemera. Decisions about what to save first should
be made well in advance.
Following a disaster, the public may need infor-
mation about access to affected records. Archivists
should find ways to share information about how
collections were affected, when restoration efforts
will make collections usable again, the scope of loss,
and how patrons can help with recovery efforts. De-
pending on the scale and expected time and expense
of recovery from the disaster, this information may
be shared via an archives’ blog and website and on
social media. If damage is localized to a small num-
ber of collections, but the recovery period is expected
to be long, the catalog and inventory records for
those collections should be updated to reflect access
restrictions.
Disaster planning also aligns closely with archi-
vists’ orientation toward advocacy and outreach. By
demonstrating how the preservation of records is
critical during a disaster, archivists not only highlight
the importance of archives but reach new audiences
such as disaster-management professionals (Car-
micheal & Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), 2015).
Disasters
Dozens of American archives in the last several
years have suffered from disasters resulting from
flooding and hurricanes. In 2004, the University of
Hawai’i at Manoa experienced a flash flood that
dramatically affected the Hamilton Library, with
damage to over 200,000 rare maps and photographs,
several thousand of which were valuable materials
related to the history of Hawai’i and the Pacific re-
gion. A class of library-school students meeting at the
time even had to quickly escape the flood (Stone,
2004; Davis, 2006). The entire campus sustained
US$80 million in damage and the library “ac-
count[ed] for almost half of the damage costs”
(University of Hawai’i, 2014). The recovery compa-
ny used by the university, Belfor, was also called
upon by Tulane University in the aftermath of Hurri-
cane Katrina (Diamond, 2006).
During Hurricane Katrina, archivists around the
Gulf Coast raced to save their collections from the
ravages of mold and complete disintegration wrought
by floodwaters and wind. Within New Orleans, the
levee failure created a “toxic stew” in which library
and archive holdings sat for several days due to a
mandatory evacuation and the immediate focus on
ensuring human health and safety. Tulane Universi-
ty’s libraries suffered arguably the greatest damage
ever in an American academic library (Corrigan,
2008). As a member of the Association of Research
Libraries (ARL), an elite group of North American
research libraries, Tulane’s libraries had more re-
sources than others to deal with the aftermath of the
hurricane and floods; nevertheless, they experienced
massive losses of materials and subsequent recovery
efforts spanned several years. The main research li-
brary’s audiovisual and microform collections were
almost entirely lost while the printed music scores
sustained extensive damage, although most were
eventually salvaged. Flood waters inundated the Spe-
cial Collections building, damaging an entire floor of
archival collections, including historical ephemera
and political papers (Corrigan, 2008). Much of the
Special Collections material was in due course recov-
ered; however, some vulnerable items such as film
reels were completely lost during the recovery pro-
cess. Tulane’s libraries ultimately sustained ap-
proximately US$30 million in losses and the
administration cut a dozen staff positions as part of
the overall university reorganization (Diamond,
2006).
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath affected vir-
tually every academic library and archive in the New
Orleans metropolitan area, as well as most school and
public libraries. Over 100 public libraries were ad-
versely affected in Louisiana and more than 30 in
Mississippi (Nevins & Nyberg, 2006). Even when the
flood waters did not inundate a particular location,
the insufficient operational infrastructure failed to
prevent heavy mold outbreaks (Skinner, 2006). Else-
where in the Gulf Coast region, Hurricane Katrina
and its repercussions affected dozens of academic
libraries, archives, and museums (Nevins & Nyberg,
2006; Wall, 2006). Even when collections survived
relatively unscathed, large numbers of library staff
suffered great losses to their homes, health, and
sometimes family and friends’ lives. In addition, vital
records maintained outside the purview of archival
repositories were often damaged. Residents who
evacuated without their own vital documents, such as
a birth certificate, marriage license, or other records,
faced large obstacles in replacing these materials
(Swartz, 2005).
A common reflection through much of the post-
Katrina recovery literature is how even the most
thorough plans may be no match for a large-scale
disaster ( Diamond, 2006; Skinner, 2006; Wall, 2006;
Corrigan, 2008). Employees with institutional email
addresses became unreachable as institutional servers
went down; those with Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo
addresses were easier to reach. However, emergency
contact lists at the time did not always include non-
institutional addresses. Administrators at Tulane
University established an online listserv through
Yahoo to communicate with employees (Diamond,
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2006). Government officials closed access to the
region for weeks following the levee failures and
only emergency responders and other designated
personnel were able to enter, which meant few
professional librarians and archivists could assess the
situation on-site. Disaster-recovery specialists often
value different knowledge than do archivists and
these differences may have effects for response
efforts, for instance in taking necessary immediate
steps to halt the growth of mold in water-damaged
collections (Passley, 2013).
In addition to Katrina, other recent hurricanes
have had disastrous consequences for American ar-
chives. The archives of the Slate Valley Museum
(located on the New York-Vermont border) suffered
damage from two feet of water that flooded
document-storage boxes during Hurricane Irene in
2011 (NYCH, 2015). When Hurricane Sandy hit New
York City and its surrounding area in 2012, several
smaller archives suffered damage to their collections,
including the non-profits Eyebeam Art and
Technology Center, Printed Matter Inc., and the
National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey
(Webre, 2013; NJDMVA, 2015; Printed Matter, Inc.,
n.d.).
Comprehensive numbers on how many Ameri-
can archives have been affected by disasters in recent
years do not exist because no periodic census is taken
to assess this kind of annual damage. Given the irre-
placeable nature of these records, collecting these
data would be difficult and an alternative measure
would be needed to assess damage, such as volume
of records lost or dollar value of insurance payments.
Inadequate information limits wider understanding of
how climate change may continue to affect American
archival repositories. Archivists lack data to
adequately inform the stakeholders of their parent
organization, as well as emergency-management of-
ficials, on the dramatic losses that can occur in the
wake of a disaster.
Long-Term Adaptation
Looking past intermediate steps of improving
disaster preparedness, some archival repositories in
increasingly geographically vulnerable regions like
coastal areas may need to reckon with the possibility
of relocation—whether of the entire archival reposi-
tory building and its collections or of specific groups
of records—or even dissolution. Few archives will
make these decisions solely on their own, as most are
part of a larger parent organization, such as a univer-
sity, government, or corporation. It is likely that deci-
sions about continued human occupation of threat-
ened areas will ultimately be decided by state and
federal policy, as well as the risks the insurance in-
dustry is willing to bear. Historic preservationists
have noted that changes to the federal flood-
insurance program may affect the insurability of
historic properties and sites (Eggleston & Wellock,
2015). Archives located in these affected sites, or in
other endangered areas, may find insurance coverage
increasingly hard to attain, which may be the ultimate
lever that forces a shift to long-term adaptation
and/or relocation.
It is important for archivists to plan for these cir-
cumstances now so that they can start to embed
climate-change adaptation into their advocacy and
outreach activities. This adaptation can build upon
earlier efforts to incorporate sustainability into ar-
chival practice as a way to enhance resiliency. If
planning is delayed until urgent conditions have be-
come fully manifest, government plans are unlikely
to prioritize archives in more expansive community
or organizational climate-adaptation initiatives.
Sea-Level Rise
Sea-level rise, which will significantly affect
many major American coastal cities, presents the
most obvious long-term danger to archives, threaten-
ing the physical viability of continuing to house rec-
ords in vulnerable locations. Depending on projected
emissions pathways, between one and seven major
population centers in the United States (i.e., popula-
tion > 350,000) will have significant areas below
future high-tide lines (Strauss, 2013). Archivists
alone will not make decisions about where to relocate
records housed in areas vulnerable to inundation.
Corporate directors, university presidents, governing
boards, and government officials of organizations
that house archives will participate in tough decisions
about what justifies relocation. Most disaster-
management officials are unlikely to prioritize cul-
tural heritage adaptation, so cultural heritage profes-
sionals must become their own best advocates. Ar-
chivists may be pressured to make difficult choices
about prioritization for saving records, or finding
them new homes, or may be asked to identify
reformatting solutions (e.g., mass digitization or
microfilming) to reduce physical storage needs (Line,
2006).
Residential relocation in response to climate
change has already begun in parts of the United
States. Several native tribal communities in Alaska
and Louisiana are in the process of relocating to safer
areas due to increased sea-level rise, thawing perma-
frost, and/or loss of natural barriers to mitigate flood-
ing. Many of these tribes lack adequate access to
governmental assistance for relocation and there is no
designated federal agency to help native (as well as
non-native) communities proactively migrate to safer
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areas before coastal erosion and rising sea levels
threaten to overwhelm current residential locations
(Maldonado et al. 2013). Hurricanes and coastal ero-
sion have particularly affected Louisiana tribal lands,
an issue compounded for tribes without federal
recognition (Ferguson-Bohnee, 2015).
Some historical monuments, such as the Cape
Hatteras lighthouse in North Carolina, have been
relocated due to eroding shorelines and rising tide
lines (Holtz et al. 2014). Because many natural and
cultural coastal landscapes are expected to be lost or
radically altered over the coming decades, some ad-
aptation, such as engineering sea walls, levees, dikes,
and building elevation will be needed to help protect
existing communities. Other areas may be completely
lost. American history has numerous examples in
which coastal and floodplain communities have cho-
sen or been forced to migrate due to high costs of
attempting to control inevitable disaster (Isacoff,
2014). In 2010, the last house on Holland Island in
Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay finally collapsed
(Fahrenthold, 2010). The island had experienced al-
most total desertion in the preceding decades due to
residential concern about the island’s stability
(Gibbons & Nicholls, 2006). Other areas of the Unit-
ed States are confronting similar issues; the Inupiat
village of Kivalina in Alaska may be completely lost
to erosion and rising sea levels by 2021, but there is
no clear source of funding available for relocation
efforts (Maldonado et al. 2013, DeMarban, 2015).
Fortunately, unlike an entire settlement with
unique topography and historic buildings, archival
records are much easier to physically relocate, given
enough time and planning. Physical relocation of
these materials raises significant concerns, including
whether the archive’s parent institution will continue
to operate or be ultimately dissolved, and whether its
assets (including the archival records) are transferred
to another institution. Regardless of outcomes, archi-
vists working in areas subject to sea-level rise must
find ways to embed themselves in the long-term
planning for their parent institution’s future. Without
early involvement in institutional adaptation efforts,
archivists’ interests are unlikely to be prioritized.
Future Research
The overall topic of climate change is largely ab-
sent from the American archival profession. Even
when the issue is addressed, the discussion typically
concerns reduction of carbon emissions. Few re-
sources, whether publications, training, workshops,
or conference programs, exist regarding the adapta-
tion of archival repositories to climate change. This
emphasis is understandable regarding what archives
can do to reduce or mitigate carbon emissions, such
as choosing environmental controls and decisions
about materials, transportation, and storage matters.
Archivists have significant influence over these
activities, while appropriate adaptation measures,
such as deciding where to move a university archives
on a campus threatened by rising sea levels or coastal
erosion, may often be outside of their direct control.
In addition, sustainability questions may be psycho-
logically easier to tackle than those associated with
resiliency. Planning for adaptation to a changing
climate inevitably raises disturbing questions about
risks to human safety, collections, livelihood, and
operational continuity.
American archivists should consider the follow-
ing topics to develop a robust professional response
to climate change:
Conduct a comprehensive census of financial
and collection losses sustained by American
archives due to disasters associated with global
climate change. Currently, there is no accred-
itation body for American archives, so this effort
would either have to be a research project (likely
sponsored by a large organization such as the
Society of American Archivists) or a reporting
infrastructure would need to be established.
Examine archives that are developing or im-
plementing climate-adaptation plans. More
research is needed to determine whether any
archives are formulating these plans or whether
staff assume that the parent organization will
take the lead on adaptation issues.
Investigate FEMA and insurance-company pay-
outs to American archives for material losses.
Collection of this information could help archi-
vists inform stakeholders on the potential risks of
inadequate facilities or staffing to care for rec-
ords.
Prepare a comprehensive survey of American
archival repositories located in geographically
vulnerable areas threatened by sea-level rise.
Particular attention should be paid to territories
and associated states, many of which are far
more vulnerable to rising sea levels due to their
isolated oceanic geography than mainland
archives. This information could be used to in-
form new priorities for archival grant programs
such as the Institute for Museum and Library
Services or the National Historical Publications
and Records Commission. These organizations
may consider creating new grants to help archi-
vists with collection adaptation and relocation ef-
forts.
Assess the current state of regional and national
coordination of cultural heritage emergency-
response organizations. Currently, many of these
efforts are scattered and cultural heritage staff
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may be unaware of resources available during a
crisis.
Conclusion
The American archival profession is not alone in
its delayed response to climate-change adaptation.
Across the country such oversights are common at
both the state and federal level. At present, FEMA is
currently encouraging states to include climate-
change considerations in their hazard-mitigation
grants, which are available to areas following a
presidential major-disaster declaration (FEMA,
2015). This development may hasten state response
to climate-change adaptation, because only seventeen
states have so far adopted climate-adaptation plans
(Elliott, 2015).
It appears that most federal agencies are
currently in the exploratory stages of determining the
impacts of climate change on their activities and
agency-adaptation plans. Of federal agencies
examined in 2015, the Department of Defense was
recognized for releasing the strongest assessment of
how climate change would affect its mission
(Leggett, 2015). Otherwise, the United States
Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recent
review of coordinated federal response to climate
change, which it identifies as a high risk to the
solvency of the federal government, found significant
problems. The GAO (2015) report noted, “There are
no programs to monitor and independently validate
the effectiveness and sustainability of federal efforts
to reduce the fiscal exposure posed by climate
change. Thus, there is no way to demonstrate
progress in implementing corrective measures.” For
this reason, archivists should not expect government
agencies in the United States to develop a robust
adaptation agenda before taking action to manage the
effects of climate change.
Archives contain a wide range of records neces-
sary to support society. Institutional archives such as
those situated in government, universities, and corpo-
rations steward significant groups of records essential
to uninterrupted operation of civic affairs. Vital rec-
ords include those needed for individuals to demon-
strate their identity, for universities and businesses to
prove their legal and tax status, for students to docu-
ment their education, and for local jurisdictions to
establish property boundaries. Collecting repositories
also provide a critical service to society by preserving
the papers and records that reflect community history
and cultural heritage.
The increasingly severe weather and sea-level
rise associated with anthropogenic climate change
raises significant challenges to the archival profes-
sion. Archival repositories in geographically vulnera-
ble areas will have to adapt through a combination of
intermediate and long-term practices that draw on
values of sustainability and resiliency. These steps
are necessary to ensure that the critical services ar-
chives provide to society are not threatened by the
shocks of climate change. Archivists who contribute
research in these areas will find that colleagues in the
allied fields of librarianship, museums, and historic
preservation have developed significant work that
can be adapted to archival theory and practice. De-
veloping this awareness within the archival profes-
sion is critical to guiding archivists through the chal-
lenges of global climate change.
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ARTICLE
Growing our vision together: forming a sustainability community within the American Library Association Beth Filar Williams1, Madeleine Charney2 & Bonnie Smith3
1 OSU Library, Oregon State University, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331 USA (email: beth.filar-williams@oregonstate.edu) 2 W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 154 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01002 USA (email: mcharney@library. umass.edu) 3 George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, PO Box 117000, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA (email: bonniesmith@ufl.edu)
As long-standing keepers of democracy and information stewardship, library professionals are a natural fit for advocating and promoting sustainability within their communities. From seed libraries to Occupy Wall Street libraries, their view of sustainability extends beyond environmental concerns to include community activism, economic development, and social equity. Empowering people, facilitating dialogue, and providing resources for a more resilient future are at the center of librarians’ vital and changing roles. These visionary professionals have powered libraries’ work as outspoken advocates with well-founded initiatives. For a long time, however, there was no cohesive sustainability-focused venue for sharing best practices, collaborating, and contributing to the profession. In 2013, after one year of focused research and promotion, the American Library Association (ALA) approved a new group, the Sustainability Round Table (SustainRT). This article describes how library advocates built SustainRT over the years and gained momentum with a pivotal webinar series. Clear signs of SustainRT’s early success are a testimony to the critical need for a sustainability-related Community of Practice (CoP). The article shows how the steps taken to achieve this national group’s standing can serve as a model for fostering dialogue and collaboration (often through virtual means) that allows for wide participation.
KEYWORDS: advocacy, co-creation, community, education, environment, library, stewardship, webinar
Introduction
A rich and colorful tapestry of innovative and
sometimes daring library practices, services, and
engagement emerged in response to the unpredictable
dynamics of the twenty-first century, not least of which
were the explosion of technology, the Great Recession,
and a growing environmental imperative. In a world
struggling for sustainability, libraries continue critically
evolving to embrace their communities’ successes and
adversities. Library associations bring together
professionals to co-create solutions, share expertise, and
bolster resilience through learning and community
building. This article reports on the early stages of
development of the American Library Association
(ALA) Sustainability Round Table (SustainRT) in 2013,
the result of an urgent “call to action” for a unified effort
to address the new millennium’s environmental,
economic, and social sustainability challenges within the
library profession in the United States and Canada. We
identify the technologies, processes, dynamics and other
factors that led to the formation of SustainRT as a
functional Community of Practice (CoP)—“a group of
people who share a concern, set of problems, or a
passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge
and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing
basis” (Wenger et al. 2002). From the initial large-group
webinars to the identification of leaders, from the
acceptance of the Round Table into ALA to the decisions
involved in forming committees and prioritizing work,
the establishment of this CoP offers a model for
engaging in dialogue and collaboration within the library
profession to better foster community resilience.
In an article entitled “To Remake the World,” Paul
Hawken (2007) refers to hundreds of thousands of
sustainability-related groups as constituting “the largest
coming together of citizens in history.” He describes
these groups as being without a center, codified beliefs,
or charismatic leader and as cutting across economic
sectors, cultures, and regions. Arising from research
institutes, community-development agencies, village and
citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks,
faith-based groups, trusts, and foundations, they all share
the goal of creating “a just society conducive to life on
Earth.”
Andres Edwards (2005) synthesizes the intentions
and objectives of such sustainability-oriented groups
with the three E’s, “concern for the environment, the
economy and social equity,” and recognizes sustain-
ability as “a common language that links the central
issues confronting our civilization as well as its potential
to bring social change values into the mainstream.” This
article outlines SustainRT’s place within the global
context separately described by Hawken and Edwards
and how it was established as a professional forum for
ALA members to exchange ideas and opportunities
regarding sustainability in order to move toward a more
equitable, healthy, and economically viable society.
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Libraries and Commitment to Community
Library resources and services are generally
accessible to all members of a community, regardless of
socioeconomic status, gender, political views, race,
religion, and other differentiating characteristics.
Libraries are distinct in the types of communities served,
such as a municipality, school, university, hospital, or
business. As hubs of information, intellectual explor-
ation, and community, libraries offer a synergy of space,
services, and resources that create dynamic learning
environments, while their open-door ethos facilitates
partnerships with a wide range of organizations and
individuals. However, to remain relevant in a rapidly
changing world, libraries must reflect the concerns,
needs, and realities of their communities, as well as
spark inquiry, develop innovative opportunities, and
serve as a bastion of free knowledge and lifelong
learning. This strong advocacy for equality of access and
learning is reflected in ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,”
which states that “all libraries are forums for information
and ideas, and that books and other library resources
should be provided for the interest, information, and
enlightenment of all people of the community.
Furthermore, libraries should provide materials and
information presenting all points of view and challenge
censorship and make their space available on an
equitable basis” (ALA, 1996). By creating a focused
community of practitioners, SustainRT embraces and
strengthens ALA’s vision of libraries as forums for
information and ideas available on an equitable basis.
Shifting economic, social, and environmental
dynamics of the 21st century have created an
environment for radical reimagining of libraries. First,
and perhaps most transformative, is the ongoing
explosion of technology as a means for learning, creat-
ing, and sharing information. The widespread use of
computers, digital devices, digitization of materials,
electronic books, Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs), digital repositories, globalization, and the
open access movement are all recent heightened
phenomena and direct results of the expansion of
technology. As a consequence, the role of libraries has
profoundly changed, from centers that primarily house
collections and lend books to vital multi-dimensional
spaces for collaborating, connecting, and learning.
Within academic and research libraries, the
internationalization of higher education has also
contributed to extensive changes in library services and
outreach. Dewey (2010) summarizes the impact of this
new environment, in which the academic library “must,
in a global way, create, collaborate, and connect
scholarship for and with users at a level never seen
before to ensure lifelong learning and the ability to solve
the world’s continuing challenges inclusive of all
cultures, time periods, and approaches.” Sustainability as
a global challenge is being addressed within our
institutions and requires large- and small-scale collab-
oration and networking.
Following profound technological changes, the next
significant twenty-first century challenge for libraries
was the 2007–2009 Great Recession, which increased
library use in response to economic pressures including
layoffs, foreclosures, and strain on communities. During
these hard times, public libraries offered new services,
which played a key role in helping people connect with
each other and helped them find employment and launch
new ventures. While use of libraries increased and their
vision expanded, many municipalities drastically cut
personnel, which resulted in closures, reduced hours, and
dissolution of programs. School libraries, in particular,
saw sweeping cuts to funding which led to elimination of
media specialists in many locales despite the infusion of
technology. Academic libraries were similarly chall-
enged with funding constraints and budget cuts. In an
effort to reduce costs and consolidate services, many
universities closed small special-branch libraries and
restructured services. The economic downturn was
coupled with an increasing awareness of the threat posed
by humanity’s excesses, including population growth,
and their effect on global climate change. The notion of
sustainable development became a core concern of
society, and consequently of libraries. When commun-
ities respond to environmental disasters, think critically
about their environmental impacts, and seek answers to
complex and interrelated economic, environmental, and
social-equity issues, addressing the three E’s of sustaina-
bility, libraries remain firm cornerstones for free,
essential, and timely assistance.
Libraries Respond to Economic and Social Comm-
unity Pressures
As community hubs and centers of change and
learning, libraries absorb their shifting environment to
co-create spaces and services for a sustainable future.
While the fundamental role of the library as a gateway to
knowledge remains intact, the ways in which this is
accomplished are rapidly changing. Free public access to
computers and the Internet at libraries, now considered a
core service, has helped to bridge the “digital divide” for
people who do not have these privileges in their
workplaces, homes, or schools. According to the Public
Library Funding & Technology Access Study, 2010‒
2011, public libraries “serve as ‘first responders’ for
people in need of technology training and online
resources for employment, continuing education and
access to online government services…Libraries serve as
a ‘toll free’ bridge over the great divide” (Hoffman et al.
2011). Another important report, Opportunity for All:
How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access
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at U.S. Libraries (Becker et al. 2010), is the first large-
scale investigation of the ways library patrons use this
service, why they use it, and how it affects their lives.
This report demonstrates the critical role of the public
library in the digital landscape.
Libraries have begun offering new types of
collections and services, lending items along with books
and media. Seed libraries have been sprouting up in
response to a need for affordable, healthy food; to foster
understanding and knowledge of sustainable food
systems; and to support local interest in environmental-
sustainability efforts (Seed Libraries, n.d.). Economic
pressures caused people to reconsider investing in costly
equipment, and thus tool-lending libraries increased to
support people with gardening, repair, and home-
improvement projects. In conjunction with tools and
classes, libraries loaned educational materials to assist in
learning new skills and reducing costs, thus creating a
credible sharing economy and building community.
Examples include the Grosse Pointe Michigan Public
Library Tool Collection (GPPL, n.d.) and the Ann Arbor
Public Library’s Unusual Stuff to Borrow (AADL, n.d.),
which includes musical instruments and energy meters.
Adding to the list of community-building offerings are
outdoor movies, festivals, community gardening, fitness
classes, picnics, and bilingual story and craft sessions
(PPS, 2015). These services reinforce social equity and
address economic sustainability by providing free
resources to all. Project for Public Spaces notes that,
“When you put all the ingredients of a great library
together, you end up with a public institution whose
influence extends far beyond its physical location. The
best libraries anchor communities. Because they are
highly visible centers of civic life, these libraries instill
public confidence in their neighborhoods and catalyze
further investment from both the public and private
sectors” (PPL, n.d.), strengthening community resilience
and sustainable environments.
Libraries as community-oriented repositories for
social sustainability sprang up in unexpected ways. For
example, September 2011 saw the launch of Occupy
Wall Street, a “people-powered movement” that fought
back against “the corrosive power of major banks and
multinational corporations over the democratic process,
and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic
collapse that has caused the greatest recession in
generations” (OSN, n.d.). A critical part of this
movement was the People’s Library—also referred to as
the Occupy Wall Street Library—which provided, “a
space for dialogue, creativity, intellectual and cultural
exchange and personal growth” (Scott, 2011). The
People’s Library sparked valuable and passionate
debates about the role of “guerrilla librarianship” within
the profession as a response to the strictures of the status
quo (Henk, 2011). Mandy Henk (2011), a librarian
involved in the People’s Library, sees the occupation
movement as the shape of things to come. “We have to
keep serving the information needs of the protesters,”
she says, “and of other communities being hit by the
economy” (McLemee, 2011). Libraries need to continue
addressing economic issues as part of the three
dimensions (environment, economy, and equity) of
creating and supporting sustainable communities.
Since the start of the Great Recession, libraries have
increased their partnerships with critical community
services. Examples include a healthcare partnership
between the Arizona Public Library in Pima County and
the Pima County Health Department, which resulted in a
library-nursing program (Johnson et al. 2014). In
Rochester, New York, the CLIC-on-Health (2015)
collaboration of hospital, public, and school libraries
provides the community with healthcare information and
resources. In 2009, the Multnomah County Library in
Portland, Oregon received the National Medal for
Museum and Library Service from the Institute of
Library and Museum Services (IMLS) for the positive
impact of its programs for non-English speakers (IMLS,
2009). The Alachua County Library District in
Gainesville, Florida received the IMLS medal in 2011
for their “Thinking Outside the Book” approach, which
helped open the door to community partnerships that
provide “health and legal services, rent and utility
subsidies, tax assistance, counseling for substance or
domestic abuse, and a host of other social services,”
including a mobile outreach clinic (IMLS, 2011).
When crisis and disasters strike, libraries provide
services and a safe haven so that citizens can rebuild
their lives. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks, New York City libraries stayed open throughout
the day, offering space for citizens to gather as the
tragedy unfolded. Subsequently, many libraries provided
programming and brought community members together
to discuss the significance of these events. Similarly,
after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in
2005, libraries welcomed evacuees, held story-time
programs for children, provided books to shelters and
contact information for local service organizations, and
established missing-persons bulletin boards (Albanese et
al. 2005). As climate change worsens environmental
disasters, the need for these services is likely to intensify.
Libraries Respond to Environmental Pressures
Examining the environmental aspect of the three E’s
of sustainability, we notice that libraries have worked in
two different ways: 1) through internal management and
procedural changes to create sustainable buildings and
practice and 2) through education, collaboration, and
community dialogue. Libraries are by their very nature
“green” in that their resources avoid the environmental
impact of unnecessary duplication. Building on libraries’
innate qualities, other efforts seek to minimize resource
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consumption in library construction and operations. As
trusted community institutions and with shared
consensus about local needs and goals, libraries have
embraced environmental responsibility and become
models for sustainability. A notable example is the New
York City Bronx Library Center, which became the first
municipal green building in the city in 2006 (Harriper-
saud, 2013). A plethora of efforts to improve the
environmental performance of libraries have been
written about and shared in library professional journals
and books, on social media, and at library-association
conferences. Illustrative examples include the Going
Green initiative, which took place at the American
Association of School Librarians (AASL) 2007
conference (ALA, 2007) and the 2008 Knowledge to Go
Green initiative of the Special Library Association
(SLA) (SLA, 2008). Monika Antonelli (2008) provides a
comprehensive overview of green-library developments.
Her 2012 co-edited book Greening Libraries covers
recent examples from all types of libraries taking
initiatives ranging from green building to resources as
well as the coauthors’ own reflections and insights
(Antonelli & McCullough, 2012).
Educating for environmental stewardship and
engaging with communities on green initiatives are
additional strategies used by libraries to contribute
toward a more sustainable future. Libraries offer a
neutral venue and bring together programming on
sustainable topics through film nights, local speakers,
book clubs, events, and art exhibits. For example, Laura
Barnes (2012) identifies public libraries that connect
themselves with the developing ideals of the commun-
ities they serve and use their green-building technologies
and practices as tools to teach patrons how to be more
sustainable at home, at work, and in the community.
Within academic libraries, sustainability
engagement has played out in many of the same ways as
in other libraries. As part of a larger institution, however,
each academic library must serve its distinct
communities of learners and researchers by aligning
itself with its institution’s mission and vision. The
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in
Higher Education (AASHE), founded in 2005 as a
professional organization to help coordinate, advance,
and strengthen campus sustainability efforts, boasts over
750 institutional members (AASHE, 2015). As of July
2015, AASHE’s database of academic programs reports
nearly 1500 sustainability-focused programs at 476
campuses in 66 American states and Canadian provinces
(AASHE, 2015). Another indicator of higher education’s
engagement with sustainability is the increase in the
number of signatories of the American College and
University President’s Climate Commitment
(ACUPCC). The original 2007 charter, signed by 152
presidents, had an additional 533 signatories as of July
2015. Signing the Climate Commitment signals resolve
by colleges and universities to “demonstrating with their
actions that addressing climate and sustainability issues
are central to the education, research and service mission
of higher education to help create a thriving and civil
society” (Second Nature, 2015). Given the urgent need
for cutting-edge research on effectively managing
climate change, it is not surprising to see the emergence
of a serious and focused dialogue within the academic
library community on the library’s role in advancing and
supporting sustainability teaching, research, and service.
Several pivotal publications have recently focused
on this new interest on the part of academic libraries and
their growing role in educating for sustainability,
including contributing to scholarly activities and
curricular initiatives. Focus on Educating for Sustain-
ability: Toolkit for Academic Libraries captures a range
of best practices, case studies, and activities ready for
implementation in the academic library (Jankowska,
2014). The book emphasizes the role of librarians as
teachers and collaborators engaging with administrators,
instructors, and researchers to provide credible resources
and instruction, bringing sustainability more fully into
the curriculum and reinforcing collection development.
Two studies (Charney, 2014; Jankowska et al. 2014) also
provide a baseline on the sustainability efforts of
academic libraries, including library guides, instruction,
research, institutional repositories, collaboration with
other units on campus, and the role of Library
Information Studies (LIS) schools.
The Role of Library Associations
Library associations are the backbones that connect
the library community worldwide, through networking,
professional development, sharing, and collaborating.
ALA, the “largest and oldest library association in the
world,” was founded in 1876 during the Centennial
Exposition in Philadelphia (ALA, 2015a). With over
50,000 members, ALA’s highly complex structure offers
myriad options for participation. Members may join
divisions, sections, committees, discussion groups, task
forces, and/or round tables. The overall goal of
establishing a roundtable is to promote a field of
librarianship that does not fall under any single division.
While roundtables may recommend policy and action to
other units, ALA is not committed to any declaration of
policy.
Placing a high value on learning, collaborating, and
sharing is inherent to the library profession. Joining an
established association, whether local or global, large or
small, is one means of transforming values into action.
Finding colleagues with whom to collaborate and share
ideas strengthens the profession and thus the comm-
unities it serves. Library associations are also venues for
creating strong partnerships to advocate for issues facing
the profession and communities. As John Berry (2010)
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says in a Library Journal column, “Every issue is a
library issue.” He goes on to cite a resolution submitted
in 1978 to move the ALA Headquarters to an Equal
Rights Amendment state or district. The ALA Council
defeated the resolution, but it demonstrates an
infrastructure for advocacy within library associations.
Task Force on the Environment (TFOE)
Well before “green“ and “sustainable“ became
household words, libraries were drawing attention to
these issues, as reflected in the establishment of the Task
Force on the Environment (TFOE) in 1989 (Stoss, 2009).
Spurred by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and
created under the ALA Social Responsibilities Round
Table (SRRT), TFOE quickly contributed to the
profession by publishing several articles and hosting the
first ALA environmental program at its 1991 annual
conference. A turning point occurred in scholarly
publishing with the creation of The Green Library
Journal: Environmental Topics in Information World
(GLJ) in 1994, now the well-respected Electronic Green
Journal (UCLA Library, 2015). Following their creation,
TFOE and GLJ supported each other and were
instrumental in emphasizing environmental concerns
within the library community.
Over the next few years, TFOE hosted a variety of
green programs at ALA conferences, including “How
green is your library: environmentalists at work” in 1990
and “Environmentally and socially responsible business:
finding the information to make the decision to buy or
invest” in 1996. TFOE also introduced resolutions to
promote greater environmental stewardship within ALA
and at its conferences while providing a forum and open
dialogue for the greater library community.
In 2000, ALA’s president, Sarah Ann Long,
supported sustainability in her landmark project
Libraries Build Sustainable Communities (LBSC), a
two-year grant-funded partnership between ALA and
Global Learning, Inc. (SRRT, 2000). This ground-
breaking ALA initiative, heavily supported by TFOE,
educated the library community on sustainability
concepts and provided the tools for libraries to “serve as
strategic assets and resources for building sustainable
communities while building positive development,
environmental integrity, and equitable access” (Stoss,
2003). One significant element of the program was a
train-the-trainer preconference, which equipped
participants with a “workshop in the box” to hold their
own LBSC workshops back home. Libraries responded
to the call for environmental stewardship and education
with a strong green-library movement.
TFOE continued its powerful advocacy for
sustainable library efforts by meeting and offering at
least one program during each ALA annual conference.
At the same time, global events and social stressors led
to library-budget cuts amid a rapidly changing environ-
ment, with increasingly digital formats. Accordingly,
libraries were compelled to focus on managing change
and providing new and key services to stay afloat. These
cross-cutting institutional pressures caused a natural
veering away from the siloed environmental focus,
embracing a more complex, interconnected, full-
spectrum sustainability concept. Despite continued
efforts, membership, participation, and activism within
TFOE plateaued and then significantly decreased, with
very few attendees for the 2010 meeting at the ALA
annual conference. The reasons for this decline are
multifaceted, but it became clear that TFOE was no
longer meeting the needs of library professionals even
while they were clearly formulating and engaging in all
three E’s of sustainability—environmental, economic,
and social-equity—as a direct response to their
increasingly informed and challenged communities. The
question then emerged as to whether sustainability-
engaged library professionals wanted and/or would
support and contribute to a community of practitioners,
an outlet for expressing their passion, a forum for
communication and, equally important, a virtual “home.”
Collaboration Leads to Webinar Series
In 2011, while co-writing a book chapter for The
Entrepreneurial Librarian, the first author of this article
and colleagues (2012a) drew from a survey designed to
identify advocates, educators, and entrepreneurs involved
in sustainable librarianship activities. Subsequently, she
created the Sustainable Librarians LinkedIn space to
connect respondents who participated in the survey. That
same year, the second and third authors of this article
met for the first time at the AASHE conference, where
they both presented on sustainable libraries and co-
facilitated a library-networking event. Informal commun-
ication regarding the need to strengthen and energize the
library community regarding sustainability led to a
virtual collaboration and a shared vision among these
three library professionals. The goal of developing and
implementing a series of free webinars emerged as a first
step toward a national dialogue, and thus the four-part
Libraries for Sustainability was born.
Figure 1 Libraries for Sustainability Webinar Series
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A seasoned distance-learning librarian, the first
author was already adept at techniques for hosting online
sessions and had access to existing tools. The idea of a
webinar series to initiate a national conversation seemed
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within reach, with the stated intention “to facilitate
dialog with the hope that leaders will emerge and begin
to work on a new framework for collaboration.” A robust
marketing effort was launched, which encouraged
attendance by members of the Sustainability Librarians
LinkedIn group, SRRT, and TFOE—including key
leaders identified from the history and literature reviews.
To broaden and maximize participation and input,
presenters from a variety of library environments and
roles were selected. All sessions were recorded for future
viewing by those unable to participate (Filar Williams,
2012). Using a Google form for registration, participants
were asked for their name, email address, library role,
institution, hopes for the session, ideas for future
webinars, and interest in presenting in webinars or
becoming otherwise involved (Smith et al. 2012a).
Gathering this information was important to better
understand the needs and range of individuals interested
in sustainability in libraries.
The first webinar, Libraries for Sustainability: Call
for Action and Collaboration, took place in February
2012. The session featured invited guest Maria
Jankowska as the most recent Chair of TFOE, to discuss
the organization’s background, challenges, and
successes, as well as her recommendations for next steps
to revitalize TFOE and support the sustainable library
movement in the United States and Canada. Participants
shared their ideas regarding possible courses of action
within ALA. A follow-up email was sent to all
registrants with links to the recording and slides, a chat
transcript, a bibliography of items mentioned, along with
a few questions to further investigate options and ideas.
Key questions included: Should this group be revitalized
and/or is a change in direction indicated? What are some
options for remaining engaged at the local and national
levels? Where are opportunities for collaboration and
action around broader sustainability issues? The
organizers hoped that this conversation would spur
leaders to organize a new ALA group or revitalize
TFOE.
The second webinar, Exploring Sustainability
Practices in Libraries, held in April 2012, featured
speakers representing the following array of library
initiatives:
Kathryn Miller: Public Libraries, Sustainability
through library operations
Marianne Buehler: Academic Libraries, Sustain-
ability across the curriculum and research
Laura Barnes: School Libraries, School libraries—
lead by example
Mandy Henk: Community, Confronting power
The webinar also included an open discussion.
The registration form posed the question, “What do
you hope to get out of the session?” (Smith et al. 2012b).
Responses indicated the need for new ideas, tips, and
information. Other important themes included “under-
standing what libraries are doing to become more
sustainable and what trends they are seeing,” “identify-
ing applicable strategies and best practices,” and
“developing a plan for sustainable practices.” Both the
general and more specific responses confirmed the desire
for a community to share practices and learn from each
other. The topics presented, which represented a broad
array of library initiatives, generated an engaged
exchange of information and a lively discussion. By the
conclusion of this second webinar interest seemed to be
rising.
The third webinar, Engagement in Professional
Library Organizations, held in June 2012, was scheduled
just before the ALA annual conference to generate ideas
and momentum. The discussion was designed to glean
specific recommendations for successful sustainability
activities within professional library organizations,
including library associations, national and regional
organizations, and other groups, such as discussion
groups, task forces, committees, and social activities.
Participants also shared their experiences using tools
such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and listservs. The
registration form asked for input regarding desire to be
part of, or assist in forming, a group focused on
sustainability within existing library associations (Filar
Williams et al. 2012b). Participants were provided
options including individual sections within ALA,
AASHE, International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions–Environmental Sustain-
ability in Libraries Special Interest Group (IFLA
ENSULIB), state and regional associations, and write-in
suggestions. The majority of respondents selected ALA,
but others suggested a range of cultural and local
organizations, recommending outreach and partnerships
with these sustainability leaders once an established
ALA group was formed.
The webinar began with a recap of efforts to date
and the introduction of five embedded facilitators—
engaged and energetic librarians recruited to assist with
the session. Participants broke into two virtual rooms,
one for an ALA-focused discussion—in particular, the
future of Task Force on the Environment (TFOE)—and
the other to discuss alternative options for collaborating
on sustain-ability in libraries. Participants self-selected a
virtual room, then both groups rejoined for sharing.
Plans were announced for a meet-up during the
upcoming ALA conference, at the TFOE official
meeting time, with the hopes that discussions on whether
to revitalize TFOE or create a new group would become
conclusive at that point.
The fourth and final webinar, Exploring More
Sustainability Practices in Libraries, held in August
2012, focused on creating an action plan and facilitating
an open discussion. Although this webinar had the
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lowest registration numbers, many more people viewed
the recording after the webinar as demonstrated in Figure
1. The registration form asked whether participants had
presented, or had plans to present, on a sustainability
topic and requested future webinar suggestions (Charney
et al. 2012). The session began with a TFOE update
report from Ashley Jones, a librarian from Miami
University, who had assisted with the previous webinar
and co-facilitated a meet-up at the ALA annual
conference in June 2012. Similar themes and ideas
coalesced from previous webinar discussions: revitalize
TFOE or create a new group to be more inclusive and
visible to all ALA members; create resources for people
such as a toolkit with information, data, best practices,
and so forth; work with ALA to make conferences
greener; and seek collaborations for future conference
sessions. Participants discussed at length whether to use
the term “sustainability” in the group name to reflect
broader engagement than is reflected in the term
“environment,” and whether to create a new entity
altogether. Some felt it would be wiser to remain within
a well-established entity such as SRRT rather than
starting from scratch, while others believed that
sustainability was a large enough arena to warrant its
own roundtable.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, a range of libraries and
other entities were represented in the webinar series,
including some from outside the profession and several
from across the globe. The types of positions held within
library and related organizations also varied. Registration
was widely marketed as a way for interested parties to
access the recording even if they were not able to
participate in real time. Of the 4,138 total views, 97%
(4,024) were offline, with only 3% (114) viewed live.
These recordings are still viewable and the offline views
will only grow over time. These figures reflect
significant desire for remote engagement and SustainRT
is strongly committed to connect with those not able to
attend a conferences, including professionals in other
countries.
SustainRT is Formed
The deliberations and discussions during the webinar
series led to the decision to create a new ALA Round
Table. By December 2012, with Jones taking the lead, a
plan was formulated to navigate the logistics of creating
this organizational form. Working with ALA, Jones and
her collaborators implemented and promoted an e-
petition, which requires 100 signatures from ALA
members; gathered input from others in the library
community; drafted a mission statement; created a logo;
secured an online space on ALA’s “Connect” portal; and
scheduled a networking meet-up for the ALA Midwinter
Meeting in January 2013. More signatures than
necessary were gathered to form the Round Table. A
small team from this emerging practitioner community
presented the e-petition to ALA Council at Midwinter
2013, which granted its immediate approval. SustainRT
members then collectively decided on Libraries
Fostering Resilient Communities as a byline for the
group. An assortment of professionals from academic,
school, and public libraries, among other settings, came
together, virtually at first and later in person, at ALA
meetings. The webinar series described above
jumpstarted a sustainability conversation, which led to a
fairly organic process for creating SustainRT.
Unwittingly, this process turned out to be based on the
three fundamental elements of a CoP: a domain of
knowledge, a community of people, and the shared
practice within this domain (Wenger et al. 2002).
Member benefits of a CoP, as Wegner et al. (2002) state,
are assistance with challenges, access to expertise, team
contributions, confidence building, enjoyment, mean-
ingful participation, and a sense of belonging. In a
practical sense, a CoP allows its members to manage
knowledge efficiently and then share and steward that
knowledge effectively. However, the group’s knowledge
is also “an integral part of their activities and
interactions, and they [the CoP] serve as living repository
for that knowledge” (Wegner et al. 2002). While a full
exploration of CoPs does not fit the scope of this article,
it is useful to note that this model now guides
SustainRT’s work.
Vital to the group’s success is a consistent message
for members to share in the responsibility (and attendant
satisfaction) of improving the group’s evolution over
time. SustainRT’s foundation rests not merely on its
members’ professional achievements, but equally on
their ethical and personal stake in the well-being,
empowerment, and blossoming of the communities they
serve. Continued success will depend on marketing the
community value of this group, so that membership
increases as existing members invest their energy and
legitimize its voice (Wenger et al. 2002).
SustainRT’s Place within the Profession
The Libraries for Sustainability webinar series,
which involved a host of presenters, facilitators, partic-
ipants, and organizers, jumpstarted the formation of
SustainRT as a CoP. Casting the net broadly to capture
as many sustainability library practices and practitioners
as possible was key, and indeed was prominent at the
very foundation of SustainRT, in opening an inclusive
dialogue. The most dedicated individuals formed an
interim steering committee to navigate the complex
structure of ALA, an organization with over 50,000
members. A backbone began to form, connecting
geographically and topically scattered pieces. With each
subsequent resource, meeting, and conference came a
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growing sense of community and shared enthusiasm,
with the knowledge that together we could accomplish
even more. Some of the intangible values of a CoP listed
by Wenger et al. (2002) are an increased ability to
innovate, relationship building, a sense of belonging, a
spirit of inquiry, and “the professional confidence and
identity [CoPs] confer on their members.” Special
acknow-ledgment goes to Ashley Jones, who stepped
forward as the first SustainRT Coordinator, the group’s
lead officer. Her pioneering spirit led the Round Table
into the next phase of development and growth. While
electing officers is a requirement within the structure of
ALA, SustainRT established a decentralized and
distributed leadership structure, a growing “ecology of
leadership.”
ALA Council’s approval of SustainRT in 2013
affirmed the value that such a group brings. The
professional association provided strong support to
SustainRT from the start, including a capable staff
liaison for guidance through administrative procedures
and a seasoned council liaison who shared ideas on
outreach and procedures when working within ALA.
According to Wenger et al. (2002), these “external roles”
are important, “especially as communities mature,
because communities depend on external sponsors for
access to influence and resources and for building
credibility with teams and business units.” Looking
ahead, there are limitless ways SustainRT can grow
within ALA to bolster sustainability engagement within
the profession. SustainRT provides a unique means for
all types of libraries to interact, allowing the
interpenetration of the three E’s, and creating a holistic,
more synthesized approach to sustainability in libraries.
SustainRT became an official ALA body with the
election of its officers in June 2014 and has moved
rapidly from an engaged to an active stage. The CoP
culture of SustainRT operates from a decentralized
leadership structure, intentionally encouraging members
to step into leadership roles. Members create, expand,
and exchange knowledge, as well as develop individual
capabilities, such as posting resources on the website,
adding content to SustainRT’s social media channels,
learning to organize webinars, participating in
conference-submission reviews, helping draft
resolutions, implementing and contributing to the blog,
and learning how to run a membership drive. Many of
our members are stretching in these new roles. The
aspiration is to continue increasing the passion,
commitment, and identification within the group and
expand its expertise (Wenger et al. 2002).
A “Think-Pair-Share” exercise was conducted at the
first SustainRT board meeting in June 2014 (SustainRT,
2014). The group was asked to collectively respond to
the statement, “When we are successful, we will
have….” Sheets of paper on the wall were soon filled
with specific visions, including “Convey that
sustainability is not an ‘add-on’”; “Develop a situational
awareness of what is already being done in the area of
sustainability in ALA and in libraries modeling best
practices, at conference (both in our activities and by
influencing how the conference is run) and through
resolutions at council”; “Boil down our message to a tag
line”; “Develop resources and an online toolkit to share
best practices and help others avoid reinventing the
wheel”; and “Adopt and practice a decentralized
leadership culture within SustainRT.” All of these
statements have come to fruition. Other ideas from the
exercise are infusing conversations and taking shape
through the project teams, for example, “Embedding
sustainability in the profession”; “Providing a clear
understanding of the sustainable, resilient, and
regenerative nature of libraries and how libraries can
adaptively manage the future”; “Shifting the culture of
the profession and the perception of libraries in our
communities so that we all have a renewed sense of the
role of libraries within the context of the social-
ecological system”; and “Talking to library schools and
students.”
From the exercise, project teams were formed for
governance, environmental scan, online education, and
outreach (with a program-project team added later). Each
team chose a chair and was offered a board liaison. The
governance team quickly collaborated with ALA’s
Conference Planning Committee to set up plastic badge
reuse stations at the January 2015 midwinter meeting, a
first step in helping to “green” ALA conferences. The
establishment of a searchable public database to provide
a cohesive and growing picture of sustainability
advancement in libraries is now well underway, a project
pioneered by the Environmental Scan Team, which is
collecting publications, policies, and procedures, facility
projects, best practices, curriculum support, program-
ming, and community-outreach documents from the
broad library community. The Online Education Team
launched a free webinar series, beginning with a
showcase of lightning talks from the ALA annual
conference; a presentation about ALA’s Center for the
Future of Libraries focusing on the trends of resilience
and sharing economy; an IT lesson in saving energy
costs with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
EnergyStar Program; and a “Book to Action” program
featuring Chelsea Green Publishing and the Hayward
Public Library. The Programs Team organized lightning
round presentations at two annual conferences. With a
goal of 300 members by the end of 2016, the Outreach
Project Team initiated “Each One, Reach One,” a
membership drive including a gift-certificate incentive to
a green-products company. An active and skilled
webmaster keeps activities updated and a blog adds
another layer of dynamism to the group’s public face, as
well as providing opportunities for contributions from
members.
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The summer of 2015 was a fertile time for
sustainability and community-related advancements
within ALA itself. Sari Feldman, ALA’s President for
2015–16, launched the Libraries Transform (LT)
campaign, which highlights how libraries support
individual opportunity and community progress. One of
its goals is to “Energize and engage all library workers
as well as build external advocates to influence local,
state, and national decision makers” (Feldman, 2015).
The LT campaign includes the Center for the Future of
Libraries, which, according to ALA Executive Director
Keith Michael Fiels, helps libraries “identify emerging
trends, provoke discussion on how to respond to and
shape the future, and build connections with experts and
innovative thinkers in other fields who can help libraries
understand and meet the challenges of the future” (ALA,
2013a). One trend identified by the Center is resilience,
which is particularly aligned with SustainRT’s core
value of equity and access; the term “resilience” is
actually embedded in SustainRT’s byline. The statement,
“Truly resilient communities would embrace distributed
renewable energy, support diversified local agriculture,
and foster social equity and inclusion,” demonstrates that
ALA already upholds the three E’s of sustainability.
Also related is the LT campaign’s Libraries
Transforming Communities program, which trains
library staff to better understand communities, change
processes and thinking to make conversations more
community-focused, be proactive to community issues,
and put community aspirations first (ALA, 2015b).
A particularly powerful example of SustainRT’s
work so far, and ALA’s support, is the passing of an
ALA resolution, The Importance of Sustainable
Libraries (ALA Council, 2015). Within ALA, a
resolution is “a clear and formal expression of the
Table 1 SustainRT Communities of Practice Model
CoP Lifecycle Phase CoP Lifecycle Phase Explanation SustainRT Steps Taken
Inquire Explore, in order to identify audience, purpose, goals, vision
Webinar series with embedded questions regarding: the resurrection of TFOE, hoped for outcomes of a webinar session, how to initiate contact with library groups, how to address diverse needs of all library types, interest in presenting at sustainability conferences.
Design Define activities, technologies, group processes, roles to support the group
Used virtual technology for webinars, including chat function to stimulate discussion, ideas, and connections; invited guest speakers to webinars.
Prototype
Pilot the community with a select group of key stakeholders, to gain commitment, test assumptions, refine the strategy, and establish a success story
Formed an interim steering committee across library types; navigated the channels of ALA for becoming an official round table; collaborated on writing bylaws; selected neutral title of “Coordinator” for lead officer.
Launch
Roll out the community to a broader audience, in ways that engage newcomers, and deliver immediate benefits.
Launched social media, listserv and website with resources, news, events, and opportunities; circulated e-petition and asked everyone to share it with colleagues and other library groups; used open LinkedIn group for communicating; celebrated approval of the round table at an in-person social event.
Grow
Engage members in collaborative learning and knowledge sharing activities, group projects and networking events, that meet individual, group and organizational goals while creating an increasing cycle of participation and contribution.
‘Think Pair Share’ exercise at initial in-person meeting to elicit ideas from everyone; established ‘Project Teams,’ intentionally named to stimulate collaborative and tangible results; Lightning Rounds for sharing success stories at conferences; collaborative environmental scan of sustainability library projects; widely communicated goal of 300 members by end of 2015.
Sustain
Cultivate and assess the knowledge and “products” created by the community, to inform new strategies, goals, activities, roles, and technologies.
Continue to populate Project Teams, encouraging members to serve as chairs, with officers moving to liaison roles; open virtual meetings prior to in-person meeting to gather ideas from everyone; free and open professional development webinar series.
opinion or will of the assembly which supports ALA’s
strategic plan, its mission and/or its core values” (ALA,
2013b). The ALA initiatives outlined above provided a
logical, relevant, and welcoming bridge to passing this
resolution in June 2015. This synergistic awakening
within ALA as an organization invites its members to
commit to more specific, unified sustainability practices,
presumably with support and insights from SustainRT.
From greening library conferences, to offering
professional development, to funding more sustainability
projects, success will be partially measured by “the
energy, commitment to, and visibility of the
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community,” until SustainRT becomes “institutionalized
as a core value-added capability” by ALA (Cambridge et
al. 2005). Rebecca Miller’s Library Journal editorial
sounds the alarm on The Importance of Sustainable
Libraries resolution as a call to action. Recognizing that
the sustainability work of libraries will be daunting in the
face of “a broad shift in entrenched practice,” Miller
notes how SustainRT set up structures to plan
dynamically for this shift through alliances with library,
civic, grassroots, business, and other groups. She
appreciates the terms “resilient” and “regenerative” in
the resolution, stating that they “add a supercharge that
hints at challenges inherent in the sea change, literal and
figurative, ahead.” She refers to the library community as
“one vast, smart, ethical network that is poised to
facilitate this work and make an impact, within the
profession and well beyond” (Miller, 2015).
Model for Fostering Dialogue and Collaboration
Due to the interest and passion staked around the
subject of sustainability, individual and group efforts
combined to move SustainRT forward relatively rapidly.
Working from a more formal model, however, such as a
CoP, would have provided an even more solid found-
ation from which to become established and grow. One
of the goals of this article is to provide a model for
library (and other) groups to start on firm ground.
The trajectory of SustainRT is reflected in the life
cycle offered in EDUCAUSE’s Community of Practice
Design Guide, which was adapted from Robert
McDermott (Cambridge et al. 2005). Based on the
history, development, needs, and aspirations of
SustainRT, the preliminary model exhibited in Table 1 is
offered to other groups starting out or working to
revitalize membership.
SustainRT’s own challenges include how to involve
school librarians, since their schedules do not accom-
modate daytime meetings and they do not typically work
during the summer. Possible solutions include targeted
outreach through school librarians’ professional groups,
listervs and publications; creating a dedicated “home” for
them within SustainRT (e.g., a Project Team); and
fostering connections with public and academic libraries
to support school libraries in the face of budget cuts and
a shrinking workforce. There is also the question of how
members can add to conversations when they cannot
immediately attend the session. One idea is to solicit
comments, questions, and statements in advance, just as
a radio host does, so that others may respond. Finally,
when guest presenters lack experience in the webinar
environment, extra training sessions are necessary. Over
time, as more members (and society in general) become
accustomed to webinars, this challenge will likely
resolve.
Ideas for strengthening and growing SustainRT
include creating avenues for LIS faculty and students to
connect and share resources; offering opportunities to
share members’ passion and expertise through story-
telling; mentoring peers; creating a sustainability “buddy
system”; offering outreach to LIS students; and
providing internships. In addition, SustainRT can support
ALA’s Libraries Transforming Communities endeavors
by developing instructional programs to engage
community conversations as well as leading citizens to
reliable information and empowering them to be
proactive in the face of challenges to come.
Conclusion
The journey from scattered individuals and
disconnected library groups working on sustainability
efforts to a unified, forward-thinking official roundtable,
within a newly realized CoP framework, sets the stage
for measureable change in the near future. SustainRT’s
member-driven design supports the concept that social
responsibility requires individuals to commit to action,
while collegial support through ALA maximizes the
library profession’s ability to address climate disruption
along with economic and social disparities.
Our impetus for engaging the library community and
joining forces around sustainability was born out of a
sense of urgency to openly, unabashedly, and relentlessly
address climate change, environmental degradation, and
social inequities. As the instigators in rallying passionate
and engaged colleagues around the Libraries for
Sustainability webinar series, the authors hope that
SustainRT’s work will provoke radical conversations and
lead to critically needed change at the local, regional, and
national levels, in our libraries, library associations,
communities, and beyond. In his groundbreaking book,
Don’t Even Think About It, environmental commun-
ication expert George Marshall (2014) writes about the
need for unbiased and direct discourse on climate
change, which is too often stymied by internal cultures of
academia, politics, the electoral process, and the media.
He laments that, “Climate change finds no foothold in
the conversations between workmates, neighbors, or
even friends and family...Each silence appears to be built
on the other silences, but they have a common basis in
the need to avoid anxiety and defend ourselves.” He
celebrates the prolonged struggles of social movements
that broke through socially constructed silence around
wicked problems. SustainRT also breaks a silence,
allowing sustainability, including addressing the urgency
of climate change, to resonate as a core mission of lib-
raries as community organizations. SustainRT provides
an open forum that empowers those engaged in
sustainability. In turn, SustainRT members and non-
member participants can gird their communities with
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reliable information while maintaining safe spaces for
citizens to converse, connect, and learn.
Acknowlegments
The authors would like to thank the Libraries for
Sustainability webinar presenters and participants, the
first SustainRT officers and Project Team leaders, TFOE,
and ALA administrative staff who were instrumental and
dedicated to ushering in SustainRT. Finally, we convey
our gratitude to Estefania Arellana for designing the
infographic.
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