‘Sustainable development’ … a lot of people see that as an oxymoron - Jim Cantrill
Sustainable Thinking
When it comes to “sustainable development,” environmentalists, industrialists, developers and lakeshore residents are all in agreement …
They agree that not one of them can specifically define this most recent focus in planning philosophies.
But many also agree that this elusively defined philosophy might be the best chance out there to get everyone talking - together - about crucial decisions facing the Lake Superior basin without conversation disintegrating into combat.
Ask what “sustainable development” - or for the developmentally squeamish “sustainability” - projects exist in Lake Superior’s basin, and you will be regaled with an extraordinary range of examples like:
• School children spray-painting links-to-Lake Superior reminders on town storm drains.
• Cities weaning industrial operations from waterfront areas to create lower environmental impact businesses and lakewalks to attract visitors.
• Citizens restoring sites once contaminated by past ill-informed industrial practices.
• Lumber operations cooperating with multi-layered forestry management that not only ensures future log harvests but future ecological diversity.
The lists, like the definitions, seem endless. What, then, is “sustainable development?”
Essentially, it’s three legs for any project to stand on … planning that takes equally into account the environmental, social and economic impacts of actions. Give short shrift to any of the legs, and the stool becomes unstable and wobbly, just as the project would for those who believe in the three-way balance.
“Sustainable development,” as described in the 1987 report of a world commission on environment and development, strives “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The concept has gained national and international attention. In the United States, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in 1996 published a report titled, “Sustainable America: A new consensus for prosperity, opportunity and a healthy environment.” It followed an international lead from 10 years earlier.
Around the lake basin, states and communities are gathering their own councils on “sustainability.”
The Lake Superior Binational Program has encouraged a focus on “sustainability” within the lake basin. In defining the role of a “Developing Sustainability” Committee, however, the program’s Lake Superior Work Group, a collection of U.S. and Canadian government agency representatives, skirted a specific definition for outlining of broader concepts and dropped the word “development.”
Jim Cantrill, U.S. co-chair of the work group and a professor at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, outlines the three legs this way:
“You don’t want to save the environment to run everybody out of the basin. You can’t foreground just the economics … because that’s not going to be sustainable. You can’t sacrifice the (region’s) social values on the altar of economic and environmental sustainability.”
The concept in this region borrows in philosophy and language from cultures with a longer history around the lake: the Native American idea of the Seventh Generation.
While many elements of “sustainable development” started with moves toward environmental awareness in the 1960s, the concept gives humans a new role. Rather than putting humans outside the ecosystem as either simply users or abusers of it, sustainable development incorporates them into thinking about the system.
“At least for me, in resource management for 20 years, I felt I was looking at the landscape, I was looking at wildlife and I was looking at water quality, but when it came to human beings, I came to separate them as … part of the problem,” says Carl Lindquist, member of the Lake Superior Binational Forum and director of the Chocolay River Watershed Project.
“We are part of it. We are here to stay; we’ve been here since the removal of the glaciers.”
Cantrill agrees. “Agencies and industry across the board have come sooner or later to that decision: that we are part of the ecosystem.”
Some planners feel “sustainable development” is just a fancy term for what should be common practice.
“I think it’s one of those buzz words, with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling about it,” says Jim Hendricks, planning and development director for the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
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