Different Needs, Different Approaches

English says most efforts focus on implementing strategies without looking at how communities should choose the strategies that are right for them. The WMREI project will identify a set of process modules by which rural communities can plan for smart growth.

English and Peretz -- with research assistant Melissa Manderscheid, a graduate student in UT’s planning department -- are combing through recent literature and web sites on sustainable development efforts across the country and reviewing the tools currently used by some communities.

The researchers will also investigate communities’ current use of computer-based planning tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and evaluate the feasibility of wider use of these tools to help organize and facilitate the decision-making process.

"There are sophisticated economic models for forecasting," says Peretz. "But our challenge is to find a tool that combines economic, environmental, and social factors; that can be run on a PC; is user-friendly; and whose data-collection requirements wouldn’t overwhelm a rural community."

English and Peretz are drawing on the expertise of four other UT researchers. Jack Barkenbus, executive director of UT’s Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC); EERC Research Professor Robert Bohm, who also serves as a professor in UT’s economics department; Ronald Foresta, a professor in UT’s geography department; and David Patterson, head of UT’s planning department, make up an advisory committee that provides project advice and feedback.

Rural Diversity

Three types of rural communities exist in the United States. Communities on the urban-rural fringe face are becoming engulfed by urban growth. "Deeply rural" communities, those situated far from urban centers, often lag behind the rest of the nation in income, education, and public services and struggle against economic decline and outmigration of residents. Communities with new tourism and retirement industries are challenged by an emerging employment structure marked by low-paying and seasonal jobs, as well as development that can destroy their scenic and recreational assets. Because of their unique situations, these communities may require different visioning and planning tools.

Planning is made even more complex by the fact that decision making on a community level involves choosing actions to take on behalf of many people with divergent interests and needs, says English. For this reason, communities must think carefully about their collective goals and preferred paths to those goals.

For example, a community in decline may want to focus on increasing residents’ earning potential within its boundaries without undermining traditional ways of life. It would need to consider options for creating jobs, like recruiting businesses that complement, rather than threaten, the community’s culture.

English says only a few communities across the United States systematically plan for the long term. "Most communities haven’t realized that they need to plan, and many rural communities simply don’t have the resources," she says. Many communities simply react to forces from inside and outside their borders that may take them along paths they did not wish to follow."

Communities will continue to experience this kind of belated hindsight unless they start looking at the bigger and longer-term picture. Says English, "They need to examine all the possible effects of a decision. For example, a community contemplating a proposed factory needs to think about waste disposal, resource consumption, and possible effects on people and the environment.

Past Points to Future

Though insufficient planning practices plague U.S. communities -- both large and small -- English believes that equipping rural communities to make informed, reflective decisions is vital to the overall sustainability of the nation. "Rural communities are ecologically and socially important to the United States," says English. "But they’re not always given the attention they deserve."

English says that although just a quarter of the country’s population lives in rural communities, these are likely to see the greatest change in coming years. "The choices rural communities make about whether or not to protect their natural and built environments will affect the entire nation," she says.

Smart growth planning can help rural communities by providing an organized method of making decisions based on a stated vision and concretely identified sustainability needs.

English and Peretz are keeping in mind rural communities’ financial limitations as they develop their planning process recommendations. "We are looking at whether processes are feasible based on staff and computer limitations and asking ourselves, for example, whether all steps must be taken by all communities or whether other steps could be taken that are simpler and less time-, cost-, and expertise-intensive," English says.

English believes that models developed for Tennessee’s rural communities will be broadly applicable to other states because Tennessee is semi-rural and is experiencing rapid growth in some areas and decline in others. Although the current project focuses on developing a menu of planning process modules for communities at the urban-rural fringe, English and Peretz hope to receive funding for another project designed to address the planning needs of all three types of rural communities. l

For more information, contact Mary English, The University of Tennessee, WMREI, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

Accentuate the Positive

Special training shows two researchers that focusing on points of agreement in the sustainability debate may be the surest route to progress.

by Laurie Varma

Our goals for achieving sustainable development should incline us to act on what we know and can agree on rather than haggling over details and waiting until all the facts are in, according to Mary Swanson and Catherine Wilt, two researchers from the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT). CCPCT is an affiliate of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute. Swanson and Wilt recently completed training focused on reversing unsustainable modern resource use by encouraging people to focus on points of agreement.

This past October Wilt and Swanson attended a five-day training program sponsored by The Natural Step, a nonprofit organization whose goals include fostering a new way of thinking about how we interact with the environment as individuals, businesses, and communities. They were joined by representatives from corporations, nonprofit organizations, and universities, as well as independent consultants and interested citizens.

Think Globally, Act Naturally

The training program covered a broad range of topics, including the principles that undergird the Natural Step philosophy, organizational dynamics that often shape corporate and political decisions, methods for presenting Natural Step principles to others, and techniques for prompting industry change.

The training upholds the central notion of sustainability, which maintains that environmental, economic, and social impacts are inextricably linked -- and that negative impacts in one sector will be felt in the others. For example, our historical overuse of natural resources to produce consumer goods has led to depleted and contaminated resource supplies and such environmental problems as inadequate waste disposal, water and air pollution, and contamination by toxic materials.

"The training helped us recognize the connectedness among issues that often are considered disparate," says Wilt.

Natural Step also hammers home the message that disagreement over details is delaying progress toward sustainability. Indeed, rather than quibbling over the precise extent of environmental damage, we might instead focus on the broad agreement that we are harming the environment and shape our responses from there.

Says Swanson, "When we argue over how much the seas are rising -- is it three feet or five? -- instead of recognizing that we know the seas are rising because of global climate change and that it’s detrimental, we lose track of what’s important."

Wilt says that focusing on the basics of human effects on the environment will allow the United States to implement the steps necessary to stop environmental degradation, without waiting until all details are known and all disagreements are resolved.

Natural Laws

One of the program’s strongest assets, Swanson says, is that it’s built on scientific principles that everyone agrees on. The Natural Step program was initiated in Sweden in 1989 and has since grown to include operations in this country. The developers base their philosophy on the first and second laws of thermodynamics and the principle of matter conservation.

From these principles, we know that the Earth is a limited system where matter is neither created nor destroyed. That means waste matter and toxic substances disperse throughout the environment and accumulate to unhealthy levels.

The program developers maintain that these simple concepts point to the crux of the problem: Overuse of the Earth’s resources and introduction of unnatural substances, at a rate the Earth cannot accommodate, is degrading ecosystems.

Natural Step training employs four main principles expressed as the following action steps:

Message in a Funnel

While some environmental programs rely almost entirely on dense collections of data to make their cases, the Natural Step illustrates its message with the simplest of devices -- a funnel. Trainers use the funnel analogy to show how unsustainable practices -- spurred by increasing population and consumption and decreasing resources -- create an ever-narrowing passage for a society’s activities over time.

"The idea of running into the walls of the funnel and finding it harder and harder to compete economically is a disturbing but very effective," says Wilt.

"Many of our current practices are obviously not sustainable, and they cause the funnel walls to close in around us," she says. "The training helps identify ways to get people, businesses, and communities to understand that some activities are harmful and must be changed."

The United States lags behind Sweden and other Nordic countries in implementing sustainability programs, but Swanson and Wilt believe we’re catching up. And locally, the city of Knoxville and Knox County are working to make their activities more sustainable.

For instance, Knox County has created a household hazardous waste facility to divert toxic substances from storm drains and landfills. And the Knoxville Greenways Coalition is creating a system of greenways along the city’s urban streams. The greenways improve water quality by providing filtering strips to reduce surface runoff and vegetation that anchors the soil and reduces erosion.

Despite the increase in initiatives that support sustainability in Knoxville, Wilt and Swanson point out that they aren’t connected in a holistic way. They hope to help change that and believe that the Natural Step framework could be useful in tying the community’s activities together.

Wilt and Swanson would like to use their training to open up dialogue and unify the city’s efforts. They hope to help guide community efforts by holding workshops for representatives from a wide range of area organizations, including businesses, churches, schools, government offices, and various associations.

CCPCT, with its legacy of industry collaboration and emphasis on life-cycle assessment and extended product responsibility, is in a perfect position to help organizations implement Natural Step principles. Indeed, Wilt and Swanson believe the Natural Step program is particularly well suited for corporations intent on amending their wasteful practices but unsure about how to proceed.

"Natural Step provides principles without prescribing rules, so companies can decide how to apply the principles to their operations," Wilt says.

For more information, contact Catherine Wilt or Mary Swanson, The University of Tennessee, CCPCT, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

InSites Garners First-Place Award in International Publications Contest

InSites, the international newsletter of the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI), received a first-place award in the 11th Annual International Mercury Awards Competition sponsored by MerComm Incorporated. The gold award, in the external, nonprofit newsletter category, recognizes InSites for its editorial excellence and overall design. The newsletter was also honored with a 1998 Technical Communications Award of Achievement from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Technical Communications.

Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, a quarterly journal published jointly by UT’s Energy, Environment, and Resources Center; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; The Rural Policy Research Institute; and TVA Rural Studies, won first place in the National Association for Government Communicators’ 1997 Blue Pencil Awards in the category "Publications for a Technical Audience."

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

Future Perfect

The EERC launches programs aimed at building a sustainable future

The University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC), an affiliate of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute, has launched a quarterly seminar series and initiated a faculty associates program to support the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable development balances environmental, economic, and social concerns and aims to meet the needs of the present generation while preserving future generations’ ability to meet their own.

The EERC’s quarterly seminars will feature speakers from government and industry who will address audiences of academics and representatives of nonprofit organizations, businesses, and government.

David Berry, executive director of the Interagency Sustainable Development Indicator Group, a part of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), visited the EERC in January as the series’ first speaker. In his presentation, Berry stressed the importance of compromise in balancing the needs of the economic, social, and environmental sectors.

"It’s not as simple as deciding whether we want owls or jobs," he says. "Economic, environmental, and social needs must be integrated into a compromise that passes on to future generations the capacity to meet their needs. That will likely involve valuing both owls and jobs."

PCSD is developing a set of indicators of environmental, economic, and social conditions in the United States.

"We know we are passing on less to future generations every time we dump toxic chemicals into rivers or make decisions that make poor people poorer," Berry says. Indicators will allow us to bring greater precision to identifying these harmful practices and their potential impacts, he says.

The council’s framework involves three classes of indicators, into which all environmental, economic, and social indicators fall. "Current results" indicators reflect current conditions, including such things as air and water quality, gross domestic product, and levels of education and crime.

"Long-term endowments/liabilities" indicators project future resource reserves, levels of various wastes, capital assets, and human populations. These indicators also provide insight into possible challenges we will pass on to future generations if our current practices continue unaltered.

"When we talk about endowments, we’re talking about such cumulative capital investments as roads, bridges, and factories; natural resources; and our capacity to train and educate our population," says Berry.

"Process" indicators evaluate the processes and driving forces that influence both long-term endowments and current conditions.

"When we build a factory, for instance, we build up the economic endowment," Berry says. "But when we cut down trees and dig up a lot of minerals to build that factory, we deplete the stock of natural resources."

The factory may produce products that enhance consumers’ quality of life, but as it does, it may also send out emissions that seep into groundwater and harm the environment. These impacts may cause overall decline in the endowments the current generation passes along to those that follow.

According to Berry, these indicators will help us assess more accurately the factors that contribute to declining economic, social, and environmental endowments and reverse them while there’s still time.

Through the faculty associates program, another EERC initiative launched earlier this year, the center seeks to build relationships between the EERC and UT’s various departments. It also hopes to advance areas of mutual interests and spur interdisciplinary research. Faculty associates will work with EERC staff to shape research projects that reflect shared interests.

The faculty associates team includes Mike Berry, associate professor in the department of computer science; Tom Dean, associate professor of management in the College of Business Administration; and Mary Rogge, assistant professor in the College of Social Work.

For more information, contact Jack Barkenbus, The University of Tennessee, EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

State Residents Gain New Resource

Tennesseans confronted by environmental troubles in their neighborhoods need not feel powerless in navigating the maze of state agencies when looking for assistance, thanks to a new toll-free hot line. The line (1-888-PROTEKT) is designed to help citizens report problems and get the information they need to resolve them.

The Protect Tennessee Network (PTN), sponsored by the Tennessee Environmental Council (TEC), "provides a clear way for the public to report environmental problems," says Alan Jones, TEC’s executive director. The program represents the first step in resolving environmental concerns ranging from illegal dumps to toxic releases.

Through the network, TEC helps people get involved in the environmental decision-making process itself. The organization has launched an ambitious project to establish a computer database of the information it gathers. By tracking the incidence of various problems, PTN may eventually be used to help frame legislative solutions to some of the state’s environmental woes.

"The hot line came about because people are reluctant to call government agencies in the first place when they’ve identified environmental problems," says Jones. "And it isn’t easy to find the right agency, the right person to talk to." For example, one woman was unable to persuade authorities to clean up an illegal dump near her home in Nashville. Her call to PTN got results.

Modeled after a vanguard program sponsored by the Alabama Environmental Council—The Watchdog Campaign—PTN was started with seed money from the W. Alton Jones Foundation and is funded with the help of corporate sponsors, individual members, the TEC, and an annual fund-raiser held in Nashville and dubbed the Green Tie Affair. The idea of a statewide clearinghouse for information and assistance has spread to North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Washington state.

Jones sees a clear need for the hot line, which was established in early 1997. Each week, he says, the number of calls increases as the program receives more attention via television and radio, the Internet, and word of mouth.

For more information, contact Alan Jones, Tennessee Environmental Council, 1700 Hayes Street #101, Nashville, TN 37203, or call 615-321-5075.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

WMREI Team Publishes Biotechnology Book

Researchers from the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) and Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) have published a book that explores key areas of biotechnology, including bioremediation, waste treatment, risk and policy issues, pollution prevention, and techniques for evaluating and monitoring the actions of beneficial microbes.

Biotechnology in the Sustainable Environment (New York: Plenum Press, 389 pp., hardcover) presents the proceedings of a 1996 international symposium of the same name. The symposium, which was held at UT, drew more than 100 participants from 22 states and provinces and nine countries.

The symposium was sponsored by WMREI with financial support from Eastman Chemical Company; E.I. DuPont De Nemours and Company, Inc.; Procter and Gamble; IT Corporation; Dow Chemical Company; Science Applications International Corporation; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; General Electric; Biotreatment News; and the Bio-Cleanup Report.

Gary Sayler, director of CEB and WMREI; WMREI Senior Research Associate John Sanseverino; and Kimberly L. Davis, WMREI assistant director, co-edited the volume, which is part of Plenum’s Environmental Science Research Series.

"The symposium did an excellent job of giving participants a vision of the breadth of biotechnology and the drivers that will shape its future. It also provided a broad international perspective on both the use of biotechnology and the widely varying regulatory framework that affects its development and application," says Sayler. "We expect the book to serve the same function and convey the information to those who were unable to attend the conference."

For more information or to order copies of the book, contact Kimberly Davis, The University of Tennessee, WMREI, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134,or call 865-974-4251.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page

Staff Citings

Senior Research Associate Melinda Basler presented a discussion of environmental-management certification at a brown-bag lunch attended by EERC staffers and guests. Basler completed requirements for certification as lead auditor for the International Standards Organization (ISO) 14001 standard, part of the ISO-14000 family of standards that focuses on environmental management systems and addresses all companies.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to InSites Home Page