Title: |
Sustainable Development: Some Starting Points Discussion paper prepared for The AQUADAPT workshop, Montpellier October 25th-27th 2002
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Resource Type: |
document --> technical publication --> report
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Country: |
EU Projects
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Year: |
2002 |
Availability: |
O'Connor, M. (2002): Sustainable Development:
Some Starting Points
Discussion paper prepared for The AQUADAPT workshop,
Montpellier October 25th-27th 2002
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Author 1/Producer: |
O'Connor, M.
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Author / Producer Type: |
EC Project
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Format (e.g. PDF): |
PDF
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EUGRIS Keyword(s): |
Contaminated land-->Soil and groundwater processes-->Soil and groundwater processes overview
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Short description: |
Introduction:
All human societies have been preoccupied with their future. Human concern for
degradation of the living environment is not a new phenomenon, nor is it peculiar to
Western industrial economies. So the question arises, what are the specific
preoccupations of our current society, underlying the concern for the (un)sustainability
of contemporary processes of economic development?
System and environment interdependency has been analysed since the 19th century
from the point of view of input/output efficiency and productivity. Thermodynamics is,
in this regard, the pre-eminent science of the industrial age, with analyses built around
the framework of the controlled exploitation of one system by another. The steam
engine fuelled by wood or coal from the environment was the first technological model
for the science of thermodynamics; the same image of a productive machine has been
transposed onto the economy whose ‘growth’ and ‘output’ is dependent on the
successful exploitation of the natural world.
Yet, with different cultural imperatives one might equally have used thermodynamics
to focus on the pathways of transformation of water to steam to atmospheric vapour
and back, via complex ecological pathways, as rain or snow, to earth again. With this
change of focus, we are led to emphasise the profound sense of economic life taking
place within evolving complex systems. Water, without which there is no life, can
indeed be taken as a thread that orients diagnosis of sustainability problems,
challenges, and paths ahead. It is in our blood and our bodies' cells, and is the main
substance of everything that we eat and drink. It is certainly the vapour of the steam
engine and also the humidity of productive soils. It is the medium of nutrient
transportation and osmotic pressure in plants, and of mobility and life-support for the
fishes that swim in lakes and rivers and under the ocean waves. It is that ubiquitous
substance that we use to wash our hands and our clothes, to clean our machines, to
dilute our wastes, to transport raw materials and processed goods from one place to
another, to distribute heat in homes and factory buildings, to cook our food, and so on.
It is the permanent metaphor of movement, of the spirit, of the flows of death and life.
It is an economic asset, a strategic resource, a poetic resource and a security
problem. It is an object of everyday knowledge to everyone.
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Submitted By:
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Dr Stefan Gödeke WhoDoesWhat?
Last update: 14/02/2006
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