Tagged: sustainable development

De Ceuvel: sustainable urban development and cleantech playground

  • metabolic lab workshop room
    One of the workshop rooms at de Ceuvel (photo: Metabolism)
  • artist impression
    Artist impression of the Ceuvel before its realisation (courtesy: space&matter)
  • cafe de ceuvel
    De Ceuvel cafe is cosy-with-a-hippy-touch (photo: Metabolism)
  • De Ceuvel material flows
    Nothing is lost at de Ceuvel: water and waste streams are recovered (photo: Metabolism)
  • De-Ceuvel
    De Ceuvel seen from the water side
  • during construction
    During construction, old houseboats were hauled onshore and refubished (photo: Metabolism)
  • greenhouse
    In the aquaponic greenhouse, human waste is used as fertiliser (photo: Metabolism)

As an energy engineering student, I come across a lot of inventions that are about to save the world. At least, if they would ever get further than their inventor’s desk. Sometimes low-tech solutions can have a way bigger impact, simply because they happen. Urban development site de Ceuvel in the up-and-coming Amsterdam Noord area is a gem that exemplifies exactly what I’m talking about.

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The ABC of climate change: Brundtland report

The Brundtland report is probably the most famous document regarding sustainable development. The report, officially titled “Our Common Future”, was published in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) under the lead of former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The 300-pages long report coined and defined the term sustainable development for the first time as a broad economical and ecological concept. Although it had been used before with regard to sustainable forestry and fisheries, it was not until the release of this document that economic and ecological policies were linked in an integrated framework.

By now, the document’s definition has become famous, quoted in countless studies, reports and policy documents around the world. Chances are high you have come across it yourself already.

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Personally I don’t think it’s the best definition to quote from the report, but it might have to do with the fact that it is the very first sentence of the chapter that introduces the concept of sustainable development. Less abstract is article 15 of that same chapter 2:

In essence, sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development; and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations.

The famous Brundtland report was published in 1987 and meant a turning point in global ecological policy-making

The famous Brundtland report was published in 1987 and meant a turning point in global ecological policy-making

By using the first definition, all too often the focus shifts to the now-future relation; we have to live and consume now such that the future generations are not compromised. It is essential though that the document also stresses that sustainability demands equity among all within one generation.

A world in which poverty and inequity are endemic will always be prone to ecological and other crises.

This is strikingly similar to what Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudate Si last year. Ecological crises can simply not be seen decoupled from social and humanitarian wrongs. Everything is interconnected.

The Brundtland report laid the foundations for the famous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro five years later. It became an environmental conference of unseen scale, with more than hundred heads of state present.  The conference was a major step forward, with the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Agenda 21 and so on.

Since then, countries have been meeting yearly during climate conferences, also known as “COPs”, Conferences of the Parties. Soon those conferences turned into a diplomatic arena for developed versus developing countries. Finally, in December 2015 they reached an internationally binding agreement on how to tackle climate change.

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