1.1 Introduction: Understanding Sustainable Development

This module instils a foundational understanding of sustainability, and addresses SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals, which supports the delivery of the other 16 SDGs.

As explained in the introduction to the course as a whole, this unit comprises 2 ‘Core’ modules, and 16 ‘Goal’ modules. The Goal modules will address specific SDG areas, like SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, SDG 13 Climate Action, and SDG 5 Gender Equality. The two core modules show how organisations and people, at all scales, must work together to pool their resources and expertise to help make the world more sustainable. This is important because challenges such as global peace, equitable economic growth and climate change cannot be solved by single countries or organisations. Action is needed at a number of scales to achieve sustainability. That is why you reducing your consumption of single use plastics will have an impact on sustainability, as will encouraging the reduction of carbon emissions from the aviation industry, as will ensuring equitable access to quality healthcare, even collecting and monitoring data - to name but a few examples. That was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Drawing upon expert opinion we will discuss the short and long term negative impacts of the Coronavirus. Perhaps more controversially we will consider the opportunities of the pandemic for sustainability.

As you will learn in this module, sustainability is often about striking a balance between different priorities and requires trade-offs and compromises. The SDGs are important because they identify clear goals that have been agreed by almost every country on the planet and outline ways to measure progress towards targets using data. Data can illustrate the breadth and scale of a problem or issue which can then be used to inform strategic decisions, monitor impact of action and set targets. Data must be reliable, accessible and disaggregated at a usable level. This makes data expensive but, as we will discuss further in Core Module 2, and with Dr. Jonny Huck in this module, data becomes particularly important in meeting the aim of the SDGs to ‘leave no one behind’. This is why we invite you to to contribute to sustainable development data through your assignments.

After this introduction, this module contains four chapters.

• The first chapter will consider the main dimensions of the sustainability challenge that is facing humanity in the 21st century and highlight the complex ways in which social, economic and environmental processes are linked together. This chapter will also consider how the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has impacted sustainability.
• The second chapter explains the origins and core principles of sustainable development, including the triple bottom line, approaches to decision-making and the relationship between local and global action.
• Chapter 3 focuses on SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals, which outlines how we can implement and monitor sustainable development through international partnerships.
• The final chapter brings the SDGs back home, considering what the University of Manchester is doing to be more sustainable and our specific response to the SDGs.

- Intended Learning Outcomes

By completing this module you will:

• Have a grounded understanding of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ and the origins of the concepts
• Understand why sustainable development is essential for the future
• Understand the complexity of sustainability and sustainable development in action and how they often require compromise at multiple scales, and can be vulnerable to external threats such as global pandemics
• Begin to understand the need for partnership and good governance in sustainable development, as foundational principles for the Sustainable Development Goals
• Begin to critically reflect upon your role in sustainable development in Manchester, and beyond, and feel empowered to make positive change.

- Definitions of Sustainability

This is a course about action, doing things and making positive change. So, practising what we preach, before we begin - and without referring to Google! - please complete the exercise below. Please tell us your discipline area (for example, Maths, Geography, etc) and your definition of sustainability. For example:

We will return to your definitions of sustainability later.

All comments are completely anonymous. We ask that you be respectful with your answers.

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Take note of your own definition of sustainability. It will be interesting to see whether this changes as the course unfolds. Also have a look at a few of your colleagues’ definitions of sustainability. Is there much variety? There are two points to note here. 

• Firstly, the fact that ‘sustainability’ is interpreted so differently by students studying in different subject areas illustrates one of the challenges that we face in achieving it.
• Secondly, the University College of Interdisciplinary Learning (UCIL) brings together students - or potential change makers - from across the University who can draw on different disciplinary viewpoints to reframe problems. Across the first two core modules, and indeed throughout the course, you will hear a lot about partnership and how essential it is for development. Through this course we are bringing together a vast range of different insights and skills to address issues of sustainability. That is hugely powerful.

Sustainability is a balancing act. As we declare ‘Climate Emergency’ and see the impacts of climate catastrophe and as we fight the war against single use plastics and lobby against the increasing investment into fossil fuels, there is a danger of overlooking the fact that for economic growth, for industrialisation, for energy, for the many technological and medical advances that we take for granted, even in our day to day consumption, we need to use resources. This fact is important to remember as we consider our personal impact on the world and how we might live more sustainably. Human activities take place against a backdrop of environmental systems that have changed over millennia. Plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, varying solar radiation all generate natural changes to the climate on which our ecosystems are dependent. We need greenhouse gases to protect our earth from extreme heat and cold. The Earth’s climate has changed a number of times since the Earth formed some 4.6 billion years ago. This is why many environmental activists prefer terms such as ‘climate emergency’ or ‘ecological catastrophe’ to emphasise the fact that human impacts have massively increased the rates at which changes are taking place. As the United Nations Climate Change Agency noted in July, 2019,

The era of industrial growth, that began in Eighteenth Century Manchester and has now spread to all parts of the planet, has generated a series of negative environmental impacts, threatening the material and human resources on which our economies depend. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) report of 2013, stated: “It is extremely likely [95 to 100 percent] that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Since the Industrial Revolution, for example, the combustion of carbon-based fossil fuels have artificially enhanced the natural greenhouse effect, preventing heat from escaping the Earth, and literally warming it up, leading to the melting of ice caps and resultant flooding.

‘Sustainability’ is about ensuring that we do not undermine our planet’s ability to sustain us. ‘Sustainable Development’ is the political project developed by the United Nations in the latter part of the Twentieth Century to strike a balance between continuing economic and human development, and the need to conserve the global ecosystems and climate upon which we ultimately depend for survival.  

In the next film, Professor James Evans, Professor of Urban Sustainability, explains the difference between sustainability and sustainable development.

As Professor Evans explained, Sustainable Development is humanity’s major global attempt to balance economic development against the need to maintain social and environmental health. It was first made popular by the Brundtland Report of 1987 and defined as:

This ambition was articulated in the principle of the ‘triple bottom-line’, also referred to as the ‘Three Ps’: People, Profit and Planet. The triple bottom line begins to illustrate some of the complexities of delivering sustainability. The concept holds that all decisions in business, politics, sustainable development and so forth should take account of social and environmental impacts as well as economic gain. A new runway at an airport, for example, might open up new trade links, create new jobs and generally boost the economy of the local area. The increased aviation emissions of the new runway, however, will be detrimental to the planet. For development to be truly sustainable that negative impact on the planet needs to be mitigated. Sustainable development, therefore, sits in an equilibrium of the impacts on people, planet and profit. This is illustrated in the diagram below.

The triple bottom line provides a framework for measuring performance of an organisation, or indeed individual, using three measurements: economic (profit), social (people), and environmental (planet) (Goel, 2010). In 2000, the Earth Charter broadened the definition of sustainability to include the idea of a global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace.

As Figure 1 shows, sustainable development sits in the intersection between people, profit and planet. Emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War, the triple bottom line of sustainability represents a compromise between countries in the global north and global south that promises to allow further economic development while reducing its negative social and environmental impacts. As Professor Evans illustrated, Sustainable Development requires – sometimes politically awkward - compromise: industrialised countries have developed at the expense of the environment since before the first Industrial Revolution; imposing sanctions now on the economic growth of other countries negatively impacts their profit to the overall benefit of the planet. We will discuss this in greater detail later in this module.

The triple bottom line presents an opportunity, and a tension. It suggests that for sustainable development, which (as a reminder) shouldn’t compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs as we develop, profit should not grow at the expense of the planet or people. The two photographs shown in Figure 2 and 3 are a good example of the tension of the triple bottom line. Leh, the capital of the Indian Himalaya is largely dependent upon tourism for its economic sustainability. That same tourism is dramatically impacting the natural world on which the economy is dependent. The economy has benefited substantially from tourists attracted to the area to look at the eco innovations that are being trialed in Leh.

More optimistically, the triple bottom line also suggests that an expanding environmental agenda can, and should, integrate growth in, or benefit, social and economic spheres (Elkington, 1997). Whilst the planet delivers resources upon which many businesses depend, there are also economic benefits to being sustainable. This is powerfully illustrated by the fact that ethical investment funds have outperformed global stock market averages since the 2008 financial crisis, and that companies that reduce their carbon emissions the most outperform their peers. During the summer of 2019, the UK’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, announced Labour’s plans for a ‘green industrial revolution’ via an increased role for the Bank of England in regulating finance to ensure a better future for the next generations. Like many grand statements about environmental action, the declaration was a little thin on concrete detail about how to achieve this goal, but it is a notable shift in economic thinking and illustrates the increasing range of actors who are now involved in sustainable development. As we will see momentarily, global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic offers further opportunity for sustainability through a potential ‘Green Recovery’.

From the outset, the principles of Sustainable Development as set out by the Brundtland Report in 1987, were intended to be applied in all places and at all levels, from local communities in which people live, to global decisions taken by leading nations. This idea of scaling action, and the range of actors who have responsibility for Sustainable Development, has come into sharp focus with the recent understanding of impending climate catastrophe. Many councils, including our own Manchester City Council, have declared a ‘climate emergency’, which the University of Manchester supports. This should then impact on policy making and governance to reduce carbon outputs. After decades of peaceful protests many environmental groups, like Extinction Rebellion, have now resorted to more direct action to disrupt ‘the system’, the political system, to make change that is equitable to all. Many extreme environmentalists would argue that it is too late for individual action to make an impact.

For sustainable development we need system change. Change in sustainability governance. Change in global energy production and use. Change in international trade and global redistribution of wealth. Meanwhile, considerable emphasis has also been placed on the idea that small actions can contribute to big impacts through the slogan, ‘think global, act local’. Chapter 4 of this module will critique what could be argued as ‘greenwashing’, and the need for informed thinking behind sustainability related behaviour. Nonetheless small actions such as reducing plastic use, recycling, eating local produce and shopping ethically, particularly around fashion (which is said to be the second highest polluting industry behind oil according to the MacArthur Foundation) can and do contribute to a more sustainable future. As David Attenborough put it in his award winning Blue Planet 2 Documentary:

Sustainable Development has been developed over the past thirty years to include a number of core principles. Often we use these terms interchangeably with little consideration of what they mean. The final exercise in this chapter is designed to encourage you to think critically about these terms.

Well done for matching up the terms. It is a simple exercise but these terms are core to understanding sustainability and they are used throughout the following modules, so it is important to understand them fully.

Why is sustainability so important? And why is it so important now? In the next chapter we will unpack some of the sustainability challenges that we face today and why we face them, in turn highlighting why it is so important to meet the global challenge of sustainable development, because, as Professor James Evans puts it:

1.2 The sustainability challenge facing humanity in the 21st Century

There are a number of threats facing humans in the 21st century, which are starting to jeopardise our long term survival as a species. Such has been the impact made by humans over the last few hundred years that Paul J. Crutzen, a Dutch Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000) coined the term ‘Anthropocene’. The Anthropocene literally means the ‘human’ (anthro) ‘era’ (cene’), and denotes a geological time period in which human action has geological significance - just as the dinosaurs did in the Jurassic period. The term is yet to be formally recognised by geologists, but there is no doubt that we are facing a new period of impact. As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, we have to use resources to develop. As Emel et al., (2002:337) put it ‘Everything we use to communicate, move, stay cool, sit, sleep, cook and refrigerate comes from the 15 billion tons of raw material that humans extract from the earth each year.’ In the last 70 years we have seen a rapid increase in the use of resources due to industrial growth, often referred to as ‘The Great Acceleration’, as illustrated in Fig. 05 below.

These (now quite well known) graphs illustrate how everything, from access to telephones, international tourism, even McDonald's restaurants, has seen a massive acceleration in the last 70 years. Much of this growth has significant benefits for development. We will discuss the role of data and the digital divide a lot across the Creating a Sustainable World unit. The availability of telephones, for example, has been a source of social empowerment in poor communities by providing access to money, or healthcare, fair prices for produce, the possibility to maintain contact with family and so forth, to the extent that, even in 2010, Sachs, quoted in Etzo and Collender, suggested ‘mobile phones are the single most transformative technology for development’ (2010:661). Some academics would argue that the ‘acceleration’ is only getting faster. The Institute for European Environmental Policy argued in 2020 that more than half of all Co2 emissions since 1751 were emitted in the last 30 years, and link emissions to the need for a Green Recovery under Covid, which we will discuss later in this module (IEEP, 2020).

In the next film, Professor James Evans explains some of the key threats to the sustainability of planet Earth. As you listen to James, notice how many of the threats that he discusses are a direct result of rapid, unregulated economic growth and industrialisation, which would have once been considered beneficial advancements for society.

Professor Evans argues that ‘we need to get cities rights’ as they represent challenge, and opportunity, for sustainability. By the end of this century, 85% of humanity will live in cities. Between 1950 and 2100 the population of urban dwellers will have increased from less than one billion to nine billion (OECD, 2015). Many researchers will argue that the main consequence of the rapid growth of cities is that sustainable development, economic growth, social inequality, climate change and health are increasingly urban challenges (Bai et al. 2018; Short, 2017). In turn, if we can make cities sustainable, healthy and equitable, then we will have gone a long way to fixing many of the problems that we, and our fellow species, face. This is why the United Nations formulated a specific goal around Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 11. The goal recognises that while cities are part of the sustainability problem, with a mass of people all drawing upon resources to eat, drink, dispose of waste, stay healthy and so forth, they are also the most effective places to implement solutions. This is illustrated by Figure 6 below, which shows the lights of incredibly densely populated Hong Kong whilst coming in to land for a sustainability conference (yes, the irony is palpable). A mass of people all together poses greater resource pressure but enables greater efficiencies in delivering power, for example, or removing waste. Much less land is used when buildings go up rather than out, perhaps enabling greater green space. Cities also become interesting sustainability test sites, the classic examples being Masdar in Abu Dhabi, believed to be one of the world’s most sustainable urban communities. As we will discuss momentarily, cities have become even more complex spaces under Covid-19.

Moreover, the challenges that Professor Evans outlined earlier are catalysed by climate crisis. The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that globally, 41 people are being displaced each minute. The Global Report on Internal Displacement (2016) found that between 2008 and 2016 21.5 million people were displaced due to climate change – and that rate of change is increasing dramatically. Climate change can be a key driver of humanitarian crisis or it can make an existing crisis worse. Such crises then tend to be under reported. Care International (2020) refer to Africa as a ‘blind spot’ for the coverage of humanitarian crises that are fuelled by the climate emergency. In 2019 Madagascar suffered a chronic food crisis due to drought that impacted 2.6million people but this crisis largely went unknown internationally. Of the US$90bn damage created by Hurricane Harvey that ripped through the Caribbean and Texas in 2017, around US$67bn is attributable to the human influence on climate (Frame et al., 2020). The catastrophic bushfires in Australia in 2020 not only destroyed 5.4m hectares of rainforest, home to 3,000 indigenous people, but released 830m tonnes of carbon dioxide, far more than the country’s annual greenhouse gas pollution (New South Wales Environment Department, 2020). California governor Gavin Newsom declared that the wildfires that swept through California in the summer of 2020 show that the ‘debate around climate change is over’ (BBC, 2020). Rates of recovery will be impacted by climate changes including drought or more frequent and intense fires. Whichever example you draw upon from the perspective of the subject that you are studying, there is no doubt that:

Drawing upon Professor Evans’ thoughts about the challenges for sustainability, and your interpretation of ‘sustainability’, so far, what do you think? Are we doomed? Can we avert a global collapse before 2100? The next exercise invites you to tell us, and each other, what you think. After you’ve completed the poll, you’ll be able to see how others taking the unit have voted. We will also ask you to complete the poll again at the end of the course.

What did you make of the responses others made to the poll? Did most people vote the same way as you? Did they think differently? And what did you think about being asked the question, ‘Are we all doomed?’ at the start of a unit about sustainability?

As you have probably already begun to appreciate, and perhaps have experienced yourself, the sustainability challenges that we have faced, arguably since the Brundtland report of 1987, are interlinked - in turn generating difficult questions as to how they could, or should, be tackled, as Professor James Evans outlines in the next film.

Appreciating the interlinkages between the different components of sustainable development generates tensions and opportunities as to how they should be tackled. In particular it highlights the need for partnerships between different actors at different scales, whether that be reducing aviation emissions, reducing single use plastics, or regulating the banking sector, as no single group, country or organisation can fix these problems in isolation. This need for new partnerships and better governance is a core part of SDG 17, which we will discuss further. Before that, the following exercise invites you to consider some of the interlinkages between key sustainability challenges to illustrate the complexity of the sustainable development challenge that we face.

- The Impact of Covid-19

We have begun to outline the complexity of the challenges that we face in sustainable development. That was before the Covid-19 pandemic. A number of recent global disasters have been exacerbated by Covid: providing shelter for families who have lost their homes to wildfire, or are seeking asylum having crossed the channel, is much harder to do when social distancing is required. In the next film, Professor Evans talks about the impact of Covid-19.

James talks about the ‘triple hit’ of Covid-19 on progress towards sustainability. He identifies challenges to work, health and education, which have led the UN to say that Covid 19 will reverse the last ten years of global development. We will hear more about the challenge of Covid for the SDGs from Professor David Hulme, in Core Module 2.

On top of the direct impacts of Covid, in the next film, James explains how Covid has further exacerbated existing inequalities, creating challenges that cut across the SDGs. The digital divide is an immediate example, and one that we will discuss further in SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

In the film, James explains how progress towards gender inequality has been reversed. SDG 5 Gender Equality considers the global patterns of gender equality. It’s interesting that James focuses on examples from the Global North, where women undertook greater childcare responsibilities during lockdown, shifting the shape of the workforce, potentially with long lasting implications.

- Silver linings of Covid-19

We mentioned earlier that cities present a curious space for sustainability as perpetrator and victim of, and potential saviour for, sustainability. Covid 19 has reshaped cities with some unforeseen but positive consequences, as James explains in the next film.

In the film, James mentions the reduction in emissions from the aviation industry. To put that into perspective, let’s consider carbon footprints. An individual’s carbon footprint is an estimation of the amount of CO₂ given out as we travel, buy food, heat our homes, and generally live. The average personal footprint in Britain in 2013 was 7.1 tonnes (t). To reduce environmental impact in line with the IPCC’s report, individual carbon footprints must be reduced to 1.2t of CO₂. On every flight to New York and back, each traveller emits about 1.2t of CO₂. According to the IATA, the aviation industry contributes roughly 2% of global CO₂ emissions, which equates to approximately 815 million tonnes of CO₂ globally. Moreover, air travel emits other vapours and gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect with the IPCC estimating that the warming effect of aircraft emissions is about 1.9 times greater than CO₂ alone. Due to a Global Agreement from 1944 to facilitate trade, there is no tax on aviation fuel. A decrease in air travel at the start of lockdown, then, was a good thing. Le Quéré et al., (2020) estimate that at their peak, emissions in individual countries decreased by –26% on average. Of course, the related implications of decreased air travel are job losses both directly and through the impact on associated industries.

James also touched upon how patterns of behaviour have changed, positively and negatively. The image below shows a graph of the electricity use in University Place. The blue bars show usage in July-early September 2020, while the red line shows usage in the same period in 2019, and the orange line the University’s ongoing target to reduce electricity use by 1%. Note the shift in 2020 usage at the point when University buildings began to be used again after lockdown. While it’s a good thing that the University’s electricity use decreased during the 2020 lockdown, the overall net energy use will have shifted, potentially onto people for whom energy is already expensive. We’ll discuss Energy poverty in more detail in SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy.

Lockdown changed many of our local habits, to the benefit of sustainability. For example, carbon emissions in the first half of 2020 are likely to be 14% lower than they were for the same period in 2019, because spending remained weaker than usual even as lockdown restrictions eased (Guardian, 2020). The clothing industry is one of the greatest contributors to carbon emissions, so lower spending on clothing may have cut emissions from clothing stores by 620,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Remember the triple bottom line again, though: the challenge here is the hundreds of thousands of low paid workers in the garment industry who lost their jobs as international contracts for clothes were cancelled due to low demand. Now, think back to James’ point earlier about the impacts of Covid-19 on inequality: often the workers who lost their jobs were women who relied on the flexible work to fit around childcare. The World Bank estimates that the pandemic could increase the number of people who are extremely poor (defined as living on less than USD1.90 a day) by 71 million to 100 million (World Bank, 2020).

- Air Quality

James also talked about how air quality improved over cities during the Covid 19 pandemic due to the reduction in traffic during lockdown. If you live in a city, maybe you noticed this yourself. For a while, at least, the air smelt better.

Arguably air quality is under-represented in the Sustainable Development Goals. It’s given just one short mention under SDG 3, which is one of the broadest SDGs, though the consequences of air pollution extend beyond health: particulate matter in the air also damages ecosystems through acidification, for example. In our SDG3 module, Professor Sheena Cruickshank discusses the health impacts of poor air quality. Just 20% of the urban population studied by the World Health Organisation (WHO) live in areas that comply with WHO air quality guidelines levels of PM 2.5 . PM means particulate matter and can include any particles in the air, from car exhausts to pollen. Poor air quality has long been recognised as a major health challenge. In cities in the global south, particulate air pollution can be 4 to 15 times higher than WHO guidelines which put many people at risk of long-term health problems, arguably in places that have huge pressures on existing under-resourced health care infrastructure - and that was before Covid-19, which has heightened the problem or air pollution, and the awareness of it. Now, evidence suggests that there are links between transmission of Covid-19 and poor air quality, which is often found in poorer areas, such as on arterial routes into city centres.

It is now clear - literally in the air - that any temporary improvement in air quality achieved during lockdown has been lost, as people have started using their cars again. Meanwhile, early research indicates that Covid particles have been found on air pollution and, of course, it is harder to recover from a respiratory disease like Covid-19 if you are breathing poor air, and Covid-damaged lungs will be heavily impacted by air pollution. Clean air then becomes more than ever an imperative for sustainable development and, as James suggested, another opportunity to make more people listen to sustainability concerns.

Manchester is the second-worst council area in England for inhalable particulate matter and thought to be the most congested region outside of London, with 152 roads in breach of legal NO₂ levels. Manchester’s Mayor, Andy Burnham pledged to make Manchester a leading green city in Europe, investing £122m in a Bus Priority package and £83 m on 27 new trams whilst trebling the number of electric vehicle charging points and delivering 40,000 more seats on commuter trains as part of his ‘Congestion Deal’. At the same time £6 billion has been invested into road plans.

However, Manchester’s proposed ‘Clean Air Zone’ has been continuously delayed, most recently due to Covid. It is a controversial plan that has been challenged by commercial drivers, particularly smaller businesses, who will be taxed to drive into the city centre. Environmental groups have argued that not charging private vehicles means the plan will be insufficient to improve air quality, while others have argued that taxing private vehicles will disadvantage the poorest in society. This latter argument has been challenged, as ONS data illustrates less than 10% car ownership in the lowest income households, whilst nearly all households in the richest 10% by income own a car. Meanwhile, air quality campaigners argue that even if the clean air zone was brought in tomorrow, a newborn baby would be five before they would breathe legally safe air. Like any sustainability problem, there are competing positionalities, not least from taxi drivers who argue that the tax imposed on their vehicles will make their business unviable.

In the ‘Silver linings of Covid-19’ film James also outlined how Covid-19 has changed people’s attitudes towards the global environment. As he explained, some evidence from opinion polls suggest that people are more aware of climate change as a threat because, for the first time ever, they are part of the crisis. Air quality is a question of sustainable development. As truly awful as the Covid 19 pandemic has been, the opportunity for health if we can reframe these questions, make them more accessible and more clearly positioned on political agendas, is one potentially good outcome.

- Green Recovery: Rebuilding after Covid-19

Covid-19 has shown us a need for Green Recovery that would facilitate rebuilding our economy and society but with respect to the environment to facilitate a more sustainable future. Jonny Sadler is the Director of the Manchester Climate Change Agency. You’ll hear from Jonny in SDG 13, Climate Action. Here he summarises the the opportunity afforded by a green recovery:

Earlier, James made the point that due to Covid-19, governments are more willing to legislate to encourage healthy behaviours but also to discourage unhealthy behaviours. Jonny’s positioning of a green recovery further illustrates the need for stronger partnership between different actors. This is challenging when you look at the intersectionalities of sustainable development and realise the need for multi-scalar, multi-actor governance to address them. There is no ownership of air, for example; it is a commonly held resource. Air crosses international boundaries, especially as aircraft travel overhead. No global government exists to fix these global problems. While we may end up with a global government at some point in our species’ future, it is unlikely to happen before the end of this century, which is the critical time frame to ensure the sustainability of the planet. The best solution we have is for people and organisations to work together, which is what the SDGs are all about. The enabling mechanism enshrined in SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals proposes ways to strengthen governance, or the ability to organise collective action, for sustainability. Of course, the key question then becomes who should be acting to fix our global problems?

In the next Film, Professor James Evans talks about how we might rebuild in a more sustainable way after Covid, and who should make this happen.

James made the point that global problems require global solutions for sustainable development. Before we address the important question of responsibility for sustainable development, we need to unpack sustainable development in a little more detail and explain why global cooperation has been such a challenge in the past. The next chapter considers where sustainable development has come from and explains some of its core principles.

1.3 Origins and core principles of sustainable development

So far in this module we have introduced sustainability and sustainable development and presented the concept of the triple bottom line laid out by the Brundtland Report. In the last chapter we discussed why sustainable development is needed by beginning to unpack the sustainability challenges that we face today and where they have come from. This chapter will deepen our understanding of sustainability, and its relationship to the more political concept of sustainable development and consider some of the political milestones that have shaped the agenda.

To begin, in the next film, Professor James Evans explains where the idea of sustainable development came from.

If sustainable development is an attempt to enable development to continue while not endangering the long term sustainability of the planet, as Professor James Evans explained, it is a highly political concept, which illustrates why the global collaboration necessitated by Covid-19 is such a shift in governance. This is powerfully illustrated through the two WorldMapper examples in the interactive below.

The chart below, taken from Our World in Data, illustrates the measure of cumulative CO₂ emission given as the share of the global total. The graph clearly illustrates the significant transitions and shifts in global emissions which have occurred. If you click on the interactive version you can see the emission shifts of individual countries over time. You’ll notice how, for most of the 19th century, global cumulative emissions were dominated by Europe; firstly in the United Kingdom, and then other countries in the (now) European Union. You’ll notice also that the cumulative contribution of the United States began to rise in the second half of the 19th century into the 20th. By 1950 its contribution peaked at 40 percent; since then it has declined to approximately 26%, but remains the largest in the world. Look also at emissions for China and India. By 2015, China accounted for 12% of total cumulative emissions, and India for 3%.

In 2015, a report from Oxfam highlighted how there is a challenge of fairness and inequality in sustainability, with the wealthiest 10% of the global population being responsible for 50% of emissions. This is illustrated in Figure 8, which illustrates the percentage of CO2 emissions by world population. In stark contrast to the richest 10%, the poorest 50% are responsible for only around 10% of total lifestyle consumption emissions.

Figure 8 illustrates the political awkwardness around sustainability policy that Professor Evans mentioned earlier. The richest 10% of the population are responsible for almost half of the total lifestyle consumption emissions whilst the poorest 50% are responsible for around 10% of the emissions. Already we are seeing the physical consequences of these emissions through, for example, the cyclones that hit Mozambique in the summer of 2019. Not only are the populations that are least responsible for the emissions still being impacted by them, but also, because they are also poorer, they are generally the populations who have the fewest resources to mitigate or respond to that crisis.

- The Politics of Sustainable Development

Whether it is considered through international carbon emissions, the aviation industry, or quotas of fish, sustainability is inherently political. Sustainable Development therefore requires wide political buy-in. Many countries have signed agreements based upon the principles of sustainable development, as James explains in the next film.

As a political concept, Sustainable Development has been recognised in global governance for several decades. There are many sustainability timelines to be found on the internet. It is interesting to note the point at which the different synopsis of sustainability start and which key events they include, which often reflects the positionality of the creator of the source. A key milestone in environmental action was the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. This was the first time that the political world came together, not only in multiscalar partnership but in recognition of the imperative of climate in Sustainable Development. This partnership led to the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which, as the next section outlines, went on to build the COP 21 in 2015 as a governing framework for climate emergency as agreed by 187 Nations.

As explained earlier, the UNFCCC meets annually. The 2019 meeting of the UNFCCC was held in Bonn amidst the soaring heatwave, perhaps the tangible result of historic unsustainable practices. The conference showcased best practices of effective climate policies and technologies and stressed the need for nations to deliver on the mandates agreed in Paris in 2015. Amidst the extreme heat of Bonn in 2019, Ms Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, stated:

At this meeting, it was recognised that in order to achieve the central Paris Agreement goal of holding the global average temperature rise to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced 45 per cent by 2030, and climate neutrality achieved by 2050.

- The Triple Bottom Line: The Trade Offs of Sustainability

As we’ve seen, the idea of sustainable development has existed for more than thirty years, forming the focus for numerous global conferences and thousands of policies aimed at protecting the environment. That said, our planet is arguably in a worse state than ever before, and many criticisms have been levelled at the idea of sustainable development. These range from neo-malthusian arguments that population growth has been too great to sustain, through to radical arguments that the insistence of capitalism on economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with sustainability. While these critiques (and others) undoubtedly contain some truth, they are best viewed as challenges to be overcome as they provide no realistic global alternative.

One of the key weaknesses of sustainable development has been the difficulty of achieving real change and ensuring that economic growth does not harm the environment. In practice economic interests often trump social and environmental considerations. In part this reflects the difficulties of putting financial valuations on social and environmental impacts so that they can be directly weighed up against economic benefits. For example, it is easy to estimate the economic benefits of a new housing estate, but harder to capture the cost of destroying the small wetland on which it will be built. Valuing more sustainable development options is also complicated by the fact that sustainability benefits tend to be longer term and more diffuse than economic benefits. For example, as we discussed earlier, the benefits of building a new airport are immediate in terms of extra economic activity, investment and jobs, while the environmental benefits of not building the airport are exceptionally long term and relate to things as diverse as avoiding coastal flooding in Bangladesh, reduced heatwaves in Australia and fewer fires in the Peak District. In practice there are multiple trade-offs in decision-making around sustainable development and sustainable action.

Lets look at two tangible, interlinked examples of the need to consider trade offs in sustainability at an individual level; plastics and food.

Plastics

In part due to the work of Sir David Attenborough in the Blue Planet series, most people are aware of the damage that plastics have created on the earth. But plastic is a wonder product, the value of which has to be weighed up (or traded off), against the environmental destruction created by poor use and disposal of the waste, largely generated by our throwaway consumer culture. Plastic needs to be understood as an important resource. In the next film, Michael Shaver, Professor of Polymer Science, explains the science and background of plastics.

As Professor Shaver explained, plastics transformed our ability to manufacture things and dramatically reduced the costs of production which in turn reshaped us as consumers. Plastics made many more consumer goods much more accessible because they became affordable. Plastics are efficient in every way and in fact, actually have a low economic footprint to produce. The challenge is what to do with them at the end of their lives. This is where the physical materiality of the plastic represents a cultural and governance issue as less planning was invested into how to dispose of the wonder product.

Moreover, plastics are not the same. Plastic packaging is made from seven different types of plastic, some of which are more recyclable than others. The heavier the packaging, the more protective it is but the harder it is to recycle. Nobody would challenge the necessity of plastics in technology or medicine, but a tougher question is generated in relation to food waste. For example, what are we to make of reports that an unwrapped cucumber will last for three days, assuming it survives transport to a supermarket, while a shrink wrapped cucumber will last for around 14 days? According to Fareshare, 1.9 million tonnes of food is already wasted in the UK every year. That’s a huge resource loss, before you consider the multiple costs of production, transportation, processing and so forth. Packaging means that only 3% of food goes to waste before it reaches the shops. Most supermarkets now charge for single use plastic bags. A Danish report on the life cycle of plastic bags published in 2018 concluded that the more sturdy ‘bags for life’ that are made from non-woven polypropylene are only less damaging to the environment if they are used 52 times. An organic cotton bag needs to be used 20,000 times (that’s a shopping trip every day for over half a century) to balance out the resources required to make it.

Plastic itself is not the problem. The issue is how we use plastic and the type of plastics that we use, precisely because the wonder product is so cheap to make and versatile. In the next film Professor Michael Shaver discusses how and why plastics have become so vilified as an environmental problem and what we need to do to reduce the negative impact of plastics.

Did it come as a surprise to hear Professor Shaver say we should use more plastics? Plastics have a low carbon footprint, certainly when compared to glass or paper, but they have to be the right plastics. Whilst stressing the need to just produce less waste, Michael indicated the difference between ‘able’ and ‘ed’ words, so rather than using recyclABLE plastics, we need to use more recyclED plastics. That requires, however, a policy shift that enables us to more effectively treat and recycle plastics, and indeed all waste. This argument still supports the ‘war against plastics’ that is such a popular environmental message at the moment, but illustrates a need for a more nuanced, or critical, understanding about plastics. In the next film, Professor Shaver illustrates the role of the individual in a better understanding of plastics but also the need to critically challenge some of the environmental messages that we are exposed to, particularly through the popular media.

There are always trade-offs in sustainability. As Professor Shaver said, you have to be well-informed about the decisions that you are making. Sometimes this requires challenging the popularist message, or going a step further to understand the reality. Often this has policy implications. When we were talking after the interview, for example, Michael referenced how the widely used Vegware take away cups are technically recyclable. But, few councils have the ability to recycle them, so they are often sent to landfill. As the consumer you think you are using a recyclable cup. Let's look at another very poignant example of sustainability trade offs and misunderstanding. Food.

Food

The photograph below was taken at one of the first Youth Strikes for Climate in Manchester. The prominent ‘Go Vegan’ sign was offered as a major solution to climate catastrophe.

Being vegan is becoming more popular as the health benefits of a plant based diet are increasingly recognised, even to the benefit of business making it a much easier diet to follow as vegan options are now readily available in a number of restaurant chains. But echoing Michael’s words about a more critical understanding of plastics, as an environmental action the message that a vegan diet will reduce climate catastrophe needs some careful consideration.

In the next film, Dr Malte Rödl, who is an Engineer, talks about a vegan diet and the complexities and trade offs of eating sustainably. Returning to the opening discussion in this module, Malte first challenges you to consider how you would define ‘sustainable’.

As Dr Rödl explained, broadly speaking, a vegan diet causes around 40% less green house gases (GHGs) than a diet including meat, dairy, and/or other animal products, which has been verified by much research such as Aleksandrowicz et al., (2016). A vegetarian diet still emits around 25% less GHGs. But as Malte explained, it is important to consider the full scope of sustainability: think back to the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Food is actually really quite complex when it comes to sustainability.

Malte talked about the impact of diet on the planet, for example, which is much greater than carbon alone. The monocultures of maize and soy in the Americas grown for tofu, meat alternatives, even animal feed, require a huge use of fertiliser, pesticides, and herbicides, which may cause among others biodiversity loss, eutrophication, or even illness of farmers. In the worst cases, native rainforest was logged or burned to create those fields.

The transportation of food is often under considered. Locally or regionally grown food needs less transport—but these benefits are quickly equalised or destroyed when foods are instead grown in passive or active greenhouses; Clune, et al., (2017) suggest that heated greenhouses increase the GHGs of fruit and vegetable production six fold. If products are harvested far away from consumption, the mode of transport matters. The least impact is associated with cargo ships, the most with aeroplanes (see Edwards-Jones, 2010). This is particularly important for products harvested far away that need to be kept cooled in shipping containers or trucks: Green beans flown in from Kenya to England might be cheaper, but emit around ten times more GHGs than green beans grown in the UK. As Malte highlighted in his tomato example, heated greenhouses may still be preferable but then a tomato grown in a heated greenhouse in the Netherlands will have a higher carbon footprint than one grown in the sunshine of Spain but flown to the UK. Perhaps surprisingly, tropical fruits such as pineapples generate 98% of their GHGs through transport. Eating only what is in season, ideally as close to home as possible, reduces the choice of fruit and vegetables to a lot of kale, cabbage, and root vegetables in British Winter.

Take a look at the chart in Figure 13 below, which demonstrates that cows milk has a higher environmental impact than vegan substitutes.

The chart shows that, whether we measure in terms of carbon emissions, land or water use, milk alternatives are better for the environment than the real thing. But focus in a bit more closely, and maybe things are not quite so clear cut. Almond milk has a much lower carbon footprint than semi skimmed dairy milk, but almonds also require huge amounts of water, around 5 litres per almond. In California, where over 80% of almonds are grown, drought has raged for decades. Wat does that say about the sustainability of almond milk? In a more ‘social’ example, the demand for the superfood quinoa has been blamed for many local farmers in Peru and Bolivia not being able to afford their native grain. You might have personal reasons for dietary choice, which are essential for you, your health, culture and your lifestyle, but without critical consideration, just going vegan won’t necessarily save the planet.

Try it for yourself. For our next activity use the climate change food calculator to analyse your own diet, thinking critically about the multiple dimensions of sustainability that we have discussed.

Did you identify how could you make sustainable change through your food intake? Remember,, the data needs to be interpreted carefully and, as Dr Rödl explained earlier, allowing for a significant error margin. In the original research that supported the carbon calculator the measure of ‘impact’ was constructed through the different food production methods that affect the overall kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per serving of the food. The graph below shows the relative ‘impacts’ of different foods. It serves as an interesting summary of the dilemma of food sustainability we’ve been exploring. Take a close look at it. What strikes you about it?

The graph shows that a low impact beef might have been reared locally on a more sustainable diet than beef flown in from America fed on a high protein diet (remember Malte’s comment about the difference between free roaming grass fed beef and cattle reared in sheds). A chocolate bar made from cocoa imported from deforested rainforest could then have a higher impact through kilograms of greenhouse gas than locally reared beef. Conversely the highest impacting vegetable proteins have the same impact as the lowest impact animal proteins. It’s also interesting to see that beer has the same impact as dairy milk and that farmed prawns rank so highly in the number of kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per serving. As Dr Rödl identified earlier, on top of this, there are further cultural impacts that have to be factored in such as land use, employment rights, production processes and so forth. Do any of these values surprise you? Having analysed your own diet, and perhaps thinking back to the role of plastics in food waste, would you make any changes to your consumption patterns?

In the next film Malte picks up on the question of cost, a vital element of the triple bottom line, as much for the consumer as for the producer.

Food is a really good example of the tensions of sustainability. We have to eat. As Malte explains, when thinking about your food intake you have to make critical decisions around the sort of impact you want to make. The reference to cost is also interesting to consider here. Questions of sustainability have to factor in the pragmatics of cost; it can be more expensive, for example, to have biodegradable plates rather than styrofoam in a start-up street food business. Might a lower environmental impact be a ‘selling point’ to consumers who would then be willing to pay more? Similarly, it is more expensive to buy organic food. Is sustainability, then, a luxury available only to the more affluent? Or is it a case of going back to simpler values, eating locally grown food but in turn reducing the range of choice? Or is it about balance and eating less of the more environmentally damaging foods?

Both plastics and food highlight the need to think critically about environmental ‘greenwash’. As we have just discussed, if based on imported fruits, soy and meat substitutes, some vegan diets can have a massive carbon footprint, potentially rivalling that of a low impact beef diet. Likewise, not all plastics are the same. Then there is the need to factor in the broader context - there is little environmental benefit in driving to a further away shop because it has recycled bottles, for example.

Greenwashing, also known as ‘green sheen’, grew in popularity and use with the increasing environmental awareness of the 1990s. Sometimes greenwashing is a public relations or marketing exercise to make an organisation seem more environmentally friendly than they actually are, perhaps to enhance sales. Alternatively it can be used in an effort to disguise actively environmentally damaging activity. The term is also increasingly used to summarise grand claims about general aims or beliefs which are unsubstantiated, or worse, contradicted by action.

There is a growing body of literature dedicated entirely to how we communicate environmental messages, particularly around climate change. A tension lies in conveying sufficient scientific information to support an environmental claim, but in an accessible and relevant manner for the audience. It would be very difficult to summarise Professor Shaver’s thoughts about plastics on the back of a water bottle destined for sale in a supermarket, for example, or to enable national policy makers to truly understand how a late rainy season would impact a soy farmer in equatorial Africa (Chirisa et al., 2018). To make genuinely informed decisions about sustainability decisions, we need that critical knowledge.

With any environmental message it is important to think critically about its intention and aim. We use the term ‘critical’ a lot in academic writing and discussion. It does not necessarily mean to ‘rubbish’ the claim with critique (although you can, of course, disagree with it!), more to use it actively, thinking about the motives and aims of the message and how that impacts how it might be understood or used.

Generally the ‘Ws’, are a useful rule -

• Who wrote it?
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• Who was it written for?
• HoW was it written?

Being critical then, recognises that there are different viewpoints or positionalities in every discussion. This is why we will often ask you to ‘analyse’, ‘discuss’, ‘evaluate’ and so forth in discussions. Political viewpoints and the presentation of the same issue in different newspapers is the obvious example here. You might find that coming from different disciplinary backgrounds your thoughts are challenged by some of the sources in this course - perhaps you are a staunch scientist who believes in the epidemiology of disease over the social science of health, for example. Neither viewpoint is right or wrong, in fact together they paint a detailed picture to help us better understand illness but only if we understand the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

The two examples of plastics and food we’ve just looked at present the tension of the trade offs of economy, society and environment (profit, people and planet) in day to day decisions. A similar challenge applies for sustainable development of weighing up the merits of taxing cars to enter Manchester city centre, building a third pier on Manchester airport, imposing taxes on countries that are developing their industrial base and emitting carbon in the process. Every positionality, every viewpoint, every need will be different. This is where partnership is vital to achieve sustainable development, particularly through the SDGs.

1.4 SDG 17: Partnerships for sustainability and the SDGs

As explained in the film, to tackle sustainability problems we need new actors, often at different scales, working together in partnership. But who are these actors? What do they do? The next interactive draws upon your understanding of the challenges of the triple bottom line to unpack just that question – who is, or should be, responsible for tackling the sustainability challenges that we face today?

How did you rank the actors who should be responsible for sustainable development?

We asked Professor James Evans to rank his top actors most responsible for tackling the challenge of sustainability and explain why. There are no right and wrong answers to this exercise. One of the many beauties of interdisciplinary learning is that we all approach the same challenge from different perspectives and thus shed new light on old challenges. This was James’ ranking, and his explanation for it.

Whilst James listed business as, in his opinion, having top responsibility for sustainable development, note how his ranking illustrates partnership across and between sectors. People are the main driving force of business; Universities can support governments with knowledge. The UNFCCC meeting that we discussed earlier stressed the need for nations to work together to deliver on the mandates agreed in Paris in 2015. Partnership is the ethos of SDG 17. It is arguably the most important goal because it provides a blueprint for organisations and people around the world to be able to address the other 16 SDGs at whatever scale they can. This could range from international charities working with national governments to improve access to affordable vaccines (SDG 3: Health) to employees within an organisation working together to address gender inequality (SDG 5: Gender equality).

When defining Goal 17, Partnership for the Goals, the United Nations state:

Drawing upon this description of SDG 17, in the next film Professor James Evans discusses the role of partnership in sustainability and, in turn, the role of SDG 17 in sustainable development.

Our ability to achieve the SDGs is underpinned by our ability to form effective partnerships. As James says in the film, there are numerous ways in which we can support the development of partnerships, including financial incentives, technology and capacity building. Remember how the COP offered additional support for capacity building to realise climate change policy. The final two ways to support partnerships are more about creating an enabling environment in which the SDGs can be effectively addressed, as James discusses in the next film.

As James explains, technology, data and monitoring are examples of factors that can enable the delivery of the SDGs. In the next core module we will discuss more about the partnership required to fund the SDGs, which is estimated at $220-260 billion in international public finance. As James mentioned, digital technology is vital both to achieve the goals and to monitor their progress. Over 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the last two years often through new technology. Spatial data can play a critical role. For example, such data might map geographical locations of biodiversity, key watersheds, protected areas, human pressures and, as we will see later in this module in the case of Dr Jonny Huck’s GIS mapping tool, people requiring medical care, all of which enable policy makers to make better decisions and monitor progress towards the targets. Digital technology makes new forms of governance possible, bringing data and monitoring logics to the fore and connecting people, governments and resources in new and potentially more efficient ways (Trencher, 2018).

The SDGs are, by their nature, hard to measure. It is widely recognised that the people who need help the most are those that are hardest to access, or often even invisible. How can you reliably and consistently assess gender equality for SDG 5, for example? As we have ascertained, data is expensive to gather. A recent study by Aarhus University used remotely sensed satellite data to monitor rural poverty in low and middle-income countries, analysing land use data from satellite images for a group of rural villages in Kenya. They used satellites to identify the poorest households with 62% accuracy and a cost far lower than doing house to house surveys, especially as satellite data becomes cheaper and easier to obtain. This could then free up budget to be used for other development work. Digital technology and data have the potential to make major contributions to the delivery of the SDGs through making more information available more quickly to larger groups of people to ensure that no person is left behind, and drawing together new multi scalar partnerships to address problems.

The film illustrates how investing in data unhides the invisible 7% of the world who are otherwise hidden from sustainable development policy. Data is often a cheaper, more effective way to understand, prioritise and implement development policy. Data has to be used critically and carefully. This is why we are asking you to analyse ‘data’ that you think is important for sustainable development as part of your assessment for this unit.

- The Importance of Technology and Data for Sustainable Development

Let’s look at some examples of the potential, and importance, of technology and data for Sustainable Development. Using data enables us to understand the sustainability problem clearly and shows how to more effectively deliver solutions – whether that is the carbon from Manchester airport, the water used in your oat milk consumption, the number of people registered to vote, cases of malaria, and so forth.

A new technology initiative in Guinea-Bissau, is revolutionising survival rates in a population where malaria is the leading cause of death among pregnant women and children under five. Rather than hand writing all of the medical notes, a partnership between UNDP, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), the government and the World Bank is introducing real-time monitoring using mobile tablets to digitize malaria data in 136 health facilities, with the hope of expanding to cover all 169 health facilities in the country by 2020. It used to take two to three weeks to analyse and process the data, as is the case in many African countries, where limited access to mobile software or WIFI, coupled with poor roads and long distances travelled between communities to gather information, means reporting is often a laborious and complicated task resulting in slow or poor healthcare. Quality and timely malaria data enables confident reporting where outbreaks are occurring which can help to predict patterns of future transmission. This has significant implications when decisions must be taken on which areas should be targeted with malaria prevention or treatment campaigns and how limited resources are allocated. Meanwhile, in countries around the world, renewable energy technology is helping communities that were never connected to electricity grids leapfrog into a cleaner, more secure energy future. Whether it is biogas in Botswana or wind power in Uruguay, these proven technologies are helping to secure sustainable energy for all.

Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, talks about how data can ‘unhide’ the invisible poor and in turn make their voices heard to understand how to deliver effective aid to improve their lives in a sustainable way. Data gives people power and agency by making them visible. As Claire said:

Dr, Jonathan Huck from the University of Manchester’s Geography Department has been using data and technology in a new partnership to deliver humanitarian aid. In the next film Jonny talks about ‘Huckathon’, (a play on the well known data challenge, Hackathon!), a tool that he has created which essentially uses satellite maps to enable the delivery of prosthetic limbs to victims of civil war in rural Uganda.

As Dr. Huck explains, his simple GIS tool has delivered 50 limbs to people who were impacted by conflict in Northern Uganda. The maps that have been created have further use for other teams as well. Huckathon is a great example of partnership and the application of technology in development to, in this case, literally put the invisible poor onto the map. This example illustrates the role of data and technology in development, As Jonny says:

‘Huckathon’ illustrates not only the role technology can play in sustainable development, in this case literally to find the invisible, but also the notion of multi-stakeholder partnership: without you sitting at your computer physically finding the invisible poor people in previously war torn Northern Uganda, medical teams would not be able to deliver vital medical care. In the next film, Jonny talks a bit more about his experience of partnership in humanitarian aid, and sustainable development.

Often partnership in development enables a number of other impacts. As Jonny explained, the maps created through Huckathon have been used in meningitis research, and also to support a cervical screening programme that was able to move from more or less randomly capturing people in the streets to moving systematically around population areas, thus delivering much more efficient, effective healthcare. The next activity is your chance to contribute to that partnership.

Huckathon is a really good example of the power of data in development, and in turn, how you can support humanitarian aid by using technology to generate data. To continue our discussion lets move from Uganda to apply the notion of partnership and data a bit closer to home and look at what The University of Manchester is doing around sustainability, sustainable development and the SDGs.

Founded in 1825, The University of Manchester was the first and most eminent of the civic Universities. We have slightly fewer goals than the SDGs, being guided by three: world class research, outstanding learning and student experience and social responsibility. We are unique as the only University in the UK that has social responsibility as our third goal. Social responsibility describes the way we are making a difference to the social and economic well-being of our communities through our teaching, research, and public events and activities. As our President Dame Nancy Rothwell puts it, if our first two goals ask ‘what are we good at?’ then our third goal, social responsibility, gets to the heart of the question ‘what are we good for?’

At the University of Manchester we strive to make positive difference at multiple scales. The University’s three fold vision comes together in the delivery of this course. Through research, teaching and social responsibility, the University - and you! - make a significant contribution to our communities and society through a wide range of activities. In each module of this course we suggest ways that you can ‘activate your learning’, to do something, to put the theory into practice. Some of these suggestions draw upon our signature programmes such as volunteering, or the Ethical Grand Challenges, which have the added advantage of contributing to the Stellify Award.

Not unlike the SDGs, a key part of our social responsibility approach is about partnership; partnership with you, our students, partnerships for research, partnerships for positive impact. Social responsibility is multi-scalar, we work at a global, national and local level. We learn from communities as we consider how we can reduce the negative impact of being so big, and make positive change. The £7.5 million Future Dams research programme is one example of a partnership between engineers, development workers and sociologists aiming to improve the selection and design of dams by enabling analysts and decision-makers to consider impacts on wider water, energy, food and environmental systems. The research recognised how dams have the capacity to contribute to social and economic changes that underpin the SDGs. Past experience, however, has shown that poorly designed and planned dam projects can have negative impacts on poor people, exacerbating political instability and environmental degradation.

Closer to home, through the Read with SEED project, staff from the School of Environment and Development (SEED) have been using the University’s electric car to travel to Medlock and Claremont schools, both of which are located in poor socio-economic neighbourhoods very local to the University, to read with the school children, for many of whom English is not their first language. The reading ages of the children involved increased by an average of 6.5 months in one academic year. These two examples are at very different scales and in very different locales, but both are making a huge difference.

- The University of Manchester and the challenge of sustainability

If we think in terms of the triple bottom line, it's not hard to see that a university the size of the University of Manchester presents a sustainability challenge, which we'll look at in a bit more detail in this section. With over 50,000 students and 5,000 staff the University is a massive institution, similar in size to a small town. It is impossible for us to not have an impact on people, planet and profit. As but one example, to maintain that town the University engages with 8,000 suppliers who deliver the diverse range of commodities required to sustain our research, teaching and general operation. That might be delivering the kit and chemicals for our laboratories, supplying the coffee in our cafes, the way that we book overseas travel for academics presenting research to conferences, the virtual learning platform that we subscribe to, the paper in our copiers, the list is endless.

So far we’ve looked at just a few examples of how the University is making a significant positive difference to communities near and far. We hope that this course will equip you, our students, to think critically and make change for sustainable development. The University represents a living laboratory of critical sustainability challenges, and indeed opportunities, as we juggle the triple bottom line of people, planet and environment, as Dr. Emma Gardner, Head of Environmental Sustainability in our Directorate of Estates and Facilities, explains in the next film.

The University of Manchester is a really good example of the triple bottom line and the interlinkages of sustainability. Illustrating the awkward tensions of sustainable development that we discussed earlier, there are often challenging compromises to be made, which is really important to recognise. Let’s take a moment here to pause and discuss the notion of the ‘circular economy’ that Dr Gardner mentioned. The move from linear to circular economy is represented in the diagram below. It is an extension of the idea of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ in which, to prevent waste, products and materials are made more efficiently and reused. In the circular economy, products are reusable by design. For example, electrical devices are designed in such a way that they are easier to repair. Products and raw materials are also reused as much as possible, for example by recycling plastic into pellets for making new plastic products. If new raw materials are needed, they must be obtained sustainably so that the natural and human environment is not damaged. It could be interesting here to draw upon Zimmerman’s theory of what a resource is, or could be, and perhaps in the diagram below, substitute ‘raw materials’ for ‘knowledge’, or ‘research’. For example, here at the University of Manchester, the Tyndall Centre’s research into carbon can feed into and inform University policy about business air travel.

As we’ve already established, a massive institution like the University of Manchester cannot not have an impact on the environment. As Dr. Gardner explained, our buildings are resource intensive; our academics fly to conferences; our students in halls of residence have an impact on all aspects of life in Fallowfield. We are also a site of sustainable development. Within the circular knowledge economy, our research feeds into governmental strategy to strengthen sustainable development, our social responsibility works at multiple scales to make a positive difference to communities in Manchester and around the world, and our teaching and learning equips you, our students, to be a driving force for change, as Emma discusses further in the next film.

Emma drew heavily on the circular economy of sustainability at the University of Manchester and how in an institution as massive as ours, sustainability offers opportunity as much as challenge. The University is trying to embed sustainability across all of its teaching, research and operations which makes you, our students, key partners in that. The next activity will encourage you to consider how you might be more sustainable within the University.

- The University of Manchester and the Sustainable Development Goals

Standing at the forefront of positive change, the University is one of the first in the world to produce an SDG report outlining how it is contributing to the SDGs across its research, teaching and operations. The report aims to help focus our future strategy. It gives a good overview of both the breadth of the SDGs and also the many different ways in which organisations and individuals can contribute. The report sets out an evaluation of the University’s work using the SDGs as a framework. The next film, produced by the University, summarises how the University’s work supports the SDGs.

The University of Manchester was ranked first in Europe and third in the world for its work towards the SDGs. Many an educator would critique the role of metrics in Higher Education, but the interesting thing about the analysis of our work towards the SDGs is that it identifies the further opportunities that we have to make sustainable change through new partnerships. For example, the film you’ve just watched referred to the University's Equity and Merit programme. As you work through the other modules in this course, you’ll notice that we often draw upon sustainable development in Uganda. Uganda is a fascinating country with a turbulent political history which has led to some socio-economic development challenges from which many lessons can be learned. It’s also one of the countries, along with Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda, where Equity and Merit Scholarships assist talented but economically disadvantaged students, by enabling them to study at the University of Manchester. The scholarships are jointly funded by the University and our alumni. Many of our Equity and Merit scholars have vast experience in development policy and practice so we approached them to contribute to the construction of this course so that you can learn from their ‘on the ground experience’; and so the circular knowledge economy continues in a sustainable way.

In the next film, Dr. Julian Skyrme, Director of Social Responsibility for the University of Manchester talks about the University’s work towards the SDGs.

As Julian explained, we are the biggest University in the country with 480,000 former students and 40,000 currently. The potential that we have to make positive change is immense. Our students are playing a massive role in sustainable development.

In the next film, Lizzy Haughton, Development Officer for the University of Manchester Students’ Union in 2019, talks about the difference students can make.

You’ll remember, one of the key messages from Professor James Evans about enabling effective Sustainable Development was the need for multi-actor, multi-scalar partnership. Yes, we need system change to prevent ecological catastrophe and for sustainable development. We need governments to put quotas on carbon emissions, and to enforce them. We need freer market economies and trade justice that speaks to the triple bottom line in business. We need cleaner, greener energy. We need to redistribute wealth globally and a just transition to green production that ensures mobility for all. There is a risk that environmental messages can become paralysing, or seem to not apply to you on a day to day basis. We also discussed the need to critique commonly shared environmental messages that may not be quite the solution that they seem, such as going vegan or reducing single use plastic.

You are part of the system that needs to change for a more sustainable future.

You can influence the corporate power and catalyse greater change.

The decisions that you make, the actions that you take, all have some impact on that system. Think back to David Attenborough’s line, ‘the actions of any...one of us may seem to be trivial…..but hundreds of thousands of people who are doing the same thing, that really does have an effect.. This is why choosing not to use a single use plastic water bottle will have impact, as will lobbying about fracking or going on climate strike, as will thinking critically about your diet, or reducing the number of flights that you take each year, to name but a few examples. Often, as this module has shown, those decisions will require some compromise, and it is essential to make them from an informed stand point. In the next film, Julian, Emma and Lizzy talk about the role that students are, or could play, in sustainable development.

To round off this module, we talked to Laetitia Alexandratos, the Education Officer for the Students Union in 2020, the year Covid-19 reshaped so much of the world that we know - including the higher education landscape. Laetitia explains why in the time of Covid-19, the student voice is more important than ever before.

As Laetitia makes clear, you have a key role to play. You have the power. You can make change. And now, that change is more important than ever.

1.6 Conclusion

For the human race to survive, we need to live in a more sustainable manner. It is that simple. This module has unpacked just some of the core concepts of sustainability highlighting the core themes of partnership, scale and inequality that underpin sustainable development. The module has illustrated the vital need for trade offs when making sustainability decisions and constantly weighing up the triple bottom line of sustainable development. The module has also shown the benefits and opportunities that sustainability can bring to business, to people and to the planet - potentially particularly so as we rebuild from Covid-19, or adjust to a ‘new normal’. The module has endeavoured to illustrate your role within the massive project that is sustainability and how you do have the power to make change, for your future. To conclude, Jen summarises some of the key themes of this module, before we link through to Core Module 2, which considers the Sustainable Development Goals.

Having learned the core concepts of sustainability, the next module will consider the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs represent an attempt to address the entire breadth of the challenges facing humanity in a structured and systematic way. This makes them hugely important. It also makes it a massive task that will require the participation of organisations and individuals at all scales and in all countries if it is to succeed.

So let’s start with that. Each of the modules will end with an ‘Activating Learning’ box, which you can see in section 1.7 below. These are suggestions of how we think you can take positive action towards sustainable development to put your learning into practice. The scale of examples range across the modules. Please let us know if you would like to add any other ideas, or want to challenge the suggestions, or share the impact that you have made.

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