ABSTRACTS

EcoSummit Focuses on the Transdisciplinary

By Carl Etnier, Norway / USA

What does it take to solve complicated problems?

The IEES and four other scientific societies tried out one way of answering that question at EcoSummit 2000, a meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 18-22. The complicated problems in question are environmental problems whose solutions span a range of natural and social sciences. The aim of the summit was to bring together all the relevant sciences with policy makers, to build a deeper understanding of the problems, in the hope that better understanding will lead to sustainable solutions.

The EcoSummit was organized around the following six themes:

• Integrated modelling and assessment
• Complex, adaptive, hierarchical systems
• Ecosystem services
• Science and decision-making
• Ecosystem health and human health
• Quality of life and the distribution of wealth and resources

An unusual approach

At the heart of the EcoSummit was the unusual format of working groups constituted around these themes. After the first day, when plenary talks covered each of the six themes, the groups broke up into separate rooms and started the process of writing an essay together. The conditions for doing so were challenging: in most of the themes, the participants were not well known to each other, and they came from a variety of backgrounds. To set the context, the groups had the plenary talk from the day before plus a list of questions developed by the group chair, and fleshed out with some of the group members in an earlier email discussion.

At the end of the second day, if everything went according to plan, the groups should have achieved understanding about what the important issues were they were addressing, and what they had to say about them. The discussion should have integrated the concepts of many branches of science, and the groups should have been well enoung along on their way to writing their essays that they could finish the process by email over the following several months.

On the fourth day, the groups reported to conference as a whole what they had come up with. It was clear that there was a good deal of variation in how closely the groups had fulfilled the EcoSummit's goals.

Integration vs. Focus

At one extreme, the group addressing "complex, adaptive, hierarchical systems” felt they had made great strides in the members’ (already advanced) understanding of systems theory. The themes they discussed, however, were so little integrated with the rest of the conference that many participants outside the group complained that they understood nothing from this group’s plenary presentations. Bernard Patten, the group’s rapporteur, explained that they had made a conscious choice to advance the field rather than trying to integrate more.

At the other extreme, the group on "science and decision-making” was very integrated but less focussed. The group took on what the rapporteur, Jason Shogren, called the conference’s broadest theme, which "could be called the ‘rest of human history.’” He also confessed that this group still seemed to have a ways to go before achieving a common understanding. Mark Schwartz, editor of Biological Conservation and one of the conference organizers, observed that this group had the additional challenge of attracting the most diverse (and one of the largest) group of participants.

The other four groups seemed to have avoided both the Scylla of too little integration and the Charybdis of too little focus. The group on ecosystem services, for example, ended its first day frustrated and uncertain. Johannes Heeb, one of the facilitators, predicted then that the confusion and frustration of the initial day's work were necessary, "the soil in which tomorrow's creative work is planted.” Sure enough, the group was proud to be able to give a coherent presentation about ecosystem services after the second day. "The group pulled together and did great work the second day,” said rapporteur Björn Guterstam.

Wanted: A name for the process

Conference organizer Robert Costanza asked the participants to help come up with a name to describe what they were doing there, using the knowledge and world view of many sciences to coherently address complicated social-environmental problems. "The goal is to find a term that even the ‘person on the street’ would understand, and ‘interdisciplinary’ doesn't work,” Costanza said. Also, he is thinking of something "transdisciplinary at least, where new theory, tools, and techniques develop out of the dialogue.” He mentioned a few suggestions: transdisciplinary science, integrated science, and hard problem science. Anyone wishing to make suggestions is welcome to send them to Costanza.

Elsevier, the publisher which organized and sponsored the conference, plans to publish the conference proceedings next summer. The book is expected to contain the six introductory talks plus the six group chapters on each of themes.

In addition to IEES, the societies sponsoring the conference were Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society, International Society of Ecological Economics, International Society of Ecological Modelling, and International Society of Ecosystem Health.

More about the summit can be found at its homepage, http://www.elsevier.nl/homepage/sag/eco99/

"OICOS Team" Wins International Junior Award

Holistic planning concepts focussing Sustainable Landscape Management, Ecological Engineering and Design are becoming of growing scientific and political interest within the field of Spatial Planning in Germany and Austria.

By EcoEng Correspondent Grit Bürgow, Berlin

In times of great changes within the "EU agriculture industry" as well as of fast economic development towards a "global market place", traditional policies and instruments seem not to meet the upcoming demand for implementing "sustainability criteria" into the context of regional development.

Within that background the call for new approaches, innovative policy and decision-making tools motivated the German "Academy for Spatial Research and Land Development" (Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung e.V. - ARL)to tender an international award 2000 focussing the question:

What kind of Landscapes will be needed in Central Europe in the next Century?
Scenarios, Guidelines, Visions and Tools of a Sustainable Landscape Development

The team: Anja Brüll, Ina Küddelsmann and Grit Bürgow (with additional support by Marco Bünger), landscape planners in Berlin and founding members of the OICOS-network (see interview Anja Brüll), has been granted with the first prize for the "Concept of a Sustainable Quality Management based on the Water Household of the Landscape".

The contributed work presented at the Symposium "The Future of the Cultural Landscape — between Loss, Conservation and Design" in Ingolstadt, South Germany from May 18^th — 20^th 2000, underlined the importance of an holistic approach focussing the interrelations between water, soil and climate processes in the landscape. It referred to the "Energy-Transport-Reaction-Model" (ETR-Model) by Prof. Wilhelm Ripl (Department of Society and Environment, Faculty of Limnology, Technical University of Berlin) who’s "Theory of Landscape (Thermo-)Dynamics" has been introduced as a valuable holistic planning and decision-making tool. According to basic sustainable landscape design and management principles that were derived from this model, following topics relevant for holistic planning and decision-making have been emphasized at the awarding presentation:

• landscape as the regenerative base of society and its economic activities, providing three basic "landscape services" (regeneration of fresh and healthy water, moderate climate conditions and fertile soil),
• the future role of Ecological Engineering and Design as important key disciplines to practically implement sustainable systems at the interface of societies metabolic processes and those of natural living communities (especially to viably interweave city and surrounding landscape by closing resource cycles as well as to create new markets and employment perspectives),
• watersheds as basic organization and management units to perform a "Sustainable Quality Management" (SQM) of the landscape (in accordance to the "Total Quality Management" in business economy) in order to create stable regional economic cycles.

One of the three third prices also was received by a founding OICOS member and former PhD-assistant at the Faculty of Limnology, TU Berlin: Dr. Christian Hildmann, presently working as scientific assistant at the Institute of Geography, Martin-Luther-University in Halle/ Saale.

There has been a broad positive feedback by the conference attendees. In his conclusions Prof. Dr. Werner Buchner (Munich), president of the ARL referred to the winning concept by underscoring the need for new spatial planning concepts that support the basic landscape functions to successfully perform a "dialogue with nature". He plead for the implementation of well argued holistic guidelines that stress ecological principles within future policy and decision-making frameworks in order to change towards "sustainable land use strategies", managed and performed on a regional and local scale.

For further information on the holistic sustainable planning and design approaches, please visit the website: www.oicos.de. An English version of the awarded concept will be available as pdf. version soon.

Contact OICOS: http://www.oicos.de [in German, English version in preparation]
Contact Fac. of Limnology, Tech. Univ. Berlin: http://www.gp.TU-Berlin.de/instvl/etr/limnos.htm
Contact ARL: http://www.arl-net.de [in German]

What to do with Sweden's Sewage Sludge in the Future?

Report from a "Wastewater and Recycling" conference in Linköping, 2-3 May, 2000

By EcoEng Correspondent Björn Vinnerås, Sweden

The main issue during the conference was how the sewage sludge should be handled during the next ten years. Discussions were held in a lot of different perspectives, both from the farmers association, the water and wastewater works association and the food industry. I will present some of the topics that give some idea about the discussions during the two days the conference was held.

Anders Finnson, from Stockholm Water Company, talked about how to recycle the sewage sludge. For the moment isn’t the farmers accepting to use the sludge. In Sweden, the focus of recycling is set on phosphorus and its content in the sludge. He pointed out four ways of treating the sludge. 1: The closed way to the farms. 2: Soil forming processes. 3: Incineration. 4: Land filling. In the two last ways it is a possibility to reuse the phosphorus by extraction before the rest is disposed. The two first ways are closed for the moment, especially the first, because of the high metal content and the organic residues in the sludge.

Weed-beds are considered as land-filling in Sweden, because of the long retention time (10years). Thus, they are taxed with approximately 30 SEK (Swedish Crowns) per ton wet weight. The applied sludge have a dry matter content of 1-2% resulting in a high tax for the treatment. The method is considered may give a respite of a few years, if the tax is removed, to find a way of handling the sludge and its phosphorus content. Many of the conference delegates meant that this kind of system using weed beds, if they were free of landfill tax, could be a short time solution.

The official view of the Water- and Wastewater Works Association presented by Björn Vallgren, is that the limits on metals in sludge are too stringent in Sweden, especially compared to those in the EU and the US. He said that it is not shown that low levels of heavy metals that are harmful to soil micro-organisms affect the crops at all. He also thought that the limits would be relaxed in the future, and therefore sludge not meeting present limits should now be accepted as fertiliser.

The farmers association stated that they had to start a dialogue for the future, how to recycle the nutrients in the wastewater without the heavy metals. Jan Eksvärd from the farmers association said that we have to maximise the recycling of nutrients from the households during the next 25 years and that the residues have to be certified before they are recycled (by some kind of simplified ISO standard). In opposition to Björn Vallgren, he sees a future in complementary systems, such as urine diversion and blackwater treatment systems, when they give clean residues with high nutrient content.

Mats Johansson from the Swedish Agricultural University pointed out a complementary microbiological respiratory method to investigate the soil effects by the usage of sewage sludge instead of the chemical ones used now. The advantage of this method is the small amounts of toxins needed to detect effects in the soil microbiology in combination with the problems to chemically determine the small amounts of toxic organic and inorganic compounds.

An investigation made by Håkan Jönsson from the same university showed a negative attitude in the food industry to involve sewage sludge fertilised crops in their production. In all cases, the use of sewage sludge as fertiliser was not accepted. The main reason was the concern about the reputation of the products. Only some of the industries had policies about other residues e.g. human urine. All of the policies were positive to usage of these residues.

Computer modelling of different treatment options have shown positive effects of using urine diversion complementary to the conventional system, both in cities and more scarce populated areas. The energy savings in the sewage plant by urine diversion is comparable with 200-400 km transportation of the urine, spreading included. This among some other computer modelled sewage treatment systems is further presented by Erik Kärrman June 8, when he will be defending his PhD thesis titled, "Environmental Systems Analysis of Wastewater Management".

The conclusion of the conference was a negative attitude towards use of sewage sludge as fertiliser, both from the farmers organisation and the food industry. At the same time, the central wastewater treatment organisation do not see any reason why the sludge not can be accepted for use in agriculture. Considering complementary sewage treatment (e.g. urine diversion), the attitude is the opposite: Farmers and food industry accept it and the wastewater treatment organisation does not see any future in it. The research of complementary systems has found a lot of answers to the problems with these systems, during the last years, and has also shown the environmental benefits of using them.

The Alliance for Global Sustainability

By Karin Suter, Alliance for Global Sustainability, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

We like to call the first few years (1997-1999) of the AGS’ existence, in which the focus was mainly on research projects, Phase I. The basic requirements for funding of a project were that it be interdisciplinary, include at least two of the member institutions as participants, and be relevant to the topics of global sustainability and environmental impact. The research sectors the AGS worked within were the principal areas of mobility, energy, and water and the cross-cutting areas of climate change, policy and social aspects, urban systems, and cleaner technology. The AGS made it a point early on to work closely with developing countries and industry.

Many of the projects were nearing completion in 1999. It was then agreed upon that the results needed to be made public in Phase II - the implementation phase. Along these lines, the project criteria on the RFP 1999/2000 were developed emphasizing the need for outreach components within new and continued project proposals. We planned the last AGS annual meeting held in Boston in January 2000 with the working title, "Translating Knowledge into Action and Learning to Lead”. Now in the midst of realizing this phase, we are working at enhancing our universities’ roles as educators to industry, government, and the public at large, while maintaining our strong research sector.

One example of a very successful, long-running project being conducted by all three AGS founding members and the Universities of Tsinghua and Taiyuan in China is the "Clean and Efficient Use of Coal in China” project. The main goal of this research is to reduce greenhouse gas, SO_x, and NO_x emissions by promoting a more efficient use of coal combustion in China, while still keeping up with China’s rapid economic development. Since Chinese coal consumption is mostly concentrated in boilers which function at very low efficiency levels, raising the efficiency of the boilers should allow one to significantly reduce the heavy pollution originating from this source. In this project, the various participants have spent much time looking at the technical, financial, and policy aspects of this environmental issue, analyzing, among other things, boiler performance, local conditions in China, and the reduction methods for specific pollutants .

For more information, please contact Dr. Ulrich Matter at matter@solid.phys.ethz.ch