The Sustainability
Education Center (SEC) of the AmericanForum was on display at the National
Town Meeting (NTM) in Detroit (May 2-5, 1999). The expressed intent
of the NTM was to bring together government leaders and business interests
with not-for-profit environmental groups and educators to display and
develop "best practices" for more sustainable communities.
A cursory glance at the NTM web site <http://www.sustainableamerica.org>reveals
a range of sustainability-related interests, including forest protection.
On the exhibit floor, the range was somewhat more narrow, given the
high incidence of booths sponsored by government agencies (from the
Environmental Protection Agency to the U.S. Navy) and corporate interests,
especially auto makers. Consumption levels in the U.S. were not challenged
at the NTM. Instead, the focus was on "smart growth" innovations
and applications (with a heavy emphasis on technology) that could reduce
the impacts of existing consumption patterns (including our voracious
use of forest products). Vice President Gore's admonition to auto makers
to begin work towards an 80 mile per gallon automobile (in a city already
choked by auto congestion on substandard roads) was typical of the kinds
of prescriptions for change offered within the mainstream of the NTM.
Technological innovation trumped behavior change at every turn.
In addition to setting up a Sustainability Education
Center booth to display and distribute materials, we were able to meet
with a number of prospective program partners, two of which are especially
noteworthy for their practical understanding of how the various aspects
of sustainability must hold together, forming an integrated and mutually-supportive
whole. The Sustainability Education Project in Ann Arbor, MI has created
an important regional program that links classrooms and community sustainability
initiatives while creating professional development opportunities to
help teachers integrate activities and materials on sustainable environments
across academic disciplines. The Santa Monica (CA) Sustainable City
Program (including its Sustainable Schools initiative) was created to
address the "piecemeal" response to environmental issues so
common in the U.S. (and even at the NTM). The Program has created indicators
and targets in transportation, economic development and resources conservation,
and it has made a major commitment to professional development for teachers
seeking to develop student awareness and skills in support of local
sustainability priorities.
A
number of other innovative efforts were featured at the NTM/RenewAmerica
awards ceremony, held at the Henry Ford Museum, where 24 programs were
honored for achievement. One of the winners,
the Green Map System <http://www.greenmap.org>has been a close
collaborator of Sustainability Education Center. Two of the award winners
were forest-related. One was given to the American Forest and Paper
Association (AFPA) for setting "tough standards" for members
having to do with minimizing the visual impacts of forest harvesting,
protection of biodiversity and water quality, reforestation and other
matters. RenewAmerica claims that AFPA members have reforested 3.7 million
acres of land to date and that AFPA has expelled 15 members who refused
to abide by organizational standards for forest protection. The AFPA
web site <http://www.afanda.org>contains a number of sections
for use with students, including "Fun Forest Facts."
The other award
winner for forest protection went to the Northeastern Pennsylvania Urban
and Community Forestry Program in Mayfield, PA. This
program of the University of Pennsylvania <http://www.upenn.edu/morris/uf/nepa.html>has
resulted in the planting of 10,000 trees in areas of Pennsylvania that
had previously been ravaged by strip-mines, abandoned railroad corridors
and degraded urban lands. The program has also sparked initiatives to
preserve the Lackawanna River watershed. These efforts have produced
healthier communities and, according to RenewAmerica, over 1000 new
local jobs.
While there were many speeches made at the awards event, none were made
by the award winners, leaving the audience to decide for themselves
the implications for sustainability conveyed by these programs. At the
carefully orchestrated NTM, there was little space for partnership building
nor for the integration of "excluded voices," including forest
activists. The "smart growth" focus of the NTM led inexorably
to the following conclusions: reducing the impacts of consumption rather
than changing patterns of consumption, and cleaning up environmental
messes rather than preventing their occurrence in the first place.
Impact reduction and clean-up efforts are certainly to be encouraged,
but it is not clear that such actions can bring about a world that encourages
coordinated policy and activity towards sustainability. It is important
to plant groves of trees because of all of the known benefits of trees
– including increased oxygen supply, atmospheric cooling, and protection
from flooding. But we must also recognize that a forest is a balanced
eco-system – much more than the sum of all re-forestation efforts. In
the same way, a sustainable society is more than the sum of good works
undertaken on behalf of the environment. The environmental health of
society requires actions that are organically linked. More than anything
else, organic linkage was the missing ingredient of the NTM.
Over the past
year, BBC News Online
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/>has posted numerous stories on forest-related
issues that can easily be adopted for use by students. Two stories currently
posted attracted my interest. The first was entitled "America Trading
Trees to Save the Planet," and described efforts of commodity brokers
to sell trees as “pollution cures" for industry, raising the prospect
of getting rich by planting trees. The other story, "The Curse
of Cut Trees," reports on the contribution of deforestation in
Honduras to the flooding caused by Hurricane Mitch. Despite the devastation,
many poor Hondurans remain suspicious of environmentalists. For these
local people, as for the commodity brokers, the immediacy of their economic
linkage to the trees is more compelling than the longer-term need of
their societies for healthy, intact forests.
It is becoming more and more difficult, it seems, to create incentives
for people to cast their gaze towards keeping forests healthy, integrated,
and interdependent rather than focusing so much on trees. We know that
forests pose a series of complex social issues related to healthy environments
and healthy economies. But, at a simpler level, they also remind us
of the limits of our own creative capacities. We can destroy forests,
but we cannot make them. We can only plant trees. The NTM, for all its
valuable work in highlighting worthwhile and inspirational projects
across the U.S. – such as those in Ann Arbor and Santa Monica – failed
to grasp this critical analogy
The Sustainability Education Center (SEC) was founded in 1995 in
response to the growing need for educational materials and professional
development focused on the concepts, issues and activities related to
sustainability. With a growing, national constituency and an extraordinary
group of affiliates covering all aspects of sustainability, SEC has
become an important force for promoting school/community partnerships
as well as the integration of sustainability education into academic
programs in schools and colleges of education. Current program priorities
include "ecological economics," sustainable food systems,
and the "ecological footprint" to measure and reduce environmental
impacts.
