Sustainable Planning and Architecture

Sustainable Planning and Architecture | Sathish Lakshmikanthan
Sustainable Planning and

Architecture
Edited and Compiled by
Sathish Lakshmikanthan
Associate Professor, School of Architecture
Meenakshi College of Engineering, Chennai
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1
1
Table of Contents
Unit I - Concept of Sustainability ................................................................................. 4

1.1
Introduction .................................................................................................... 4
1.2
Carrying capacity .............................................................................................. 4
1.3
Sustainable development .................................................................................... 6
1.4
Bruntland report .............................................................................................. 6
1.5
Ethics and Visions of sustainability ........................................................................ 8
Unit II ................................................................................................................ 13
2.1
Eco system and food chain ................................................................................ 13
2.2
Threats to Ecosystems ...................................................................................... 13
2.2.1
Habitat Destruction ...................................................................................... 14
2.2.2
Pollution ................................................................................................... 14
2.2.3
Eutrophication ............................................................................................ 14
2.2.4
Invasive species........................................................................................... 15
2.2.5
Overharvesting ............................................................................................ 15
2.2.6
UV Radiation .............................................................................................. 15
2.3
Food chains ................................................................................................... 15
2.3.1
Food chain length ........................................................................................ 16
2.3.2
Cycles of the Earth System ............................................................................. 17
2.4
Ecologival footprint ......................................................................................... 17
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1 Unit I - Concept of Sustainability

1.1 Introduction
In ecology, sustainability is how biological systems remain diverse and productive. Long-lived and
healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. In more general terms,
sustainability is the endurance of systems and processes. The organizing principle for
sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains:
Ecology
Culture
Economics
Politics
1.2 Carrying capacity

Sustainability science is the study of sustainable development and environmental science.
At the global scale, scientific data now indicates that humans are living beyond the carrying
capacity of planet Earth and that this cannot continue indefinitely. This scientific evidence
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comes from many sources but is presented in detail in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
and the planetary boundaries framework. An early detailed examination of global limits was
published in the 1972 book Limits to Growth, which has prompted follow-up commentary and
analysis. A 2012 review in Nature by 22 international researchers expressed concerns that the
Earth may be "approaching a state shift" in its biosphere.
The Ecological footprint measures human consumption in terms of the biologically productive
land needed to provide the resources, and absorb the wastes of the average global citizen. In
2008 it required 2.7 global hectares per person, 30% more than the natural biological capacity
of 2.1 global hectares (assuming no provision for other organisms). The resulting ecological
deficit must be met from unsustainable extra sources and these are obtained in three ways:
embedded in the goods and services of world trade; taken from the past (e.g. fossil fuels); or
borrowed from the future as unsustainable resource usage (e.g. by over exploiting forests and
fisheries).
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The figure examines sustainability at the scale of individual countries by contrasting their
Ecological Footprint with their UN Human Development Index (a measure of standard of living).
The graph shows what is necessary for countries to maintain an acceptable standard of living
for their citizens while, at the same time, maintaining sustainable resource use.
The general trend is for higher standards of living to become less sustainable. As always,
population growth has a marked influence on levels of consumption and the efficiency of
resource use. The sustainability goal is to raise the global standard of living without increasing
the use of resources beyond globally sustainable levels; that is, to not exceed "one planet"
consumption. Information generated by reports at the national, regional and city scales confirm
the global trend towards societies that are becoming less sustainable over time.
1.3 Sustainable development

The word sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere. Sustain can mean maintain", "support", or
"endure. Since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on
planet Earth and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability as a part of the
concept sustainable development, that of the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations on March
20, 1987: sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.
1.4 Bruntland report

Part I. Common Concerns
1. A Threatened Future
I. Symptoms and Causes
II. New Approaches to Environment and Development
2. Towards Sustainable Development
I. The Concept of Sustainable Development
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II. Equity and the Common Interest
III. Strategic Imperatives
IV. Conclusion
3. The Role of the International Economy
I.The International Economy, the Environment, and Development
II. Decline in the 1980s
III. Enabling Sustainable Development
IV. A Sustainable World Economy
Part II. Common Challenges

4. Population and Human Resources
I. The Links with Environment and Development
II. The Population Perspective
III. A Policy Framework
5. Food Security: Sustaining the Potential
I. Achievements
II. Signs of Crisis
III. The Challenge
IV. Strategies for Sustainable Food Security
V. Food for the Future
6. Species and Ecosystems: Resources for Development
I. The Problem: Character and Extent
II. Extinction Patterns and Trends
III. Some Causes of Extinction
IV. Economic Values at Stake
V. New Approach: Anticipate and Prevent
VI. International Action for National Species
VII. Scope for National Action
VIII. The Need for Action
7. Energy: Choices for Environment and Development
I. Energy, Economy, and Environment
II. Fossil Fuels: The Continuing Dilemma
III. Nuclear Energy: Unsolved Problems
IV. Wood Fuels: The Vanishing Resource
V. Renewable Energy: The Untapped Potential
VI. Energy Efficiency: Maintaining the Momentum
VII. Energy Conservation Measures
VIII. Conclusion
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8. Industry: Producing More With Less
I. Industrial Growth and its Impact
II. Sustainable Industrial Development in a Global Context
III. Strategies for Sustainable Industrial Development
9. The Urban Challenge
I. The Growth of Cities
II. The Urban Challenge in Developing Countries
III. International Cooperation
Part III. Common Endeavours
10. Managing The Commons
I. Oceans: The Balance of Life
II. Space: A Key to Planetary Management
III. Antarctica: Towards Global Cooperation
11. Peace, Security, Development, and the Environment
I. Environmental Stress as a Source of Conflict
II. Conflict as a Cause of Unsustainable Development
III. Towards Security and Sustainable Development
12. Towards Common Action: Proposals For Institutional and Legal Change
I. The Challenge for Institutional and Legal Change
II. Proposals for Institutional and Legal Change
III. A Call for Action
1.5 Ethics and Visions of sustainability
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2 Unit II
2.1 Eco system and food chain
What is an Ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with
the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a
system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles and
energy flows. As ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between
organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces
An ecosystem includes all of the living things (plants, animals and organisms) in a given area, interacting
with each other, and also with their non-living environments (weather, earth, sun, soil, climate,
atmosphere).
In
an
ecosystem,
each
organism
has
its'
own
niche,
or
role
to
play.
Consider a small puddle at the back of your home. In it, you may find all sorts of living things, from
microorganisms, to insects and plants. These may depend on non-living things like water, sunlight,
turbulence in the puddle, temperature, atmospheric pressure and even nutrients in the water for life.
This very complex, wonderful interaction of living things and their environment, has been the foundations
of energy flow and recycle of carbon and nitrogen.
Anytime a stranger (living thing(s) or external factor such as rise in temperature) is introduced to an
ecosystem, it can be disastrous to that ecosystem. This is because the new organism (or factor) can
distort the natural balance of the interaction and potentially harm or destroy the ecosystem.
2.2 Threats to Ecosystems

Anything that attempts to alter the balance of the ecosystem potentially threatens the health and
existence of that ecosystem. Some of these threats are not overly worrying as they may be naturally
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resolved provided the natural conditions are restored. Other factors can destroy ecosystems and render
all or some of its life forms extinct. Here are a few:
2.2.1 Habitat Destruction

Economic activities such as logging, mining, farming and construction often involve clearing out places
with natural vegetative cover. Very often, tampering with one factor of the ecosystem can have a ripple
effect on it and affect many more or all other factors of that ecosystem. For example, clearing a piece
of forest for timber can expose the upper layers of the soil to the sun's heat, causing erosion and drying.
It can cause a lot of animals and insects that depended on the shade and moisture from the tree to die
or migrate to other places.
2.2.2 Pollution
Water, land and air pollution all together play a crucial role in the health of ecosystems. Pollution
may be natural or human caused, but regardless they potentially release destructive agents or
chemicals (pollutants) into the environments of living things. In a lake, for example, it can create
havoc on the ecological balance by stimulating plant growth and causing the death of fish due to
suffocation resulting from lack of oxygen. The oxygen cycle will stop, and the polluted water will
also affect the animals dependent on the lake water Source: Study the effect of pollution on an
ecosystem, WWF.
2.2.3 Eutrophication
This is the enrichment of water bodies with plant biomass as a result of continuous inflow of
nutrients particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. Eutrophication of water fuels excessive plant and
algae growth and also hurts water life, often resulting in the loss of flora and fauna diversity. The
known consequences of cultural eutrophication include blooms of blue-green algae (i.e.,
cyanobacteria, Figure 2), tainted drinking water supplies, degradation of recreational opportunities,
and hypoxia. The estimated cost of damage mediated by eutrophication in the U.S. alone is
approximately $2.2 billion annually (Dodds et al. 2009) Source: Eutrophication: Causes,
Consequences, and Controls in Aquatic Ecosystems, Michael F. Chislock
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2.2.4 Invasive species

Any foreign specie (biological) that finds its way into an ecosystem, either by natural or human
introduction can have an effect on the ecosystem. If this alien has the ability to prey on vulnerable
and native members of that ecosystem, they will be wiped out, sooner or later. One devastating
impact of introducing alien Nile Perch and Nile Tilapia into Lake Victoria in the 1970s was the
extinction of almost half of the 350+ endemic species of fish in the cichlid family.
2.2.5 Overharvesting
Fish species, game and special plants all do fall victim from time to time as a result of over
harvesting or humans over dependence on them. Overharvesting leads to reduction in populations,
community structures and distributions, with an overall reduction in recruitment. Lots of fish species
are know to have reached their maximum exploitation level, and others will soon be. For example
Oreochromis karongae is one of the most valuable food fishes in Malawi, but populations collapsed
in the 1990s due to overfishing, and it is now assessed as Endangered. Source: IUCN, Major Threats
2.2.6 UV Radiation
The suns rays play an important role in living things. UV rays come in three main wavelengths: UVA,
UVB and UVC, and they have different properties. UVA has long wavelengths and reaches the earths
surface all the time. It helps generate vitamin D for living things. UVB and UVC are more destructive
and can cause DNA and cell damage to plants and animals. Ozone depletion is one way that exposes
living things to UVB and UVC and the harm caused can wipe lots of species, and affect ecosystems
members including humans.
Usually, biotic members of an ecosystem, together with their abiotics factors depend on each other. This
means the absence of one member, or one abiotic factor can affect all parties of the ecosystem.
Unfortunately ecosystems have been disrupted, and even destroyed by natural disasters such as fires,
floods, storms and volcanic eruptions. Human activities have also contributed to the disturbance of many
ecosystems and biomes.
2.3 Food chains

All living things need to feed to get energy to grow, move and reproduce. But what do these living things
feed on? Smaller insects feed on green plants, and bigger animals feed on smaller ones and so on. This
feeding relationship in an ecosystem is called a food chain. Food chains are usually in a sequence, with
an arrow used to show the flow of energy. Below are some living things that can fit into a food chain.
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A food chain is a linear sequence of links in a food web starting from a species that are called producers
in the web and ends at a species that is called decomposers species in the web. A food chain also shows
how the organisms are related with each other by the food they eat. A food chain differs from a food
web, because the complex polyphagous network of feeding relations are aggregated into trophic species
and the chain only follows linear monophagous pathways. A common metric used to quantify food web
trophic structure is food chain length. In its simplest form, the length of a chain is the number of links
between a trophic consumer and the base of the web and the mean chain length of an entire web is the
arithmetic average of the lengths of all chains in a food web.
Food chains were first introduced by the African-Arab scientist and philosopher Al-Jahiz in the 9th
century and later popularized in a book published in 1927 by Charles Elton, which also introduced the
food web concept.
2.3.1 Food chain length

The food chain's length is a continuous variable that provides a measure of the passage of energy and an
index of ecological structure that increases in value counting progressively through the linkages in a
linear fashion from the lowest to the highest trophic (feeding) levels. Food chains are often used in
ecological modeling (such as a three species food chain). They are simplified abstractions of real food
webs, but complex in their dynamics and mathematical implications. Ecologists have formulated and
tested hypotheses regarding the nature of ecological patterns associated with food chain length, such as
increasing length increasing with ecosystem size, reduction of energy at each successive level, or the
proposition that long food chain lengths are unstable. Food chain studies have had an important role
inecotoxicology studies tracing the pathways and biomagnification of environmental contaminants.
Food chains vary in length from three to six or more levels. A food chain consisting of a flower, a frog, a
snake and an owl consists of four levels; whereas a food chain consisting of grass, a grasshopper, a rat,
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a snake and finally a hawk consists of five levels. Producers, such as plants, are organisms that utilize
solar energy or heat energy to synthesize starch. All food chains must start with a producer. In the deep
sea, food chains centered around hydrothermal vents exist in the absence of sunlight. Chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea can use hydrogen sulfide from hydro-thermal vents as an energy source
(just as plants use sunlight) to produce carbohydrates; they form the base of the food
chain. Consumers are organisms that eat other organisms. All organisms in a food chain, except the first
organism, are consumers.
2.3.2 Cycles of the Earth System

Our planet is constantly changing. Natural cycles balance and regulate Earth and its atmosphere. Human
activities can cause changes to these natural cycles.
Life on Earth is well adapted to our planets cycles. In our solar system, Earth is the only planet with air
to breathe, liquid water to drink, and temperatures that are just right for life as we know it. Because
our existence depends on our planet and its climate, we need to understand how what we do affects the
Earth.
Scientists try to figure out how our planet works by studying Earths cycles. Changes to Earths cycles
can cause changes in the climates of our planet. The more we know about these cycles, the more we
will understand how humans are affecting them and how that might change the planet. The cycles below
to learn more about how they work!
2.3.2.1 The Energy Balance

Earth gets all its energy from the Sun and loses energy into space If more energy is lost into space than
is received from the Sun, the planet gets cooler. If it loses less energy than it receives, the planet will
warm up.
Have you noticed that it is often cooler when there are clouds in the sky? Some types of clouds act like
giant sun umbrellas, shading the Earth and reflecting the sunlight that hits them. Other types of clouds
act like a jacket, holding the heat in and preventing it from leaving the atmosphere. Today, most clouds
act more like a sun umbrella and help keep our climate cool. However, this could change if global
warming affects the type of clouds, their thickness, and how much water or ice they contain.
While it might be quite warm in the countryside on a summer day, it can get unbearably hot in a nearby
city! Thats because the buildings and pavement in cities absorb oodles of sunlight, much more than the
countryside. These cities are called heat islands. The countryside is also cooled by water evaporating
from lakes and given off by the plants in forests and fields. Cities have fewer plants and bodies of water
and so are not cooled very much by evaporation.
2.4 Ecologival footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized
measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to
regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply
the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste. Using this assessment,
it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support
humanity if everybody followed a given lifestyle. For 2007, humanity's total ecological footprint was
estimated at 1.5 planet Earths; that is, humanity uses ecological services 1.5 times as quickly as Earth
can renew them. Every year, this number is recalculated to incorporate the three-year lag due to the
time it takes for the UN to collect and publish statistics and relevant research.
Although the term ecological footprint is widely used and well known, it goes beyond the metaphor. It
represents an accounting system for biocapacity that tracks how much biocapacity there is, and how
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much biocapacity people use. Calculation methods have converged thanks to standards released in 2006
and updated in 2009.
The first academic publication about the ecological footprint was by William Rees in 1992. The ecological
footprint concept and calculation method was developed as the PhD dissertation of Mathis Wackernagel,
under Rees' supervision at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, from 19901994.
Originally, Wackernagel and Rees called the concept "appropriated carrying capacity". To make the idea
more accessible, Rees came up with the term "ecological footprint", inspired by a computer technician
who praised his new computer's "small footprint on the desk". In early 1996, Wackernagel and Rees
published the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth with illustrations by
Phil Testemale.
Ecological footprint analysis compares human demands on nature with the biosphere's ability to
regenerate resources and provide services. It does this by assessing the biologically productive land and
marine area required to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb the corresponding
waste, using prevailing technology. Footprint values at the end of a survey are categorized for Carbon,
Food, Housing, and Goods and Services as well as the total footprint number of Earths needed to sustain
the world's population at that level of consumption. This approach can also be applied to an activity such
as the manufacturing of a product or driving of a car. This resource accounting is similar to life cycle
analysis wherein the consumption of energy, biomass (food, fiber), building material, water and
other resources are converted into a normalized measure of land area called global hectares (gha).
Per capita ecological footprint (EF), or ecological footprint analysis (EFA), is a means of comparing
consumption and lifestyles, and checking this against nature's ability to provide for this consumption.
The tool can inform policy by examining to what extent a nation uses more (or less) than is available
within its territory, or to what extent the nation's lifestyle would be replicable worldwide. The footprint
can also be a useful tool to educate people about carrying capacity and over-consumption, with the aim
of altering personal behavior. Ecological footprints may be used to argue that many current lifestyles are
not sustainable. Such a global comparison also clearly shows the inequalities of resource use on this
planet at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In 2007, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global
hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.0 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.6 gha,
while China's was 1.8 gha. The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the biocapacity (the
available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%. Wackernagel and Rees originally estimated
that the available biological capacity for the 6 billion people on Earth at that time was about 1.3 hectares
per person, which is smaller than the 1.8 global hectares published for 2006, because the initial studies
neither used global hectares nor included bioproductive marine areas.
A number of NGOs offer ecological footprint calculators (see Footprint Calculator, below).
Ecological footprint analysis is now widely used around the Earth as an indicator of
environmental sustainability. It can be used to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the
economy. It can be used to explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services,
organizations, industry sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions and nations. Since 2006, a first set of
ecological footprint standards exist that detail both communication and calculation procedures.
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Kyoto protocol
166 nation representatives meet in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997 to negotiate treaty to
reduce emissions of co2 and other greenhouse gases.
Figure 1
Sustainable Solutions
socially
desirable
economically
feasible
ecologically
viable
2.5 Climate change and sustainability
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