A great step forward for the Office of Sustainability was taken this past Tuesday night; the first town hall meeting of the year was held. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the town hall meetings, it is a great opportunity for students to vocalize their questions and concerns directly to our President and his executive board! It began with the President of our college discussing a brief overview of our campus and today he discussed the Office of Sustainability. He mentioned how important sustainability is for our campus and he mentioned some of our accomplishments such as the greenhouse gas audit, water filtration system, Dixie plantation, and the creation of the Office of Sustainability! The other interns and I left the town hall meeting feeling accomplished knowing that our Office has the support from our President and his executive board.

The annual conference for campus sustainability came to a close. It was my first attendance at the national conference and it made quite an impression. On the positive side, there is tremendous energy that connects campuses around the issue of sustainability, and there are quite a few presentations and workshops that offer pragmatic approaches and application of projects. It was also a place to bounce ideas off those who have encountered many of the same issues. In many ways, it was a meeting of the minds that was insightful and useful for ideas and implementation of sustainable practices on our own campus.  Finally, it was a great opportunity for the students to engage other students around these issues and to see how the larger profession is working to address them. In the future, I expect strong student participation in the event itself, particularly by presenting some of their own research and projects! In a word, the positive aspects of the conference can be summed as: HOPE.

However, there is also plenty of room for DESPAIR. I heard more about projects, points, credits, allowances, than I did about sustainability and the context for it. The assumption was that by complying with those aspects, we would naturally become sustainable. I object to this shallow reasoning. And naturally, this raised several concerns.

One, we need to develop clarity on precisely what is “sustainability”, what does a “sustainable community” look like, and what are the trajectories toward this vision of sustainability. It’s not only about about renewable energy and recycling–which for now represents the vast bulk of the discussion.

Second, I heard very little beyond the “low hanging fruit” discourse. Granted, this is a great start, but without a larger plan, I fear that many of these sustainability programs will reach administrative obstacles as the low-hanging fruit are picked over. If the groundwork hasn’t been sufficiently laid institutionally, this could be a MAJOR setback not only for the campus but, in its totality, for the entire movement. For me, this was an incisive insight.

Third, there was a paucity of dialogue around the specific problems that “sustainability” is designed to address. What specific problems are we trying to address through a sustainability paradigm? Climate Change is most often bandied about as the primary driver of the movement. However, even though my scholarly expertise is in social dimensions of climate change, I would aggressively argue that this cannot be a tangible pathway for change and sustainability. Climate change is merely an outcome of larger processes. Have we reached a point where we just want to start talking about points and credits for a sustainability plan without educating, inspiring, communicating and dialoguing on the contextual problems we are facing?

Fourth, the conference was replete with what I call “corporatization of sustainability”. It is being taken over, absorbed, and integrated into the larger corporate world at a pace I wasn’t expecting. Some have their hearts in it for the right entrepreneurial reasons; however, many are clearly in it for profit, and see this sector as a means to do so. Quite honestly, it has become a minefield, one that requires deft and careful consideration of the short and long-term institutional goals to consider how to navigate this field. Solid research and P2P inquires can resolve much of this, but I was left with the question of what this means for the larger field of sustainability? What does this corporatization of the issue mean for us as a community and society? You see, if sustainability is promoted as a “solution” to the problem, we need to know what the problems are that it seeks to address, AND how we get there (and through what mediums) is just as important as the solution itself.

Similarly, I was struck by the “expert” driven discourse and practice that sustainability is becoming. I am probably most concerned on this point than any other. As someone who has conducted research around the globe on climate change and climate adaptation, I am seeing this expert-driven practice taking a more prominent role in “regulating” biophysical problems. When we combine the domination of the field by “experts” and corporations, we are generating a non-democratic, disconnected version of sustainability that I am growing increasingly uncomfortable with. Let’s be clear, I don’t see this as simply a problem defined through a response to sustainability and climate adaptation. NO, there are larger societal dynamics at work in which this response is merely a reflection of how American society has chosen to address (or not) increasingly complex problems.

There’s much more to this story. Obviously. Painfully. But I think we need to begin to carefully reflect on what sustainability is for our campus and community. What does it look like? What should it look like? What problems are we trying to address? And most importantly, how can WE ALL get involved to address them? Because without engagement, we leave it to experts, governments, and corporations. And I just saw a glimpse of what that looks like.

–Brian

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/10/10/sustainability-lessons-for-the-big-apple/2/

Along with the creation of the Office of Sustainability, another new member of the CofC community is the student organization Green CofC.  This is an organization born out of work done through a group project in Dr. Fisher’s Climate Change Capstone, in partnership with graduate and undergraduate students working independently with Dr. Fisher on sustainability issues.

This fall will be the organization’s first semester as a recognized student organization.  As a new organization at the beginning of the academic year, it has attracted a number of members, a disproportionately high number of which are enthusiastic freshmen.  The passion and dedication already displayed has been impressive, though as new students, many of the members had voiced concerns about a lack of formal knowledge in sustainability.  This translated in a lack of confidence in their own abilities.  In order to encourage greater active participation in the club, the officers decided that a crash course in the fundamentals of sustainability was in order, and so Sustainability Bootcamp was born.

On Wednesday, September 28th, well over 30 Green CofC members and interested students assembled in the Stern Center for what became a two hour, multimedia presentation and discussion on the basics of sustainability and its implications given by Office of Sustainability Graduate Assistant Jen Jones, Research Assistant Adam Brunelle and Intern Adrian Barry.

The presentation opened with a “Meet the Director” introduction from Dr. Fisher, who outlined his personal history and motivations, while encouraging students to take an active role in the issues by making the most of the opportunities available to to them and developing passion and leadership.

The formal portion of the presentation addressed problems such as environmental degradation, climate change and social justice as well as drivers of these issues, such as population growth, waste, consumption and values.  Imparting a broader, more comprehensive view of sustainability, one in which environmental sustainability is just one piece of a much larger, interconnected issue, was the overall goal.  To do this, sources as wide as eminent scientists, such as Wallace Broecker, were coupled with philosophers such as Peter Singer or activists like Denis Hayes.

The depth of the post presentation discussion, and subsequent interest voiced by those in attendance, suggests that a second Bootcamp is called for.  As of now, the plan is to view the first Bootcamp as a formal survey of the basics, while part two will be a more discussion based, seminar style format in which the issues broached in part one will be delved into with considerably more depth.

As we plan out the second Bootcamp we will be publicizing a date and would welcome input from the student body on what issues most interest or concern them.  We hope that we will see you there!

–Adrian Barry
Office of Sustainability Intern

Once a year, Charleston’s environmental and sustainable community come together under the banner of the Charleston Green Fair at Marion Square. Individuals, like Meg Moore, a small scale sustainable farmer; non-profits, like Lowcountry Local First and the Coastal Conservation League; student organizations, like MESSA and Alliance for Planet earth; even the City of Charleston is represented by offices such as Keep Charleston Beautiful. But this is the first year in the Green Fair’s four year history that the College of Charleston is being officially represented.

Barely a month old, the College of Charleston’s Office of Sustainability took the plunge into the public sphere by hosting a booth displaying presentation posters of past and potential sustainability projects on campus and inviting attendees to take a Google Earth tour of sustainability sites on campus. As a new Office, yet to move into its office space and yet to have a full time staff, improvisation was the word of the day. Under Director Brian Fisher, the Office is run by eight enthusiastic interns, a research assistant and a graduate assistant, who on this day served as everything from presenters and volunteer labor to bakers, having provided a selection of cookies to attract an audience.

This year’s Fair is being considered a trial run—the Office’s first foray into a public event. As we learn the finer points of how to run a booth, we learn the necessity of coming prepared with things that aren’t necessarily the first thing one would think of. Bring informational materials about what you do seems obvious enough. Bring your own table cloth seems somewhat less so, but is no less necessary. So as we depart from the Green Fair, we make mental notes on what we need to get for future events, what tactics worked best to attract attendees, which free cookies were gone first, all in an effort to constantly improve ourselves as exhibitors for the next event.

This is not to suggest we didn’t make an impact. Aside from the many children that were able to enjoy our cookies, vegan option included, we were able to inform interested attendees about the recent changes at the College of Charleston, we formed a relationship with the Sustainable Warehouse, strengthened our relationship with the Sustainability Institute, Organicarden Supplies and Trident Technical College, and will be field testing a new energy conservation device on campus vending machines, graciously given to us by another exhibitor.

All of the lessons we’ve learned as a new team, working together to further sustainability, will be carried with us as we take them on our next stop, the AASHE Conference in Pittsburgh, PA on October 8th. Look forward to hearing about our experiences there as we live-blog and live-Tweet workshops, keynotes and the day to day activities of a major national conference.

–Adrian Barry (Intern, CofC Office of Sustainability)

The Office of St has released a transportation report for CofC, based on survey commuting data. We analyze the data in supporting several levels of recommendations in campus transportation policy with an eye toward enhancing community sustainability. Dr. Erin McAdams (Political Science) and myself were the primary authors of the report.