Future friendly infrastructure

"Ecology and Auroville’s Development Planning," by Rod Hemsell by rjon on Tue 14 Nov 2006 03:05 PM PST Permanent Link

Two extremely significant reports published in the past two years must be considered essential to Auroville’s planning: Limits to Growth – The 30 Year Update (2004) and “Living Planet Report 2006” [LPR]. The latter, published by WWF and the Global Footprint Network came out just last month and is available online at the Global Footprint Network website. The former, written by Dennis Meadows (husband of Suzanne MacDonald, founder of Merriam Hill Center and Geocommons programs in Auroville) and others, is the excellent follow up to the 1972 Limits to Growth, and the 1992 Beyond the Limits to Growth. These studies are based on the best data, collected and refined over many years and submitted to the highest current level of technological analysis and thoughtful interpretation.

A couple of striking conclusions: “Moderate United Nations Projections suggest that humanity’s ecological footprint will grow to double the earth’s capacity within five decades. The lifespan of infrastructure put in place today to a large extent determines resource consumption for decades to come and can lock humanity into this risky scenario (LPR 2006).”

And from Limits to Gowth – The 30 Year Update: “The set of possible futures includes a great variety of paths. There may be abrupt collapse; it is also possible there may be a smooth transition to sustainability. But the possible futures do not include indefinite growth in physical throughput. The only real choices are to bring the throughputs that support human activities down to sustainable levels through human choice, human technology and human organization, or to let nature force the decision through lack of food, energy, or materials, or through an increasingly unhealthy environment (p.13).”

I have gathered from the LPR data that India’s current level of consumption (ecological footprint) is .8 gha (global hectares per capita) - already double India’s biocapacity of .4 gha, although it is significantly below humanity’s consumption level of 2.2 gha, which is 25% above the planet’s biocapacity of 1.18 gha. At India’s current level of exponential economic growth (7.5%) and population growth (1.7%), its economy will quadruple and its population will double by 2050.

If Auroville doesn’t take this situation seriously and manifest a viable alternative infrastructure and economy that works, its real reason for existing, along with humanity’s as a whole, may never be realized. “The assets we create can be future friendly or not. Transport and infrastructure become traps if they can only operate on a large footprint. In contrast, future friendly infrastructure – cities designed as resource efficient with carbon neutral building and pedestrian and public oriented transport systems – can support a high quality of life with a small footprint (LPR).”- end - Posted to: Main Page PROMISE & PERIL .. Perilous SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT .. India AUROVILLE .. Ideas for AV Next: Forests begin to revive as global devastation of trees is reversed