A challenge to sustainable governments?

AuthorHirokawa, Keith H.

"Sustainability," an environmentally-friendly term that previously incited political unrest, economic uncertainty, and even emotional outrage, has become quite commonplace. In federal, state, and local agencies, sustainable practices have dominated dialogues relating to indoor air quality, water availability, energy use and production; but also growth planning and development controls, public spaces and aesthetics. Governmental entities are installing low-flow water fixtures and energy-efficient appliances, redesigning rooftops and skylines, and inviting industry and neighborhoods to the negotiation table to determine the character of future communities. Sustainability has become the vocabulary of politics and is changing those past practices that have become known as resource-wasteful, inefficient, and costly relative to human and environmental needs.

Despite the explosion of interest and excitement, many have wondered whether sustainability would find its own limits, or if limitations would be dredged from strategic litigation (1) aimed precisely at identifying both the meaning of sustainability and the nexus between traditional police power authority and a growing awareness of long-term public welfare needs in the natural environment. A recent lawsuit over "green" product purchasing preferences may provide some insight into both of these questions: Ash Grove Texas, L.P, a cement manufacturing company, has challenged the authority of the City of Dallas to extend preferential purchasing status to "green" cement. (2) In the context of the Ash Grove lawsuit, this essay introduces the controversy between sustainability and its discontents to explore the question of whether the economic disruption caused by the onslaught of sustainable practices in government is itself sustainable. This essay argues that the future of sustainability in government is likely to be secure, far-reaching, and pervasive.

Sustainability has been defined as the ability to meet the needs of the present while ensuring that future generations have the same or better opportunities--in short, preserving the ability to make resource choices in the future. (3) Accomplishing this goal compels us to engage in a new discourse to construct (both conceptually and physically) (4) a new character of the built environment that centralizes the interdependency of our surroundings and our survival needs. The discourse draws on the vocabulary of ecosystem services, defined as the non-commodity, yet economically valuable benefits that humans derive from ecological systems directly (such as in flood control effects of floodplains and wetlands) and also indirectly (such as sediment filtering accomplished in wetlands). (5)

Equipped with this new vocabulary, sustainable practices have enabled local governments to envision environmentally-protective agendas in which the familiar tension between environmental and property rights camps dissolves: "the key element of sustainable development is the recognition that economic and environmental goals are inextricably linked." (6) Sustainability converges economic, environmental, and social concerns into policies and practices that prioritize human long-term needs in our present-day infrastructure, residences, offices, and other consumer-based decision-making processes. Hence, sustainability is not aimed at causing the economic regicide that some may have feared: sustainable practices do not compel the cessation of economic growth, or that we cease constructing buildings or extracting resources. Rather, the principles of sustainability merely require some rethinking on how resources are extracted and used, how buildings relate to the natural environment, and how the built environment implements the values of human and environmental health.

One steadily increasing trend has been the governmental exhibition of leadership in sustainability. Sustainable governmental policies have included the conversion of public transportation fleets into electric, biodiesel, and compressed natural gas-power vehicles; (7) or designing and constructing public buildings as "green" buildings; (8) or even designing public open spaces with low-water dependent vegetation. (9) In the last several decades, state and local governments have also participated in purchasing strategies designed to reduce the environmental impact of public policies, public buildings, and public spaces. For instance, San Francisco adopted a policy prohibiting the purchase of products made from hardwoods taken from tropical areas suffering over-harvesting...

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