Executive Summary
Students: Ryan Agoney, Chloe Bashy, Regan Clay, Austin Duquette, Rory Fischer, Matthew Garger, Liam Gorby, Jillian Kara, Alexis Larreategui, Jacob Leduc, Erin Martin, Mia Morgillo, Mikayla Osmer, Alexander Preston, Jack Rasulo, Michael Simmons, Anna Skolnick, Lillian Triana-Strautmanis, Tyler Tricarico
Dr. Curt Gervich
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Thank you to those who assisted our class in the completion of this assessment:
- Anne Herzog, Provost
- Dr. Kathleen Camelo, Director, Student Health Center
- Laura Rosenbrock, Manager, Student Health Center
- Josee Larochelle, VP Administration and Finance
- Butterfly Blaise-Boire, Director, Title IX Office
- James Sherman, Assistant Director Community Living
- Mary Alldred, Phd. CEES
- Mark Lesser, Phd. CEES
- Danielle Garneau, Phd. CEES
- Gary Kroll, Phd., History, Faculty Senate
- Raymond Carmen, Phd., Political Science, Faculty Senate
- Jules LaPointe, Residence Hall Project Manager
Executive Summary
- This semester, Curt Gervich's Sustainability class is producing a sustainability assessment for SUNY Plattsburgh. In this class, we have learned that sustainability goes beyond what will just withstand our lifetime.
- The major purpose of this assessment was to assess what SUNY Plattsburgh's initiatives towards sustainability and the United Nation's 17 sustainable development are, and ultimately produce a SWOT analysis for the college based on The Five P's of sustainability.
Sustainability/Sustainable Development
- According to the United Nations and the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainability can be defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (The Sustainable Development Agenda,2020; Our Common Future, 1987)."
Brundtland Report (1987)
Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future
- The Brundtland Report marks of of the first times sustainability was defined (Purvis, 2018; Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010).
- "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Our Common Future, 1987)."
Image from: (Our Common Future Brundtland Report 1987, 2015)
Three Pillars of Sustainability
- Society
- Economy
- Environment
- Sustainability and sustainable development has has incorporated these three pillars for a long time (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010).
- Each of the 3 pillars should have equal consideration in sustainability (Purvis et al., 2018).
Image From: (Purvis et al., 2018)
5 Ps of Sustainability
- Planet
- People
- Prosperity
- Peace
- Partnership
- The United Nations has taken the 3 pillars of sustainability and created the 5 P's of sustainability (Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2015)
- These 5 P's are a less broad version of the 3 pillars.
- The UN's 2030 agenda helped to describe what these 5 Ps are.
Image from: (Understand Sustainable Development, 2021)
The United Nation's 17 Sustainable Development Goals
- The United Nations has built off the 5 P's of sustainability and created the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Along with the goals, the UN also developed 169 targets for countries to use as a blueprint in their work to become more sustainable (The 17 Goals, 2020).
- These 17 goals and 169 targets are working to reach the UN's 2030 Agenda
SUNY Plattsburgh and the UN's 17 SDGs
- For this assessment, we have taken the UN's 17 SDGs and divided them into the UN's 5 Ps of sustainability
- This allowed us to look more closely at what the campus community is doing in terms of these goals.
- Bellow is our division of the 17 goals into the 5 Ps
Conclusions
Purpose
In general, sustainability assessments can be used to help with many things. Two definitions for describing a sustainability assessment from Devuyst and Verheem are listed bellow (2001; 2002).
- "Sustainability assessment is…a tool that can help decision-makers and policy-makers decide what actions they should take and should not take in an attempt to make society more sustainable (Devuyst, 2001)"
- "The goal of sustainability assessment is to pursue that 'plans and activities make an optimal contribution to sustainable development' (Verheem, 2002)"
Although these definitions can be broad, sustainability assessments can still be a very powerful tool to make change.
General Campus Assessment Purpose
Urbanski and Filho have created a list of purposes for doing campus sustainability assessments (2015). These purpose go more towards the STARS, sustainability tracking, assessment, and rating system, another style of campus sustainability assessments. These purpose's are still applicable to all sustainability assessments, including ours.
Our Campus Assessment's Purpose
Our sustainability assessment was created for the purpose of:
- learning more about the activities happening on and around SUNY Plattsburgh that are helping to work toward the UN's 17 SDGs
- having a base understanding of the practices in place that contribute to the SDGs in order to assess how the school is succeeding and where it is failing
- allowing us to do a SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis to get a better understanding of these activities.
With this information, areas of improvement can be identified and recommendations can be made to help make the SUNY Plattsburgh campus more sustainable in the future. Also, it will help to bring more awareness to the UN's 17 SDGs and help jumpstart more work focused on them. This suitability assessment, with the its recommendations, can then be used as resource in the future when a more fine scale sustainability assessment could be done using the AASHE STARS requirements.
Background on Sustainability
"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (The Sustainable Development Agenda,2020; Our Common Future, 1987)"
The earliest thoughts of sustainability began in the 1600's - 1700's mostly dealing with sustainable yield and resource limitations (Purvis et al., 2018; Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010). In 1987, sustainability was defined for one of the first times in the Brundtland Report (Purvis et al., 2018; Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010). This definition is the same definition that the United Nations currently uses for sustainability which is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
It is important to have understand the history of sustainability and sustainable development. This will help to create a better plan moving forward into the future.
Image from: (Our Common Future Brundtland Report 1987, 2015)
Strong vs. Weak Sustainability
The use and preservation of natural resources and capital have been debated immensely in sustainability. Two differing views or ideas to sustainability have been created when determining how to deal with natural resources and capital. These two views are called strong and weak sustainability, and they are defined bellow.
Strong sustainability - "the next generation should inherit a stock of environmental assets no less than the stock inherited by the previous generation (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010)."
Weak Sustainability - "the next generation should inherit a stock of wealth, comprising man-made assets and environmental assets, no less than the stock inherited by the previous generation (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010)."
It is imperative that SUNY Plattsburgh peruses strong sustainability rather than weak. Practicing weak sustainability allows room for excuse to diminish environmental assets for the next generation for the sake of developing man-made assets.
Three Pillars of Sustainability
For the most part, sustainable have been seen in the 3 dimensions or "pillars" of sustainability, which are society, economy, and environment (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010). These are the three factors that attribute to sustainability and each has to be considered when balancing trade-offs (Purvis et al., 2018). There has been some discussion if there should be more dimensions for sustainability as some people do not believe these are enough (Purvis et al., 2018).
The 5 Ps of Sustainability
More recently the United Nations has adopted the 5 Ps of sustainability, which are planet, people, prosperity, peace and partnership. Building off the original 3 pillars, the 5 P's bring in peace and partnership as a part of sustainability. Theses were created and explained in the UN's 2030 agenda in which the 17 SDGs are trying to reach. Bellow is an excerpt from the 2030 agenda explaining the 5 Ps.
The Five Sustainability Competencies
To ensure successful future work in sustainable development, a list of five sustainability competencies for students graduating from higher education has been created. These competencies are things that should be included in the schools learning outcomes (Wiek et al., 2015). These competencies go beyond just having knowledge about the issues and should include the skills and tools need to fix these problems (Wiek et al., 2015). For example, Wiek et al. state that the competencies are "complexes of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable successful task performance and problem solving with respect to real-world sustainability problems, challenges, and opportunities (2015)." The five competencies are as listed bellow according to Wiek et al. (2015).
- Systems thinking competence
- Futures thinking or anticipatory thinking
- Values thinking or normative competence
- Strategic thinking or action-oriented competence
- Collaboration or interpersonal competence
Our report required the use of all of these competencies as we worked together to produce a complete view of sustainability on campus. With the recommendations of this assessment, we are hoping to include these as they are useful tools all students should know.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created following the 2015 deadline of the United Nations 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Purvis, 2018). According to the UN, the new 17 SDGs are "a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere." A fifteen year plan called the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development is the proposed path to reaching these SDGs.
The UN 17 SDG's can be dived into the 5 Ps of sustainability. When doing this, it becomes easier to investigate how well an area is doing to reach these goals. This can be especially useful on a college campus.
Within the two websites, the United Nation has suggested many ways and tools to create a more sustainable planet. If every country could work towards these SDGs, the planet could be a much better place for future generations. Progress towards sustainability does not just have to be dealt with at the country or UN level. The UN has created a guide of activities that everyday people can do to work towards sustainability called "The Lazy Person's Guide to Saving the World."
For our assessment, our class first developed a greater understanding of what sustainability means, and how it plays a role in every day societal, environmental, and economic issues. After much investigation into the United Nations 17 SDGs, we categorized them under the Five Ps of Sustainability: planet, people, prosperity, peace, and partnership.
Image from: (Understand Sustainable Development, 2021)
After compiling our own ideas, we found highly qualified individuals from the different areas of campus and interviewed them gain insight as to just how their department related to the Five Pillars and 17 SDGs. All the information collected from the interviews will be used in a SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis of campus.
With all of this conclusions were made as to how well the SUNY Plattsburgh campus is doing at working towards the UN's 17 SDGs. We then made recommendations on how to better align the campus with the UN's SDGs.
Works Cited
Brundtland Commission. (1987). Our Common Future. Delhi: Oxford, Univ. Press.
Devuyst, Dimitri. (2001). How Green is the City? Sustainability Assessment and the Management of Urban Environments. Columbia University Press. 457.
Kuhlman, Tom; Farrington, John. (2010). What is Sustainability? Sustainability. 2,3436-3448.
Our Common Future Brundtland Report 1987. (2015). issuu. accessed on: 9 May 2021. accessed at: https://issuu.com/agpireland/docs/our_common_future-brundtland_report.
Purvis, Ben; Mao, Yong; Robinson, Darren. (2018). Three Pillars of Sustainability: in search of conceptual origins. Sustainability Science. 14, 681-695.
The Sustainable Development Agenda. (2020). United Nations. accessed on: 9 May 2020. accessed from: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/.
The 17 Goals. (2020). United Nations. accessed on: 9 May 2021. accessed from: https://sdgs.un.org/goals.
Understand Sustainable Development. (2021). Trailhead. accessed on: 9 May 2021. accessed at: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/the-global-goals/learn-about-the-global-goals.
Urbanski, Monika; Filho, Walter Leal. (2015). Measuring sustainability at universities by means of the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS): early findings from STARS data. Environment, Development, and Sustainability. 17. 209-220.
Verheem, Rob. (2002). Recommendations for sustainability assessment in the Netherlands. In commission for EIA. Environmental impact assessment in the Netherlands. The Netherlands.