Sustainable Development for Public Administration

John R. Bartle, Deniz Zeynup Leuenberger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317459163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

This groundbreaking text focuses on the application of sustainability and sustainable development theories to public administration practice. It's designed to guide planning, resource management, and outcomes measurement for future and current non-profit and public managers. The book introduces sustainable development and related theories; ties these theories to public administration practice; and, elaborates on applications to specific PA specializations including energy management, transportation, water, waste management, urban development, wildlife conservation, and higher education. It also includes a chapter specifically geared to outcome measurement of sustainability goals in public and non-profit agencies.

1

Focus on Sustainability

A New Direction for Public Administration

“Sustainability,” “environmental sustainability,” and “sustainable development” are becoming increasingly important concepts in public administration. With increasing demand on resources, governments, civil society, and organizations all over the world are focusing their attention and energies on managing the impact of humans on their environments, integrating environmental sustainability and sustainable development while still preserving the welfare of citizens. This is, of course, not an easy charge. The complex work of the public administrator balances citizen equity, responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, and, now, sustainability in day-to-day practice and planning.

As public organizations adopt environmental sustainability as a tenet of good practice and theory, certain questions arise. Why is environmental sustainability important to public administration? What is the role of public administrators in planning and implementing sustainable development within agencies and communities? Few people would argue about the connection between sustainability and efficiency and reduction in waste. All agencies and communities benefit from increased efficiency and reduced waste as long as other tenets, such as participation and equity, are not compromised. Environmental sustainability moves beyond economic efficiency and incorporates these other tenets of public administration as well. Further, sustainable development requires the cooperation of professionals and experts from a variety of practices and disciplines. In public administration, professionals with backgrounds in community development, economics, psychology, education, ecology, sociology, transportation, engineering, geography, and many other fields work together. Public administration includes practitioners from local, state, federal, and international public and nonprofit organizations. Not only are environmental sustainability and sustainable development therefore, philosophically matched with the tenets of public administration, but the multidisciplinary nature of public administration provides the perfect opportunity to foster an environment wherein sustainable development can be meaningfully applied to community decision-making and practice. Public administrators, as translators and collaborators, may be able to facilitate communication on environmental sustainability and promote meaningful change in communities.

In order to discuss environmental sustainability and sustainable development, a definition of the terms is a helpful beginning. Environmental sustainability is a philosophy that requires the use of natural resources in such a manner that their quantity does not diminish over time or across generations. Environmentally sustainable systems rely on tools and approaches such as renewable resources, reduced consumption, technological advancements, and managerial efficiency to maintain resources at their current level or higher levels. Citizens of the future, under environmental sustainability, should enjoy resources and welfare at about the same level as people do today. Environmental sustainability also offers the potential for citizens to enjoy an increase in resources and welfare in the future. Although “sustainability” has increasingly been used to mean environmental sustainability, it is also defined as long-term success or preservation of organizations, organizational plans, or economic prosperity that may not have an environmental or natural capital dimension. This book will focus on sustainability issues that are rooted in the management of natural resources or capital.

Sustainable development is a plan of action that integrates environmental sustainability into decision-making. This type of planning suggests that any discussion of growth, development, and consumption should include steps to approach environmental sustainability as closely as possible. A completely sustainable system may not be possible in practice, but planners should attempt to make processes as efficient and effective as possible, providing goods and services with the lowest negative impact on the environment. Environmental sustainability and sustainable development depend on the consideration of short-run and long-run consequences of human action on human and environmental welfare.

Environmental resources are a form of capital, often called natural capital (Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins 1999). In general, capital is a stock of a resource; that is, an accumulated value based on previous investments minus depreciation or use. Other forms of capital include human capital, physical capital, and financial capital. Human capital is the stock of human resources accumulated through education, training, and experience. Physical capital is the value of machines, equipment, and structures. Financial capital is financial wealth in the form of stocks, bonds, cash, and other financial instruments. A definition of “weak sustainability” is an increasing value of total capital (Rogers, Jalal, and Boyd 2006; Pearce, Markandya, and Barbier 1989). Limited though this definition may be, it helps illustrate the interaction between these types of capital. This viewpoint would see sustainability enhanced if trees were harvested to produce financial capital of greater value, or if government spending on highways were shifted to spending on workforce training if the value of the latter were higher. Environmental sustainability and sustainable development are closely linked with tenets or canons held in high respect within public administration. In fact, sustainable development focuses on three tenets of public administration: efficiency, equity, and participation (Leuenberger 2006; Svara and Brunet 2004). One particular model of sustainable development, called broad-based sustainable development, stresses the tenets of healthy economy, equity, sustainability, and participation (Weaver, Rock, and Kusterer 1997). Public administration and sustainable development share many foundational themes, facilitating the application of sustainable development to decision-making in public and nonprofit organizations (Bartle and Leuenberger 2006). Sustainability is not just an environmental perspective, but also rather a holistic approach that is consistent with the founding values of public administration and naturally extends it to the challenges of the future. This type of planning is taking a hold in organizations that are local, state, federal, and international in scope. Organizations that provide transportation, environmental protection, health and human services, education, and economic and community planning are embracing sustainable development across the world.

Planning requires the setting of goals and the measurement of outcomes. Models of sustainable development concentrate on three types of goals setting. Goals are rooted in biological, economic, and social systems (Barbier 1987). In looking at biological systems, administrators would consider the impact of organizational decisions and actions on genetic diversity, species resilience, and biological productivity. For example, in building a dam, the planners would consider impacts on local fish, insects, plants, and mammals, their ability to reproduce, their availability as a food source for other species, and the impact of the ecological changes on human biology. Efficiency, equity in distribution, and social welfare improvements are the focus of economic goals. Economic goals encourage reduction of waste and duplication, balance of costs and revenues, long-run financial welfare for citizens, and fair distribution of gains from the use, production, and sale of natural resources. Social system goals include citizen participation and social justice as major components of agency decision-making and planning. Respect for the beliefs of indigenous peoples, the incorporation of knowledge held by citizens regarding their communities, gender equity, and assurance of fair and democratic citizen participation in agency planning are examples.

Environmental sustainability and sustainable development are theoretical approaches to managing real-world problems. Both are gaining importance as public administrators learn to manage finite and increasingly scarce natural resources. Subsequent chapters of this book will introduce the application of sustainable development, its theoretical and foundational roots, and its measurement and evaluation.

Local to Global Impacts of Sustainable Planning

Sustainable development is both a local and a global issue and, for that matter, an issue for any level of government between the two. Decisions of individuals at local levels and at the global level are in constant interaction with each other. For example, coal consumption by citizens in a local village in China affects air quality not only in that village, but also across the nation and across the world. Similarly, carbon dioxide emissions from cars in every town and every city in the United States have impacts on climate change around the world. Some of the solutions to problems of environmental management can be handled at the microlevel and some solutions require macrolevel planning; many require both types of consideration. Microlevel solutions focus on small units of analysis in decision-making, such as an individual citizen or organization. Macrolevel solutions attempt to take a wider view of the decision-making arena, perhaps focusing on analysis of a nation, a group of nations, or a large physical region. Regardless of whether a public administrator works in a local, state, federal, or international organization, sustainable development should and can be a part of agency planning and management. In fact, most complex environmental problems today require a great deal of collaboration at all levels of government, as well as partnership between governments, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, citizens, and businesses.

Sociologist George Ritzer, in his popular book The McDonaldization of Society (2008), suggests that organizations in the United States have developed a bureaucratic system of service provision and customer management that has influenced organizational process and decision-making across the world. He suggests that control, efficiency, predictability, and calculability are primary tenets of this type of organization, the foundations of which are closely related to division of labor and the assembly line. Human beings are treated as part of a machine and the organization easily replaces individuals who are not living up to expectations.

Essentially, Ritzer argues that organizations are adopting practices based on the development of the fast-food industry in the United States. The goal of such organizations is to process goods and services in a manner that maximizes outputs and reduces costs while leading citizens through the system as quickly as possible. The advantage is that many citizens can receive needed goods and services at potentially low costs. Unfortunately, it is difficult to address a citizen’s unusual or unexpected request under this system. One of the reasons that organizations with complex service delivery systems may not be as efficient as a product-providing organization is that they must take the time to assess the needs and wants of each citizen in the queue. The line at the Department of Motor Vehicles can be more efficient than the provision of child protective services because citizens receiving driver’s licenses have very similar needs that can be addressed quickly without in-depth analysis, while families must be assessed for a number of strengths and weaknesses before being provided services through social service agencies.

In addition to problems with citizen responsiveness, systems focused on the type of efficiency discussed above may not calculate the costs on natural capital or resources drawn from nature. Goods and services may be priced too low because of this exclusion, encouraging overconsumption. One of the problems with the expansion of the Western style of capitalism and economic development is that it has not fully incorporated the costs of business to the environments. Globalization of consumerism and consumption has the potential to tax world resources beyond repair. For instance, if automobile ownership in China were to approach per capita rates of ownership in the United States, the impact on air quality, oil resources, and global climate change would be devastating to the environment. In order to create workable solutions to the world’s problems, public administrators and nonprofit managers must consider the impact of economic and social globalization on humans and their environments, bearing in mind the special characteristics of environments and their people.

Coming to Terms

Sustainable Development and Smart Growth

Sustainable development and smart growth share a focus on long-term planning and management of multiple community systems. Smart growth is a theory of urban planning that addresses urban sprawl by emphasizing mixed-use development, public transportation systems, and growth in city centers. Although smart growth and sustainable development may go hand in hand in development of environmental sustainability, they are distinct concepts. Sustainable development is planning that may be used to balance human and environmental needs in any level of public or nonprofit agency and the communities they serve. Sustainable development is a tool for managing community capital in a manner that seeks to achieve this balance by preserving the value of capital in the long run, which may include choosing not to develop or initiate growth in communities.

Systems Theory, Risks, Partnerships, and Outcomes

Governments and nonprofit organizations have an enormous role to play in environmental sustainability. Governments are in the business of managing risk, and nonprofit organizations fill in gaps in risk reduction that governments are not able to address (Giddens 2003). Risks require humans to use rational decision-making to avoid losses and improve gains in the future (Giddens 2003). Modern societies are able to envision solutions to the problems of risk not only for short-term gains, but also for long-term gains. Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004) suggests that socie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Exhibits
• 1. Focus on Sustainability: A New Direction for Public Administration
• 2. Economics and the Environment
• 3. Managing Risk as the Work of Governments
• 4. Nonprofit, For-Profit, and Public Agents
• 5. FreshWater
• 6. Food Security and Safety
• 7. Solid Waste Removal and Management
• 8. Transportation
• 9. Wildlife and Oceans
• 10. Energy and Global Climate Change
• 11. Higher Education
• 12. Measurement and Assessment
• 13. The Future of Sustainable Development in Public Administration
• References
• Index
• About the Authors