Sustainable Design Update

I will be posting from Costa Rica for the next few posts.

Costa Rica has developed a thriving eco-tourism industry and strongly supports sustainable development.  The strong eco-ethic in Costa Rica is at least in part attributed to the eco community of Monteverde which is located in the Tilarán Mountain Range on the Continental Divide. The regions economy is driven by ecotourism associated with the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve.

The country has a certification of sustainable tourism program that promotes a broad concept approach to sustainability.  The program focuses on: Physical-biological parameters, Infrastructure and services, External clients, Socio-economic environment.

Check out The Center for Sustainable Tourism

For a timeline of the MonteVerde region check out Sustainable Futures 

2005 saw the largest coral die-off ever recorded in the Caribbean, about a third of all coral in some study areas. In February NOAA reported 96 percent of lettuce coral, 93 percent of the star coral and nearly 61 percent of the brain coral in the St. Croix region had “bleached” (died). Coral provides a breeding ground for many species of fish and is the backbone of tourist and fishing industries.

It should be noted that last year saw unprecedented high temperatures in the Caribbean waters which produced a record number of hurricanes. And while things are bad in the Caribbean, they are worse in the Indian and Pacific oceans which have seen even greater loss of coral. Professor M. James Crabbe, an expert on corals world wide stated “If you want to see a coral reef, go now, because they just won’t survive in their current state.”

From the Environmental News Network:

“It’s an unprecedented die-off,” said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands.

“The mortality that we’re seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals,” Miller said. “These are corals that are the foundation of the reef … colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months.”

Sunday, Edwin Hernandez-Delgado, a University of Puerto Rico biology researcher, found a colony of 800-year-old star coral that towered more than 13 feet high had recently died in waters off Puerto Rico.

Wednesday, Tyler Smith, coordinator of the U.S. Virgin Islands Coral Reef Monitoring Program, dived at a popular spot for tourists in St. Thomas and saw an old chunk of brain coral, about 3 feet in diameter, that was at least 90 percent dead from the disease called white plague.

“We haven’t seen an event of this magnitude in the Caribbean before,” said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch.

For the Caribbean, it all started with hot sea temperatures, first in Panama in the spring and early summer, and got worse from there.

New NOAA sea-surface temperature figures show the sustained heating in the Caribbean last summer and fall was by far the worst in 21 years of satellite monitoring, Eakin said.

“The 2005 event is bigger than all the previous 20 years combined,” he said. It remained hot for weeks, even months, stressing the coral.

CNN Science and Space reports similar findings here.

What is Sustainability? Why should it matter? How do you get there? How much does it cost? Without meaning to sound too trite, the answers to these questions and more can be found in the book “Natural Capitalism”, by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins.

The book Natural Capitalism is a powerful essay / study that covers Sustainability in industry, buildings, government and business. Natural Capitalism is a very well documented and optimistic roadmap showing how to achieve break through efficiencies in energy and materials use while at the same time making the places where we work and live healthier and more comfortable.

You may find some of the claims in this book hard to believe, like making new buildings that use only 30% of the energy of more traditional buildings, but it really works. In my practice we have often achieved amazing savings. (as a matter of fact we are now monitoring several of our recent energy upgraded facilities, stay tuned)

Paul Hawkin and Amory and Hunter Lovins have been at the forefront of a change in corporate thinking, both encouraging and learning from industry leaders who are expanding their concept of the bottom line to encompass economic, environmental and social consequences. This “Triple Bottom Line” is a way of thinking of the broader impacts of our actions.

A look inside Natural Capitalism:

A critical difference between industrial and biological processes is the nature of production. Living systems are regulated by such limiting factors as seasons, weather, sun, soil, and temperature, all of which are governed by feedback loops. Feedback in nature is continual. Such elements as carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen are constantly being recycled. If you could trace the history of the carbon, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and water in your body, you would probably find that you are made up of bits of the Black Sea, extinct fish, eroded mountain ranges, and the exhalations of Jesus and Buddha. Industrial systems, in contrast, although they get feedback from society in the form of bosses, employees, Wall Street, and monitoring machines, have largely ignored environmental feedback. The materials cycle takes high-quality natural capital from nature in the form of oil, wood, minerals, or natural gas and returns them in the form of waste. Twenty centuries from now, our forests and descendants will not be built from pieces of polystyrene cups, Sony Walkmen, and Reebok cross-trainers. The components of these goods do not naturally recycle. This means, of course, that industrial waste is accumulating and it is accumulating in nature.

What does Natural Capitalism have to do with a Campbells Soup Can? Read the chapter “Waste Not” and find out!