Beyond eco‐efficiency: a resilience perspective

Korhonen, Jouni; Seager, Thomas P.

doi:10.1002/bse.635

Cited by 161 publications

(111 citation statements)

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“…This in turn acknowledges that a tension exists between efficiency and resilience within corporate sustainability, as identified by Hahn et al (2014). This paper concurs with Korhonen and Seager (2008) who argue that it may be beneficial to adopt practices that may be inefficient, but supportive of a systems-wide, long term view of sustainability, such as that provided by Biophilic Design. They argue for a focus to be placed more on the concept of resilience, which was first developed in ecology to describe the capacity of a natural system to recover from perturbation or injury (Carpenter et al 2001).…”

Section: Biophilic Design: a Synthesis Strategy For Resilience Versussupporting

confidence: 72%

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

Jones

2015

J Bus Ethics

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This paper proposes a new organizational metaphor, the 'Biophilic Organization', which aims to counter the bio-cultural disconnection of many organizations despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and architecture to not only develop a diverse bio-cultural connection but to show how this connection tackles sustainability, in a holistic and systemic sense. Moreover, the paper takes an integrative view of sustainability, which effectively means that it embraces the different emergent tensions. Three specific tensions are explored: efficiency versus resilience, organizational versus personal agendas and isomorphism versus institutional change. In order to illustrate how the Biophilic Organization could potentially provide a synthesis strategy for such tensions, healthcare examples are drawn from the emerging fields of Biophilic Design in Singapore and Generative Design in the U.S.A. Finally, an example is provided which highlights how a Taoist cultural context has impacted on a business leader in China to illustrative the significance of a transcendent belief system to such a bio-cultural narrative.Key Words: Biophilic Organisation, Sustainability, Generative Design, Biophilic Design, Taoism. 2 Introduction'We need to enhance our recognition that we are just another biological creature and see ourselves in that way……some of our most alienating work environments, in the sense of separating us from nature, are often in the modern office building where people are in these very bland, hostile environments with no access to windows or any experience of the outside or natural environments. Ironically, if you tried to do that to a caged animal in a zoo, you would violate legal statute, and would be prevented from doing so. We don't allow zoo animals to be in these barren, alienating, unnatural environments. And yet we allow ourselves to be, and it's such a glaring example of how we don't see ourselves like that tiger in the cage, that we're just as much dependent upon those experiential connections as the tiger is. We lose track of that because we see ourselves as somehow apart or separate from nature. We need to maintain that broader understanding of who we are and where we fit into the natural scheme'. (Kellert, 2004)As Hahn et al (2014) argue most scholars in the field seem to agree that corporate sustainability requires firms to address interconnected and interdependent economic, environmental and social concerns at different levels. The begging question with such an espoused 'triple-bottom line'perspective is that what happens when all the 'win-win' solutions have been exhausted and there is a clear conflict between the predominant financial issues and the silent ecological imperative.It is no surprise that the financial bottom line, within the current corporate sustainability 3 discourse, is normally prioritized to instrumentally satisfy the expectations of the shareholders, with the ecological and social subsu...

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Section: Biophilic Design: a Synthesis Strategy For Resilience Versussupporting

confidence: 72%

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

Jones

2015

J Bus Ethics

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“…However, an agricultural sector that depends on import of protein feed has little tolerance against instable global economic and political conditions. In this way, investments that improve eco-efficiency may at the same time have inverse impacts on the system's resilience and adaptability [55].…”

Section: Implication Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Analysis of the Danish Food Production System: Food-EROI and Fossil Fuel Dependency

Markussen

Østergård

2013

Energies

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Modern food production depends on limited natural resources for providing energy and fertilisers. We assess the fossil fuel dependency for the Danish food production system by means of Food Energy Returned on fossil Energy Invested (Food-EROI) and by the use of energy intensive nutrients from imported livestock feed and commercial fertilisers. The analysis shows that the system requires 221 PJ of fossil energy per year and that for each joule of fossil energy invested in farming, processing and transportation, 0.25 J of food energy is produced; 0.28 when crediting for produced bioenergy. Furthermore, nutrients in commercial fertiliser and imported feed account for 84%, 90% and 90% of total supply of N, P and K, respectively. We conclude that the system is unsustainable because it is embedded in a highly fossil fuel dependent system based on a non-circular flow of nutrients. As energy and thus nutrient constraints may develop in the coming decades, the current system may need to adapt by reducing use of fossil energy at the farm and for transportation of food and feed. An operational strategy may be to relocalise the supply of energy, nutrients, feed and food.

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“…This section presents some perspectives on how the willingness to set targets and indicators and overcoming the limits of voluntary qualitative sustainability reports could be framed, but with a broad view of sustainability, beyond eco-efficiency. Eco-efficiency has become perhaps the most popular concept and tool in corporate environmental and sustainability management, and also the most criticized [37]. Just ticking off the presence/absence of energy efficient appliances (indicator "2.1a"), or an Energy Conservation Program (indicator "2.4") or a Smart Building program (indicator "2.1b"), does not guard us against prebound/rebound effects [38], and incorrect maintenance of appliances [39], or account for occupant behavioural patterns in the actual use of energy [40].…”

Section: Beyond Current Energy Efficiency Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

True Green and Sustainable University Campuses? Toward a Clusters Approach

2016

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Campus greening is often the first step universities take towards sustainability. However, the diffusion of sustainability reporting methodologies and rankings is still at an early stage, and is biased in mainly measuring energy efficiency indicators while omitting basic features enabling meaningful comparisons among centers or addressing social (users) aspects related to long term sustainability transitions. This paper aims to introduce a critical perspective on sustainability university frameworks through: (i) a review of current Campus Sustainability Assessments (CSAs); (ii) performing and comparing the results obtained from the application of two internationally recognized CSAs (namely, Green Metric and ISCN) to two case studies (the Politecnico di Torino, in Italy, and the Hokkaido University, In Japan) and, finally, (iii) proposing a new CSA approach that encompasses clusters of homogeneous campus typologies for meaningful comparisons and university rankings. The proposed clusters regard universities' morphological structures (campuses nested within city centers versus outside of a city compact ones), climatic zones and functions. At the micro scale, the paper introduces the need for indicators beyond measuring pure energy efficiency, but which are attentive to local and societal constraints and provide long-term tracking of outcomes. This, better than a sheer record of sustainability priority actions, can help in building homogenous university case studies to find similar and scalable success strategies and practices, and also in self-monitoring progress toward achieving truly sustainable university campuses.

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Beyond eco‐efficiency: a resilience perspective

Cited by 161 publications

References 50 publications

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

Energy Analysis of the Danish Food Production System: Food-EROI and Fossil Fuel Dependency

True Green and Sustainable University Campuses? Toward a Clusters Approach

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