Seeking Equilibrium: Exploring Environmental Sustainability and Decision Making in Higher Education.

摘要

While the term environmental sustainability is widely popular and ostensibly modern, the ideas embodied by this fluid concept are as old as human society. History has repeatedly demonstrated that when communities fail to find a balance between extracting the resources needed to live and promoting the continued healthful function of natural systems, they suffer serious consequences. Examples of this can be seen in fishery collapse, agricultural catastrophe, and chemical mismanagement where human behavior ran unchecked until ecosystems were too stressed to provide the services humans depended on. Themes in historical examples include a difficulty in understanding decision consequences, conflicting values, challenged long term thinking, and struggles to effectively use knowledge.;Understanding how to encourage today's decision makers to embrace sustainability as a core value in their decision making process can help to shift the drive for healthy human systems toward greater balance, or equilibrium, with the need for environmental well being. Institutions of higher learning have been early actors in this arena, working to improve the sustainability of their operations while training future leaders. These institutions are making changes to better manage ubiquitous human systems including those for waste management and energy production, and the lessons gleaned in these settings are relevant far beyond campus borders. Institutions of higher learning provide ideal study sites to examine how the expression of sustainability influenced values, held by actors and by the institutions themselves, impact the decision making process.;This work explores four cases in three topical areas at Yale University: food, transportation and energy. The first case presents a study of the transition from a campus dining system in which food waste was discarded in wastewater and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), to one boasting a food waste composting program. The second case focuses on the decision to shift from traditional diesel to a biodiesel blended fuel in campus shuttle busses. The third case explores efforts to influence individual commuting decisions to and from campus. Finally, the fourth case details the process of reaching a decision to make a public greenhouse gas reduction commitment. Each of these cases exposes a diversity of variables that interrelate in an evolving fashion. As values change, priorities shift, and actors enter and exit, the relationships between all components of a decision making system adjust.;The decision making processes described in each of these cases can be partially explained through the use of theory and literature from fields including the policy sciences, problem definition, and innovation diffusion, among others. Building from this foundation, this work highlighted 18 variables that were expressed as having low, medium or high influence in each case. These variables were organized into four focal groups: Context, Knowledge, Participation and Process.;Across the four cases, an increase in the prevalence of high influence variables was found when moving from the simple case of converting to biodiesel fuel to the highly complex example found in shifting to a compost system. A continuum of increasing decision complexity emerged. While the number of high influence variables increased across the continuum, distinct variables demonstrated variability.;This analysis found seven key variables, a majority of which fell into the Process group, that were identified as being highly relevant for future sustainability influenced decision making. Understanding organizational structure and having system knowledge were important in navigating decision making in complex institutions. Agenda setting enabled decision makers to provide leadership by understanding who the players were and what motivated them, and using that knowledge to set institutional priorities around sustainability. As the need for behavior change increased, so too did the complexity of decision making overall. Cultural shifts and risk taking demonstrated that having a community understanding of what sustainability is provided support for decision makers, as did acceptance of thoughtful experimentation. Finally, problem definition involvement enabled actors to skillfully communicate that sustainability was enmeshed throughout institutional work. Many of these variables were found in the Process group, underscoring the importance of understanding the functional units of how decision making happens at an institution.;Those seeking to improve the impact of sustainability influenced decision making can use this list of key variables to guide their efforts, helping target their focus and enable them to avoid common pitfalls. This work represents the experience at Yale University, and can be strengthened through further verification in other institutional settings.