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Profligacy, greed or simply don't care?

By Russ Grayson - posted Monday, 10 September 2007


Is it simple profligacy, greed or too much money? That might be the cynic's question following the revelation that Sydney's Eastern Suburbs - that long stretch of beaches, sandstone headlands and suburbia - have a higher than average ecological footprint compared to other regions of the country.

The news was delivered to local councils by University of Sydney researcher, Manfred Lenzen. Using an adaptation of the ecological footprint model of resource and environmental impact estimation, Lenzen has worked out the impact of the Eastern Suburbs and compared it to the situation only a few years previously. The findings? The ecological footprint of the Eastern Suburbs is growing.

The trouble with footprints

Lenzen presented his findings to a public meeting at the University of New South Wales organised by Randwick Council's sustainability education team. He explained how the ecological footprint method of estimating environmental impact has been improved beyond the simple concept developed by Rees and Wackernagel in 1992 to something more sophisticated and inclusive.

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Ecological footprinting estimates the impact of the production, consumption and waste disposal of goods and services expressed as the number of hectares of land it would take to sustain a particular lifestyle.

Critics may be right in asserting that the ecological footprint is not a numerically accurate measure; however, given that its main use has been in sustainability education, the figures in hectares that it produces are useful. It is a conceptual tool - more a way of thinking about impacts and lifestyles that a set of mathematically correct figures. Lenzen has refined the method to include the use of input-output analysis, supply chain impact, land disturbance and renewable energy scenarios. This, he says, yields a more detailed picture of the impact of lifestyle and affluence.

Writing in The Ecological Footprint - Issues and Trends (2003; Lanzen M, Murray SA; ISA Research Paper 01-03, University of Sydney), Lanzen describes how the idea of ecological footprint analysis has changed in less than a decade and a half. He writes:

While generally acknowledged as a valuable educational tool that has enriched the sustainability debate, the original ecological footprint is limited as a regional policy and planning tool for ecologically sustainable development because it does not reveal where impacts occur ... the nature and severity of these impacts and how these impacts compare with the self-repair capability of the respective ecosystem. In response, the concept has undergone significant modification.

Even the use of hectares as a measure of the productive area needed to support populations enjoying particular lifestyles had to be revised. The original concept measured this in terms of overseas land productivity. That had to be rejigged to account for the lower productive of Australian land.

The suburban east

From the beaches of Sydney Harbour in the north to the shores of Botany Bay in the south, the Eastern Suburbs accommodates Sydney's second-highest population density. About 48 per cent of the population live in apartments, townhouses and other medium density dwellings. The population is also quite mobile, something that has a lot to do with the large number of renters and the shifting population of UNSW students.

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The harbourside area governed by Woolahra Council in the north is the most financially well-off. The affluence gradient declines in a southwards trend through the Waverly and Randwick City Council local government areas.

Overall, Eastern Suburbs residents enjoy economic sufficiency, but areas of wealth and affluence are interspersed with pockets of poverty and need.

Lower socioeconomic enclaves, mainly Housing Commission residential developments, are found in the Randwick municipality and there is an Aboriginal population at La Perouse that suffers from poverty and child behavioural problems like those found in similar populations elsewhere. The mixed demographic reality of the Eastern Suburbs gives the lie to the stereotypical reputation of the region as one of high wealth and its residents as all being economically privileged.

Lenzen's finding, that increasing income drives a higher ecological footprint, leads logically to the conclusion that the more affluent residents of the region have the largest environmental impact. This, however, requires qualification.

It is the products and services that people buy, rather than simple affluence estimated as their financial worth, that influence impact and make for a larger environmental footprint. While they have the same types of household appliances that the lower income demographic might own, higher income groups also spend their money on those products that contribute less to the region's ecological footprint, products such as books, theatre tickets and eating out.

This discretionary spending limits income and wealth, by themselves, as reliable indicators of ecological footprint. It brings into question the idea of income redistribution through increased taxes on higher income earners as a means of reducing their impact.

Impact follows affluence gradient

Just how much land-equivalence do Eastern Suburbs residents require to support their lifestyles? Despite his reservations about a direct link between income and impact, Lenzen's research discloses that there does exist an overall relationship between them:

  • the ecological footprint of residents of the affluent local government area of Woolahra, abutting Sydney Harbour, is 8.31 hectares per capita, up from 8.12ha in 1996;
  • citizens of Waverly municipality, immediately to the south of Woolahra, need 7.97ha each to support their lifestyle, compared to 7.53ha in 1996; and
  • Randwick residents each require a total of 6.95ha, compared to 6.52ha in 1996.

It is an upward trend in all cases, with Woolahra leading the three local government areas, and it generally follows the north to south socioeconomic gradient through the region.

Lenzen compared the Eastern Suburbs' ecological footprint to that of the Inner Sydney area - the region surrounding Sydney CBD. For the same period, Inner Sydney residents needed 8.52ha to support their lifestyles, an increase from 7.66ha in 1996 and greater that of the most affluent part of the Eastern Suburbs. This he puts down to demographic changes in the region, particularly the increase in the number of single person households, each of which buys its own range of products such as white goods. Lacking is the sharing that occurs in larger households.

The affluent inner suburbs?

Inner Sydney is a region of medium to higher density dwellings, a great many dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In those times it was a socially mixed region of middle and working class residents, each in their own areas, plus a few who had found wealth on the goldfields.

Their mansions, often subdivided into apartments today, are found in pockets throughout the area. Social change came with the 1970s and the start of “gentrification”, a term that carried a certain opprobrium but which was, in reality, symptomatic of Australia's changing economy. Now, those little working class terraces and the larger homes of the middle class are occupied by Sydney's service sector workers.

It is true that the construction and fitting out of the new apartment buildings with white goods and other products, apartments that have been built in the region over the past 20 years or so, produces a spike on the ecological footprint graph. There are, however, factors in medium density residential development that tend to lower impact and that, over time, can more than compensate for the initial peak. This includes living close to public transport and shopping venues, and the consequent lower reliance on private vehicles.

Local government response

Speakers at the Randwick City Council-UNSW event (the council maintains a formal partnership with UNSW) where Lenzen presented his research praised council for its initiatives in reducing the ecological footprint of its own operations and in educating its citizens in ways to reduce theirs. Council raises funds of more than $2 million a year through an environmental levy on ratepayers and spends the money on improving water conservation and reuse, energy conservation, waste reduction, improving remnant bushland and other measures. Importantly, council is upgrading its own infrastructure to comply with environmental standards.

Council workshops attract people from beyond the municipality. This lends council’s community education program a regional, not just local importance. It reinforces the reality that Eastern Suburbs citizens perceive the coastal strip as a contiguous bio-geographical region rather than as simply an assemblage of local government areas.

Yet, local government does not appear to think like this and you can't help but ask whether some council operations would be better approached within a combined plan through which the separate councils co-operate. This is not to propose local government amalgamation, although there could be merit in that because the Eastern Suburbs is geologically contiguous and shares a common stretch of seafront that is home to some of the most popular and iconic beaches in Australia.

Treating it as a geographical unit rather than as separate local government areas might make more sense, especially in policy for sustainable development. Surely, Lenzen's research suggests the common sense and planning possibilities that could come from this. In this context, Waverly Council's policy of making its community food garden available only to Waverly ratepayers is curious and, perhaps, something of an anachronism. No such restriction is placed on Randwick's garden. Perhaps it sets a precedent for councils to deny access to facilities such as football fields, libraries and surf life saving clubs to ratepayers, a possibility truly out of kilter with Australian expectations and standards.

Pulled two ways

It appears, then, that Eastern Suburbs residents are being pulled in two directions. The trend towards a growing environmental footprint is being countered by an increasing number of locals who attempt to reduce their footprint while maintaining quality of life.

Reduced impact with high quality of life is not as contradictory as it seems because quality of life does not necessarily imply the accumulation of excessive possessions. It is more a psychological state that grows out of having sufficient material goods, a rewarding livelihood and income security as well as intangibles like social networks and friends. For a great many people these things matter more than material possessions and social status.

Lenzen’s environmental footprint findings for one of the city’s most populous regions has defined a trend. The detail disclosed through his research gives planners and policy makers an improved tool with which to think about the future of the region. All that is required now is the imagination and political will to incorporate it into regional and local government planning.

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About the Author

Russ Grayson has a background in journalism and in aid work in the South Pacific. He has been editor of an environmental industry journal, a freelance writer and photographer for magazines and a writer and editor of training manuals for field staff involved in aid and development work with villagers in the Solomon Islands.

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