Week 8.3 - Recycled water: Green Square

With over 20 billion litres of Sydney's stormwater flowing out to sea every year, development within the Green Square precinct is undertaking a conscious effort to implement water saving initiatives. Apartment dwellers are notoriously high consumers of drinking water, with one third of what they use either flushed down the toilet or used in the laundry. In response, stormwater harvesting will see that recycled storm water, purified through processes such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, is used for bathroom and laundry purposes. In facilitating a recycled water network, savings are real, with a parallel plumbing system able to provide up to 900 kilolitres (half an Olympic-sized swimming pool) of recycled water every day. As a consequence, economic costs associated with the implementation of such systems are able to be justified through reduced water bills and the knowledge that a conscious effort is being made to live sustainably.

http://greensquarewater.com.au/

Week 8.2 - Carbon storage

Up until a paradigm shift signals the widespread introduction of renewable energy resources, carbon emissions will continue to act as a hindrance towards the facilitation of sustainable cities. Due to the fact that development of renewable energy resources are still in their embryonic stages, and resource consumption continues to grow (quintupling over the last 5 decades), carbon storage initiatives will be necessary to minimise the inevitable effects of global warming.

Such initiatives themselves are still very much experimental, with early research pointing towards the fact that they can largely be considered as site dependent. In the Huon Valley, Tasmania, a 80m steel tower has been erected amongst a eucalypt forest with the intention of monitoring fluctuations in the amount of carbon, water and energy between the land and atmosphere. In accordance with monitoring soil samples, trees and bugs, scientists hope the data will reveal how and when forests store and release carbon. In turn, such knowledge will be able to inform decision making regarding whether it is better, from a carbon storage standpoint, to leave mature forests untouched or instead harvest and regrow them. Over the past 12 months, the key finding has been that the hotter days, the forests take in much less carbon then on the cooler days. As a consequence, this in turn dictates the need to take swift action before global average temperatures rise further.

Denholm, M, 2014. Forest tower finds the answers to carbon puzzle. The Weekend Australian, 5-6 April. 10.

Week 8.1 - One child policy

Sustainable population levels are a key criterion of sustainable cities. In response to this facet, for the past three decades, China has implemented controls in order to mitigate population growth in the form of their one child per family policy. Substantial fines associated with exceeding this limit effectively act as a birth control mechanism, and over this period, it is assumed that the policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births. However, in regards to sustainability and cities, the degree to which this measure can be considered effective is questionable.

Over the short term, this is specifically true, with the ability to have only one child, or two under certain circumstances, leaving China with a rapidly aging population. As a consequence, the first children born under this policy have been left with the added burden of caring for the elderly. Furthermore, substantial fines associated with exceeding the one child limit often leave families to lie on census data. In urban areas, children are often listed to other family members, and in rural areas, left out all together, with the real population expected to be higher than listed. In addition, the desire to have a boy has also seen that millions of female foetuses have been aborted, and resulted in an unprecedented man made gender imbalance.

Minter, A, 2014. A fine mess: China's two-child penalties don't add up. The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 April. 14.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11404623 

Week 7.3 - Adaption

With greenhouse emissions showing no signs of slowing down, this facet espouses the increasing need for adaption to climate change. In Australia we have the means to quantify and respond to forecasted impacts through the implementation of additional infrastructure e.g. by increasing the height of levees to reduce flooding. By contrast, the same cannot be said for places such as the Maldives. Due to the fact that its highest point is 2m above sea level, in a century, it will be completely underwater at high tide, illustrating how the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed around the world. Furthermore, over the past decade, flooding has contributed to 6000 deaths per year, with four of the top ten countries in terms of deaths relative to total population from the Pacific (Samoa, the Philippines, Fiji and Papua New Guinea). As a consequence, reducing the vulnerability of such societies to climate impacts is essential if they are to remain sustainable.

Comment, 2014. Inaction on climate change is no laughing matter. Sydney Morning Herald, 01 April. 14-17.