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ECO-CITIES OF THE FUTURE – Territorial twinning for eco-innovation : Greater Paris, Western Michigan, Shanghai
DETAILS
1st speaker : Tim Lincoln
Albion College is a typical liberal arts college, founded in 1835. George Heartwell, Mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan, attended it.
Focusing on basic education and career development of its 1400 students, it aims at addressing sustainability issues. It offers minors and majors in both technical and research environment-related fields. In environment sciences, students need to know a lot of things, about physical realities, as well as regarding humanities and arts. It focuses on social sciences and eco-cities, and includes an eco-lab.
In the USA, another relevant issue is racial & social inequities. Albion College, in partnership with 14 other colleges, runs a programme to take kids out of the city on saturdays. It aims at broadening those kids' horizons towards the environment and sustainability issues. This programme is funded and offers partnerships. Their leitmotiv is « stick to action ».
2nd speaker : Andrew French
Albion College promotes collaborative work for undergraduates (18-22 years old), with the same methods & ambitions as graduate schools (22-26 years old). They offer scholarships. They also established partnerships, as a way for medium schools to expand.
3rd speaker : George Heartwell
Grand Rapid, Michigan, is a 200,000 people city with 22 colleges. It was historically a manufacturing city, with increasing health and environment problems. When elected, 10 years ago, George Heartwell decided to tackle these problems. Especially, he ordered a sustainability plan, that would be much more useful to the city than the strategic planning documents that were refered to until then.
The city of Grand Rapids started establishing partnerships with public schools, colleges, and Grand Valley State University. Now, they work with over 200 partners : businesses, administrations, NGOs, media... that help them collect, aggregate and analyse data on the environment, which the city couldn't have done by itself.
4th speaker : Elena Lioubimtseva
Grand Valley State University has over 20,000 students, several hundreds of undergraduate programs, 35 graduate programs and 5 campuses. It is 2-hours drive from both Detroit and Chicago.The main goal is the education of the students, and then, having the professors to do research & publishing... students are highly valued.
There is a great culture of giving back to the community, in West Michigan, so they established strong alliances with companies and private administrations. The partnership between Grand Rapids and Grand Valley benefits the city, as well as the university.
Regarding the outcomes of the seminar, the meetings were very interesting, with an international audience, opening many different perspectives ! Links have been established, for future collaborative opportunities for research.
5th speaker : Zhu Dajian
We talk a lot about technology, but not about people. However, Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.
How to overcome the bound effect ? It's all about consumers' habits, sociology and social change. Increase in population implies increase in consumption, which imples increase in pollution, as more people buy cars !
There are 2 kinds of eco-innovations :
- efficiency oriented (do the right thing) and
- effectiveness oriented (do things right).
People think renewable energy is the key to low carbon economy, but although it is important, in the next 10 to 20 years, it will have a low impact (-0,26). Energy efficiency will have a much greater impact (-5,22) especially in transportation, and in industry even more.
Two remarks about the workshops: is it possible to involve governments in such seminars ? And is it possible to introduce sustainability indicators in traditional universities' ranking?
Questions & Answers:
Martin Dieterich, Professor at the Hohenheim University in Stuttgart asked : as population decline in Europe is an opportunity to lower the impact (I=PxAxT), won't premium policies for buying « geen cars » prevent any decrease in oil & materials consumption ?
Zhu Daijin : set up ceilings for maximum admitted emissions and then rely on market mechanisms
Elena Lioubimtseva : challenge of behaviour (education & individual choices) rather than regulation
Andrew French : system change has to happen, at the interface of sociology & business, but how ? For instance, how to make car manufacturers not issue a new model each year ?
Tim Lincoln : current US elections are about jobs and how to increase production, helping car manufacturing industry... how to learn and teach the students how to live a simpler & happier life ?
Frances Harrison, UVSQ /REEDS : are there courses to learn more sustainable ways of life, to change people's behaviour at home ?
George Heartwell : there are no formal programmes for that, but there are incentives, like Grand Rapids' recycling program with coupons to (90) local stores + online accounts to check one's recyclable collection.
Andrew French : it is hard to change adults' habits, better educate the kids, and they will then turn their parents into environment friendly behaviour.
Martin O'Connor : there are experiences in Albion College, about producing food in the city, indoors, with LED lights, but the professors were not invited to go for it, as it is neither teaching nor research.
Reporter : Renan Le Tohic, student at the International Professional Master 2 in Management of Eco-Innovation