Sustainability…. What does it mean?
Sustainability is a term in widespread use, if not overuse, and its precise definition continues to evolve. We’ve asked a variety of people involved in exploring sustainability to provide their view of it from particular points of view. As you will see, like beauty, sustainability is in part in the eye of the beholder, but common ground is possible, and by giving voice to varying takes, consensus can be found.
Sustainable Sonoma – What it is, and isn’t
Though ‘sustainability’ has become a surprisingly moveable idea, like Thomas Jefferson we generally find the truths about sustainability to be self-evident.
“Sustainability is permanence.” Lady Eve Balfour’s words still ring true today. She went on to quote Aldo Leopold, “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise”.
Sonoma is blessed with an abundance of natural — and increasingly cultural — amenities that inspire our spirits and make almost all of us happy to live here. Our Bear-Flag-loving pueblo also has a proud tradition of iconoclastic independence. The quality of life we now enjoy is a result of the agrarian sensibilities and economic conservatism of our forebears. Rather than sell out, most had the foresight (or just plain stubbornness) to preserve Sonoma’s integrity, stability and beauty rather than build more generic monuments to ‘growth’.
Sonoma’s uniqueness today is our inheritance, and its authenticity is our duty to preserve.
We all know that our permanence in the Valley is increasingly at risk; that our present economy and lifestyles are not sustainable, and that by most indicators, matters are getting worse, not better. We know that aspirational goals and marketing campaigns alone won’t change this.
We can be thankful that some of our best community leaders seem ready to understand this. It’s always wise to face in the right direction when the answers are blowin’ in the wind.
At Transition Sonoma Valley, we seek to be a catalyst bringing people to together to start asking the tough questions and to celebrate the joys of living in a community that is committed to transitioning away from our current unsustainability and risk to a world that future generations are depending on us to deliver.
Tom Conlon,Transition Sonoma Valley Steering Team
What does sustainability mean, right here, right now?
This word “sustainability.” Decades after it came into use in 1987, it has been over-used and watered down, but it still has meaning, and Earth Day is a good time to mull over its value.
It seems likely the word “sustainability” was set up as a goal statement by people who were alarmed at how quickly humanity is eating up our collective legacy of arable soil, clean water, a functioning atmosphere, and mind-boggling biodiversity. Instead of using up our birthright, they reasoned, we should “sustain” it, so that we and our world can endure.
That’s fine, but it’s unwise to set goals in reaction to bad behavior. Let’s turn it around and plan to achieve the world we want, not just plan to stop wrecking the world we have
So… what sort of a world do we want? My favorite version of the sustainability goal, one that cuts to the heart of the matter, is from William McDonough and Michael Baumgart in 2010:
How do we love all the children, of all species, for all time? This is how many people—including us at the Ecology Center–now use the word “sustainability,” as a container for all the attributes we hope for in our community and in our world.
Here in Sonoma Valley, most people agree that many aspects of community sustainability are in good shape. We enjoy unbelievable beauty all around us, a thriving business sector, and a degree of goodwill and connectedness throughout the community.
But in other ways, we are still far from demonstrating a love for all the children of all species for all time. Let’s take that goal to heart, and raise up that tide that will carry all boats. Let’s make the community we want, together.
Caitlin Cornwall, Sonoma Ecology Center
Leverage our assets, tackle our problems
For some the Sonoma Valley can feel like paradise—blessed with an ideal climate, rich history, small town intimacy and big city amenities that have been woven together over time into a unique blend. Yet for other Valley residents, Sonoma can be a challenging place to live beset with high costs, limited support resources and few opportunities.
One doesn’t have to look far to see the growing economic and ethnic divides, the lack of affordable housing, the strains on public education, the aging of the population, the stresses on the natural environment and the struggle to maintain a strong community in the face of growing numbers of tourists and part-time residents. If you can’t already tell, I think of ‘sustainability’ in the broadest sense of the term, encompassing environmental, economic and social aspects.
In the past we have too often thought about and addressed our challenges in silos, arguing about economic development, water or education. Sustainability is about the endurance of a system, and all of these issues are interrelated. When we slow or limit economic development to preserve the small town feel we have, avoid urbanization of Sonoma, preserve natural resources, we also limit opportunities for younger, working families to earn a living here. We rightly support increased investment in education and encourage more students to go to college. But, have we built a community, house and jobs that attract those graduates back here to live and work? Our solutions have to be as creative as the problems we face.
We have the talent and the resources to create a healthy and sustainable community for everyone who lives here. We’re not so big that our problems are insoluble. In fact, at forty thousand residents, we’re the perfect size to come up with the solutions, leverage our best assets and tackle the problems we face.
Joshua Rymer, President, Sonoma Valley Fund
Sustainability is synonymous with equity
Sustainability is an empty word without working class communities being a part of the conversation to define it. Sonoma County is at great risk of becoming an exclusive eco-friendly playground for the wealthiest. It is our most marginalized communities who are the first to be impacted by unsustainable practices.
This can best be seen in the current housing crisis that we face. Rents in Sonoma Valley have gone up 30 percent in less than 3 years, there is a 1 percent vacancy rate, and no protections for renters exist to stabilize rents or help avoid unjust evictions. Renters, both working class and middle class, are stuck and being squeezed at the same time, and yet the market logic that got us into this crisis is often unquestioned.
In order to ensure sustainability and equity, local government and local communities must begin inserting themselves into the equation, providing human-based solutions that defy market logic, and that demonstrate resilience in the face of pain. Policies such as rent stabilization and just cause eviction should be on the table, and so too should the ability of renters to organize ourselves and begin exercising collective legal rights as tenants, to expose slumlords and unfair practices.
If the needs of the workforce are not made a priority, we will no longer be able to afford to live in the County. That will result in commutes, traffic, CO2 emissions, family stress, deeper poverty, and deeper segregation of people. The only interactions will be brief economic transactions, if even that.
Sustainability means an expressed effort to lift up the voices and rights of those who tare preyed upon by this system, so that we have the power to provide solutions that benefit us. Creating a County that all can live in, work in, pray in, play in, will benefit us all in the long run, but the solutions need to begin now.
Davin Cárdenas, Lead Organizer, North Bay Organizing Project
Groundwater: Avoiding the nightmare scenario
As the state grapples with its fourth year of drought, Californians have reacted with shock to photos of Central Valley farmlands where land has sunk up to 20 feet due to declining groundwater levels. The phenomenon, known as “subsidence,” occurs when so much water has been pumped from aquifers that the land collapses. It will take centuries for these groundwater basins to recover – leaving residents, farmers and ecosystems high and dry.
This is the nightmare scenario that the Legislature and Governor were trying to avoid when approving the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014. While the legislation is complex, its goal is simple: Local, sustainable management of groundwater basins. If local agencies fail to act, SGMA requires the state to step in. The SGMA currently applies to three of Sonoma County’s 14 groundwater basins: Sonoma Valley, Santa Rosa Plain and Petaluma Valley.
The first step is to form Groundwater Sustainability Agency(s) (GSA) for the basins. SGMA requires the GSA to be a local, public agency that manages or supplies water or that has land-use authority within the basin. In other words, a city, water district, the Sonoma County Water Agency or the county could serve as the GSA, either separately or together. Fortunately, Sonoma County’s recent history of stakeholder collaboration on groundwater issues in Sonoma Valley and Santa Rosa Plain provides a strong foundation to move forward under the SGMA.
In March, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors (also serving as the board of the Sonoma County Water Agency) gave staff direction to work with all GSA-eligible agencies and to gather input from farmers, residential well owners, the environmental community, business groups and economically disadvantaged communities on GSA formation. A stakeholder assessment has begun, and recommendations for next steps are anticipated in late summer.
No matter which agencies are involved, the actions of groundwater users will be key to keeping local basins healthy.
Jay Jasperse and Ann DuBay, Sonoma County Water Agency
Old word, new meaning
Sustainability. It’s not a new word but it seems to have new meaning in our “green conscious” society. Does the word invoke a time frame? Our lifetimes? 100 years? Forever? We’re obviously an evolving species, and we seem to be evolving at an alarming rate from my perspective. The old benchmarks of everything seem to be changing. Our ancestors sustained themselves for thousands of years farming, foraging. That’s not who we are now. As the world population continues to grow, is there really a possibility of sustainability? It seems that sustainability requires evolution, just like everything else.
Agriculture is on one hand what has allowed our evolution as a species and at the same time might be the cause of our irreversible demise. Many farmers are working hard to grow ever-larger quantities of food, while using vast amounts of resources and often polluting the environment. Many believe that genetic modification is the only real hope for feeding the growing population. Is big science sustainable? Let’s hope so because I don’t believe we’re going back soon.
I farm “organic “vegetables on a small piece of Sonoma Valley that used to be Romberg’s Dairy, about 14 acres in all. I believe my practices are sustainable over the long term. I have been planting this ground continuously for more than 20 years. Adding generous amounts of compost and minerals shows consistent improvements in soil tests. But sustainability is much more complex in our world than simply treating your land with the respect and reverence it deserves.
I guess I don’t really know what sustainable is… Maybe just surviving. Meanwhile, we can all make choices daily that can help to foster a more healthy community while we hope to find answers to life’s complicated issues.
Paul Wirtz, Paul’s Produce
The economics of sustainability
Since the founding of Praxis Peace Institute 15 years ago, inquiry has always been a core principle of our programs. We have tried to peel away assumptions that are the wallpaper of our culture. This means asking basic as well as systemic questions.
Sustainability is not just about nature and the environment. It is about living in balance with the earth and its inhabitants. At a recent Praxis program, we heard speakers illuminate the contradictions in our cultural assumption that our form of capitalism — an economic system that requires endless growth in order to survive – is somehow compatible with a sustainable footprint on planet Earth. Endless growth without limits is a form of cancer. It kills.
At the root of the sustainability question are economic questions.
The U.S. is 5 percent of the world’s population but uses 20 percent of its resources. This is more than any other one country, including China and India. So, when people point to population as the main problem, one has to look at two countries with much larger populations that use only a fraction of what Americans are using.
Dave Tilford of the Sierra Club says, “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil.”
The concept of “enough” must become part of our culture. Wild west capitalism that requires endless growth and demands a type of freedom that is really more accurately defined as license, has to give way to a more mature sensibility about individuality and community.
Balance is the key and, as Americans, we are out of balance with a sustainable planet. We need to scale back our demands on Nature and help birth a hybrid economic system that does not demand endless growth in order to survive.
Georgia Kelly, Executive Director, The Praxis Peace Institute
Sonoma Valley groundwater sustainability
An estimated 59 percent of the water used in the Sonoma Valley is pumped from Valley wells; most of these wells are not metered. Many local groundwater (GW) levels declined before the current drought, which has accelerated this trend. With climate change, it is likely that droughts will be common in the future. Business as usual appears to be inconsistent with GW sustainability.
Many well owners view their well water as private property that they can use as they wish.
This view is understandable because, historically, California has not restricted GW use even though the it has the power to do so. According to Richard M. Frank of the UC Davis School of Law, California law expressly states that “all water within the State is the property of the people”. If you have a well, very likely you share an aquifer with neighbors. You all have straws in the same glass.
Governor Brown signed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014. This act requires a local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) to be formed here and in other areas of California. The GSA will have the power needed to manage GW.
Sustainable management prevents chronic lowering of GW levels, seawater intrusion, degradation of water quality, land subsidence, and depletion of creeks connected to shallow aquifers. The GSA doesn’t have to achieve sustainability until 2042. Most likely, SV must move faster to achieve sustainability.
Currently, various alternatives to ensure sustainability are being considered. Some alternatives will be expensive and require time-consuming feasibility studies. Inexpensive conservation can start now.
Beware of The Tragedy of The Commons. A natural resource used jointly by many stakeholders is a commons. When that resource is exploited without sustainable practices, the result is ruin for all.
Ed Nelson, Technical Advisory Committee, Sonoma Valley Groundwater Management Program
Beyond sustainability to regeneration
For our family and extended family of workers, sustainability means farming and running a business with a high level of consciousness and care for the people who work here, the land and the surrounding community. It also means that we must make money so that we can reinvest it in people and things that will increase quality and connections in all areas we touch. If we are not improving, we are dying.
At Benziger Family Winery we utilize a third party verification and certification process in order to build trust with our customers and to provide transparency around our sustainability practices.
We believe it is our responsibility to future generations to explore going beyond sustainability to regeneration. It will be important to build biological and human capital and then work off the interest so that our children inherit a planet that is always in the process of healing and supporting higher consciousness.
Mike Benziger
2 thoughts on “Sustainability…. What does it mean?”
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Nice pieces. All the more surprising then that Sonoma Compost is about to be shut down, I read as early as June 1.
I went to the hearing and was impressed at the variety of representations. Clearly Sonoma Compost is the driver of much positive and ongoing chance. I was shocked, therefore, at the decision made, the details of which are being kept in secrecy.
I did not realize that Sonoma city was not represented until it was too late for me to fill in the form to speak. What happened to our Grance, Transition, Gardening Club, Ecology centre in speaking up for this wodnerful resource.
They are now talking about our having to import compost from outside the county – which is going backwards and a complete lack of leadership on the part of the Waste Management board and the five County supervisors who chose this option. Aside from the wear and tear on roads, traffic, gas costs of importing compost, what is going to happen to our green waste?