School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
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- Creators: Aggarwal, Rimjhim
In the end, Conservation International is more specifically seeking to aid in the optimization of the use of nature’s benefits in the region. The scenario development approach that will be used for the workshop is the quadrant method, where values of the region are used to create an axis that will show four different futures in four different quadrants depending on the direction. An example is using the axis of rainfall (increase or decrease) and the prevalence of slash-and-burn farming (increase or decrease). The findings of the workshop will be used to construct new policies based off of the Peruvian National Coffee Plan to encourage new farming techniques for the coffee growers. While the conclusion of the overall workshop will not be determined during the span of the MSUS culminating experience, the conclusion from my work will revolve around having a successful workshop, with success being defined by participation and usable results; the work, such as a literature review and interviews and running the work plan up to the workshop, that allows the workshop to occur.
Globally we are struggling to match the need for development with the available resources. Kate Raworth’s (2012) developed the idea of a “safe and just space” as a balance between the planetary boundary approach and ensuring a level of basic needs satisfaction for everyone. O’Neill et al. (2018) argue that countries are currently not able to provide their populations with basic needs without concurrently exceeding planetary boundary measures. While attempts have been made to get people to change their habits through moral self-sacrifice, this has not been successful. Kate Soper (2008) argues that a change towards sustainability will only be possible if an alternative to high consumption is offered, without trade-offs in well-being. Technological improvements are often thought to end up providing solutions to the problem of overconsumption, but as Jackson (2005) shows convincingly, this is highly unlikely due to the overwhelming scale of changes required.
‘Alternative hedonism’ (Soper 2008) is a philosophical approach that has been proposed to solve this dilemma. By changing what humanity pursues to be less focused on consumption and more linked to community interaction and living healthy, fulfilling lives, we would simultaneously reduce stress on the globally limited resources and sinks. By developing and understanding satiation points – the point beyond which well-being no longer increases because of increased consumption - affluence that wastes resources without improving well-being could be reduced. This paper explores how ‘alternative hedonism’ and the development of ‘satiation points’ could be helpful in getting humanity closer to the ‘safe and just space’. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges that taking up of ‘alternative hedonism’ would entail.