Sustainability careers that aren't environmental jobs

Curiosities  
Sustainability Curious 
Innovation, collaboration and real- world solutions 
With Associate Professor Alex Baumber 
 
Duration 9min 13sec 
 
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:05:11 
 
Hello curious people. I'm Dr Alex Baumber, a sustainability researcher and academic at UTS. 
 
00:00:05:11 - 00:00:17:04 
 
This is Sustainability Curious. 
 
00:00:17:06 - 00:00:40:05 
 
Let's get started. Do my everyday choices really make a difference and which ones matter most? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there's lots of things you can do in your everyday life. From the products that you decide to buy and thinking carefully about that through to the energy that you use in your home. For example, you can buy more energy efficient appliances, or you might be in a position to put solar panels or batteries in your home or switch to an electric car. 
 
00:00:40:06 - 00:01:02:24 
 
All of those things can add up to making a really big impact. But I'm also a big believer that it's not just about individuals, and we really need to think also about good government policy, ethical business practices and, great design that can all contribute to to helping people to make those decisions in their everyday lives. When a company says their product is green, how can I tell what's real and what's just marketing? 
 
00:01:03:01 - 00:01:30:24 
 
Yeah. So this problem of greenwashing, as it sometimes gets called, can be a really big issue. I think the trick here is to look for reputable sources of information. So maybe government labels around energy efficiency or water efficiency that that have that verification. Or, reputable non-government organisations like the Forest Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council for seafood products can be a really good guide to to what's reliable and what's not. 
 
00:01:31:01 - 00:01:49:17 
 
Individuals being asked to do too much compared to big organisations and industries. I think I would say yes and no to that one. It really depends which industries you're talking about. I think there's some industries, like the energy sector, where they've had to make really big transitions, and you've seen this huge uptake in renewable energy, which has been driven by government policy and regulation. 
 
00:01:49:17 - 00:02:09:03 
 
Also, I work in the farming sector where you do see those regulatory pressures come through. But then I think there's other industries maybe like fashion, where there's not much of that pressure happening, and you get this idea of fast fashion where people buy things and throw them away really quickly and buy more. And and there's not a lot of, of pressure on those industries to change. 
 
00:02:09:05 - 00:02:27:16 
 
The pressure is more on, on individuals to make different choices and, and maybe recycle or reuse. So I think, yeah, it really depends. But I guess my view is I'd like to see a little do more across all of those areas, more pressure on the industries and the businesses to, to do more, but also more awareness amongst individuals about the choices they're making. 
 
00:02:27:18 - 00:02:45:15 
 
Is there an industry where you see the biggest opportunity for sustainable change? Well, I'd probably give two answers to that. I think energy jumps out because there's such an opportunity that a huge impact, and it's perhaps the area where we really need to make the biggest transition, shifting away from from the use of fossil fuels towards renewable energy. 
 
00:02:45:17 - 00:03:03:18 
 
But one that's perhaps closer to my heart is the agriculture sector. There's really huge opportunities for win wins in that space where you can actually change the way you manage the land, improve the productivity of your farming enterprise, but also increase the soil carbon level. And that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere, helps to mitigate climate change. 
 
00:03:03:23 - 00:03:24:00 
 
And then it also helps to make the land more resilient and sustainable for the farming enterprise as well. Can sustainability be solved through science alone? Well, I initially trained as a scientist, so I definitely have a soft spot for science. But over time I've actually shifted away more into the social science and the policy space. So I'm very much of the view that it takes all of these different fields and more. 
 
00:03:24:00 - 00:03:46:20 
 
So, business law, design, health, all of these different disciplines working together is really where we can make a huge difference around sustainability. And it's not just disciplinary knowledge or expert knowledge. It's also about that drawing on that local knowledge, indigenous knowledges and, practice based knowledges from all sorts of people who aren't academics in their ivory tower. 
 
00:03:46:21 - 00:04:06:08 
 
So yeah, it really takes all of these things. Who drives sustainable change the most? Governments, industry, communities or individuals? Well, I think this is really an all of the above kind of answer, but if I had to pick one, I'd probably say communities, because I think communities have the power to influence all of those other areas as well. 
 
00:04:06:10 - 00:04:30:06 
 
So really, governments ultimately answer to their community, and it's the community that puts pressure on government and tells our politicians what we'd like to see. Communities also put pressure on businesses and tell them what kind of products and services and how they should be delivered. And also communities put pressure on individuals and a lot of sustainable change really happens through the changing of social norms that that influences the individual, everyday decisions that people make. 
 
00:04:30:07 - 00:04:50:04 
 
What are the trade offs between environmental goals and economic realities when designing sustainable solutions? Well, I think if you zoom out and look at the big picture over the long term, there really isn't a trade off because you need to have a healthy environment in order to have a healthy economy and vice versa. But in the short term, and at the local scale, you do find that there are trade offs. 
 
00:04:50:04 - 00:05:12:03 
 
And sometimes that's because the new sustainable solutions that are emerging might be more expensive to start with. But over time they might actually come down and be more competitive. And we've seen that with solar panels, for example, which, you know, 15 years ago were much more expensive than fossil fuels. But we've managed to bring down the the production costs through technology improvements and production and installation improvements. 
 
00:05:12:05 - 00:05:32:23 
 
But I also think the other factor that comes into it is that we don't always fully cost the impacts of some of the unsustainable things that we do at the moment. So, for example, with fossil fuels for energy, we don't fully factor in the cost of the climate change that comes with that. And if you did actually do that calculation, we had to pay the full costs associated with using those, those fossil fuels. 
 
00:05:33:00 - 00:05:56:01 
 
You'd find that the economics are quite different to the way they appear today. Why can unconventional or grassroots approaches be so powerful? Well, there's probably two different elements to that one. I think the unconventional is really important because you need people who challenge existing ways of doing things and think outside the box. Otherwise you're just going to continue to to implement things the way we've been doing them before or make very small incremental changes. 
 
00:05:56:01 - 00:06:17:00 
 
So you really need those creative thinkers who can see what doesn't currently exist. I think the grass roots side of things is related, but it also really draws on the benefit of that local knowledge and that deep understanding of a particular context that people have. And I guess a good example from my own research of that is, around rural communities and farming communities. 
 
00:06:17:02 - 00:06:38:17 
 
And the way the land care movement sprung up in the 1980s from that really close connection between people on the land, working the land, producing food and fiber. And environmental conservation, people who are interested in how we can improve the health of the landscape. And it's a great example of where those two things were able to be brought together, rather than the conflict that we sometimes see when we try to trade off production systems versus environment. 
 
00:06:38:19 - 00:07:03:21 
 
What do people mean when they talk about social licence? So social licence is really based on an analogy with a regulatory licence. The kind of regulatory licence you might need to start a new mine or a factory, but instead it says, look, what if it's the surrounding community that really needs to give this social licence? So you need to convince the people who live in that space and interact with it the opportunity to tell you whether what you're doing is acceptable or not. 
 
00:07:03:21 - 00:07:19:23 
 
And that requires companies to think and act in a different way instead of just going to the government and and trying to get a licence from them, they actually have to really interact with the local community and talk about things like who's going to be at the costs of this activity, who's going to, receive the benefits. Do we think that those are distributed fairly?
 
00:07:20:04 - 00:07:39:00 
 
Is this a legitimate activity? Are the actors who are carrying it out legitimate in the community as well. So it's really a big trust building exercise. And we've seen this play out in lots of different sectors in Australia. So mining and forestry, a couple of great examples, but also things that can actually have an environmental benefit like wind farms. 
 
00:07:39:00 - 00:08:09:05 
 
If you don't get the social licence story right, you might actually jeopardise the environmental benefits that you're trying to achieve. How can innovation, policy and collaboration help turn climate goals into practical action? Well, this one really goes to the heart of the research that I do. I do a lot of research in the agricultural sector. So I guess that's my, my go to place, where you seen a lot of really great innovation around things like carbon farming, where that involves people changing their farming practices to increase carbon levels in the soil and the vegetation. 
 
00:08:09:07 - 00:08:27:04 
 
There's been a really great level of, of policy innovation. Australia's been a real leader, and other countries are starting to to look at what Australia's been doing in that space to try to create the right incentives, but also to give farmers particular methods and guidance on what they can do, and then set up a verification system to make sure these these benefits are actually real. 
 
00:08:27:06 - 00:09:00:08 
 
But I think you see it in other sectors as well, particularly energy, where you've seen, we've got the technological side of things with things like solar and wind, but you really need the right policy environment to get those things rolled out and incentivise them within the system. And then, of course, along the way, that creates a whole bunch of different challenges where the collaboration comes in between the industry sector, the government, and, and individual consumers and people putting solar panels on their roofs and things like that, to to really think about the how the whole system can come together to deliver that sustainable transition. 
 
00:09:00:13 - 00:09:05:24 
 
That was all the questions for today. I hope you learned something new. Until next time, stay curious.