Green Design

Urban Resilience for Dummies, Part 2: Failing the Milk Test

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

by Warren Karlenzig

Last post I covered some guiding principles for urban resilience planning in the face of climate change and diminishing resources (especially fresh water and oil). Considering these guidelines, what aspect of U.S. metro
development stands out as the most ill-advised and risky? Short answer: exurban sprawl.

If the "Great Recession" taught us anything, it is that allowing the unrestrained sprawl of energy-inefficient communities and infrastructure is a now-bankrupt economic development strategy and constitutes a recipe for continued disaster on every level.

"Shy away from fringe places in the exurbs and places with long car commutes or where getting a quart of milk takes a 15-minute drive," was the warning the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers gave institutional and commercial real estate investors in their Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 report.

I make the further case that the exurban economic model is an outright anachronism in the Post Carbon Institute's Post Carbon Reader, which comes out this summer from the University of California Press and Watershed Media.

Much of US "economic growth" in the 1990s and early 2000s was based on the roaring engine of exurban investment speculation with gas at historic record low prices. That bubble popped on the spike of $4 a gallon; we now are paying the piper with abandoned tract developments, foreclosed strip malls and countless miles of roads to nowhere. Gas prices are forecast to head over $3 this summer, and likely much higher when a forecast global "oil crunch" hits by 2014 or so.

Besides the economic risks, circa-twentieth-century sprawl has destroyed valuable farmland, sensitive wildlife habitat, and irreplaceable drinking water systems at great environmental, economic, and social cost. We can no longer manage and develop our communities with no regard for the limits of natural resources and ecological systems that provide our most basic needs.

A shining alternative is metropolitan areas that have begun to plan for the future by building their resilience with economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty in mind: top U.S. metro locations include Portland, Oregon, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Denver, and suburbs such as Davis, California and Alexandria, Virginia. These communities are employing some of the following key strategies that underpin resilient urbanism:

Build and re-build denser and smarter

Most U.S. suburban and urban population or use densities need to be increased so that energy-efficient transportation choices like public transit, bicycling and walking can flourish. Multi-modal mobility cannot succeed at the densities found in most American suburban communities today. Increasing density doesn't have to mean building massive high-rises: adding just a few stories on existing or new mixed-use buildings can double population density--and well-designed, increased density can also improve community quality of life and economic vitality.

Focus on water use efficiency and conservation

Our freshwater supply is one of our most vulnerable resources in the United States. Drought is no longer just a problem for Southwestern desert cities--communities in places like Texas, Georgia and even New Jersey recently had to contend with water shortages. As precipitation patterns become less reliable and underground aquifers dry up, more communities will need to significantly reduce water demand through efficiency, conservation, restrictions and "tiered pricing," which means a basic amount of water will be available at a lower price; above average use will become increasingly
expensive the more that is used.

Global climate change is already thought to be melting mountain snowpack much earlier than average in the spring, causing summer and fall water shortages. This has serious planning and design implications for many metro areas. For example, Lake Mead, which provides 90% of the water used by Las Vegas (above photo) and is a major water source for Phoenix and other Southwestern cities, has a projected 50% chance of drying up for water storage by 2021.

Focus on food

Urban areas need to think much bigger and plan systemically for significantly increased regional and local food production. Growing and processing more food for local consumption bolsters regional food security and provides jobs while generally reducing the energy, packaging and storage needed to transport food to metro regions. In Asia and Latin America--even in big cities like Shanghai, China; Havana, Cuba; and Seoul, South Korea--there are thriving small farms interspersed within metro areas.

Gardens--whether in backyards, community parks, or in and on top of buildings--can supplement our diets with fresh local produce. Denver's suburbs, for instance, have organized to preserve and cultivate unsold tract home lots for community garden food production.

Think in terms of inter-related systems

If we view our urban areas as living, breathing entities--each with a set of basic and more specialized requirements--we can better understand how to transform our communities from random configurations into dynamic, high-performance systems. The "metabolism" of urban systems depends largely on how energy, water, food and materials are acquired, used and, where possible, reused. From these ingredients and processes (labor, use of knowledge) come products, services, and--if the system is efficient--minimal waste and pollution.

Communities and regions should decide among themselves which initiatives reduce their risks and provide the greatest "bang for the buck." Like the emergence of Wall Street's financial derivatives crisis in 2007, if we are kept in the dark about the potential consequences of our planning, resource and energy use in light of climate change or energy shortages, future conditions will threaten whole regional economies when they emerge.

Imagine if Las Vegas informed its residents and tourists on one 120-degree summer day that they would not be able to use a swimming pool or shower, let alone golf, because there simply wasn't any water left.

Odds are that the days are numbered for having one's own swimming pool and a large, lush ornamental lawn in the desert Southwest, unless new developments and desert cities are planned with water conservation as having the highest design priority.

By thinking of urban areas as inter-related systems economically dependent on water, energy, food and vital material resources, communities can begin to prepare for a more secure future. Merely developing a list of topics that need to be addressed--the "checklist" approach--will not prepare regional economies for the complexity of new dynamics, such as energy or water supply shortages, rising population, extreme energy price volatility and accelerating changes in regional climate influenced by global climate change.

Next Steps? Time to fold the climate action plan into a resilience action plan, so communities can addresses not only global climate change emissions, but also more urgent economic risks posed by climate change adaptation and resource availability.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Cities at 4:43 PM)

Industrial Strength Stormwater Fix

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

A blue-collar business embraces a green stormwater fix.

by Lisa Stiffler

Editor's note 3/9: This profile is now available in PDF format here.

On Seattle’s 8th Avenue South in the Georgetown neighborhood, empty school buses and recycling trucks rumble by. Semis squeeze past each other. Cars are parked on the street’s gravel shoulder amid shoe-soaking pools of muddy rainwater.

Georgetown’s busted streets and heavy-duty manufacturing plants seem like the last place where earth-friendly, sustainable stormwater solutions would take root. But this is the story of blue-collar industry partnering with a green-thinking community group to benefit them both. The trouble is, it was an unnecessarily long and challenging route to get the project done.

The century-old Markey Manufacturing Co. is a neighborhood institution, cranking out marine winches used to tow barges and haul anchors out of the sea.

But Seattle’s heavy rains were threatening to disrupt Markey’s operations by pocking the company’s driveway with gaping potholes, creating a perilous obstacle course for forklift drivers maneuvering their cargo.

“It was becoming a real safety issue,” said Bob LeCoque, Markey’s vice president. “We had a couple of loads drop off.”

The potholes are now gone, replaced with two paved driveways and three long, shallow ditches that catch the rain. The ditches, or swales, are lined with sand, soil, and plants that soak up the water.

When it rains, it puddles

Throughout most of Seattle, when the rain falls on roofs and streets, it’s shunted away by gutters and pipes. This area of Georgetown, however, is something of an anomaly; before the swales were built, there was no infrastructure to handle the stormwater and prevent flooding. When it rained, the water sat in puddles that took days or weeks to evaporate. Or it streamed over the industrial landscape into the nearby Duwamish River, carrying with it toxic pollutants and mud.

LeCoque wanted to pave Markey’s potholes, but city regulators opposed the plan unless something was done to address the potential increase in runoff that the paving could bring. LeCoque could lay hundreds of feet of pipe to connect with the existing King County stormwater system at the end of the street – at the cost of more than $1 million.

While Markey was trying to resolve its stormwater troubles, a community group comprised of nearby businesses, residents, local government employees, and others was working to improve the area through an effort called the Georgetown Riverview Restoration Project.The group teamed up with LeCoque to create a plan that was more environmentally friendly and cheaper than traditional stormwater infrastructure. They proposed what was essentially a large rain garden in the heart of one of Seattle’s grittiest industrial zones.

With help from Seattle’s Department of Transportation, Markey and the community group built three swales along the front of the Markey site, the largest stretching 60 feet long and 14 feet wide. The swales were dug about 2 feet deep, then refilled with 3 inches of soil and sand. The swales were ringed with wood chips and are still being planted with trees, grasses, and shrubs that can tolerate soaking wet soil in the winter and drought conditions in the summer.

“We’re trying to recreate what’s in the forest,” said Cari Simson, project manager with the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition who helped lead the effort.“Obviously, we’re way removed from the forest.”

Innovative -- and slow going

The innovative project – which is being hailed as Seattle’s first “industrial strength” natural drainage – is getting plenty of kudos now. But being the first of its kind, the project was tough to get done.

“It was a huge struggle,” said Shauna Walgren, a planner with Seattle’s Department of Transportation. There were months of meetings and countless questions about how it would work and what sort of precedent would be set.

“When you’re trying to do something different,” Walgren said, “the city doesn’t have experience to draw from."

Walgren helped coordinate between the multiple city departments involved and was key to getting approval for the plan, Simson said. The project, which started in 2007, was nearly derailed over concerns that the dirt to be excavated for the swales was contaminated with toxic chemicals. Fortunately, tests showed it wasn’t too polluted, and the swales were dug in October 2009.

Designing and excavating the swales close to $40,000, paid for by the Department of Transportation. The Georgetown Community Council working with the nonprofit Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition spent an additional $20,000 on soil for the swales, plants, designs, and other support. Markey Machinery paid roughly $35,000 to pave the driveways and add new sidewalks. Total bill? Under $100,000, a bargain compared to the price tag for a traditional stormwater system.

No more need for hip waders

Simson and others want to replicate the project in other industrial centers that also lack stormwater infrastructure, such as parts of Seattle’s South Park and SODO neighborhoods. As the Markey example shows, natural drainage can be a cheaper fix than building traditional pipes and stormwater holding tanks. Plus, it’s better for the environment because it re-greens areas with mostly native plants, and the swales and retention ponds actually clean the stormwater by allowing it to percolate into the ground.

But this kind of project won’t become more widespread unless the city makes it faster and easier to get approval for this sort of effort, said some of those involved. City departments – including Seattle’s Department of Transportation, Public Utilities, and Department of Planning and Development – need to work better together and make clear who is responsible for which decisions and permits, community members said. Even city officials said Seattle should create a standardized protocol for doing industrial projects like this one, and appoint someone to help a business navigate the process. Another way to encourage more industrial strength, low-impact development is through financial incentives -- grants, tax breaks, or a cut to utility bills -- for green stormwater solutions.

Before the swales and driveways were installed, Markey was a muddy mess in the winter and LeCoque was loath to host visitors. “The place looked like hell,” he said. That’s changed.

“I can walk from my car to my office without hip waders on,” LeCoque said. “We’re pretty proud of what we’ve done on the site here.”

Learn more about industrial stormwater fixes

The Duwamish River Clean-up Coalition and EOS Alliance are hosting a panel discussion and meeting about natural drainage projects in the Seattle area. It's free to attend, and here are the details:

• WHEN: Wednesday, March 10, from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
• WHERE: EOS Alliance Offices, 650 South Orcas St., Suite 220, Seattle
• RSVP: Email bkantner@eosalliance.org, re: "Green Forum"
  

For more information, go to the Community Natural Drainage Forum website, or email Ben Kantner at EOS Alliance at bkantner@eosalliance.org or call 206-762-2553.

Photos of 8th Avenue South and the Markey Manufacturing Co. swales are used with permission from Laura Treadway.

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 4:19 PM)

Carbon Neutral Caution

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

A climate action lesson from Denmark


There's been a lot of ambitious talk lately about carbon neutrality. It's exciting stuff, but it's worth pausing to consider just how huge that challenge is. And what, precisely, does it mean? Zero emissions, or lots of offsets? 

I thought it was interesting to take a look at the climate action plan from the city of Copenhagen. It's certainly a contender for the title of the greenest and most progressive city on earth, and it's a city that has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025. But what you find is that even for the Danes, carbon neutrality is more aspirational than actionable:

By implementing the climate plan’s contributions – and assisted by the expected developments – we expect to reduce Copenhagen’s CO2 emissions from 2,500,000 tonnes CO2 today to about 1,150,000 tonnes in 2025.

To become completely neutral we must also remove just as much CO2 as we produce. We will need to compensate for the 1,150,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2025 by for example investing in still more windmills, use new technologies or plant forests which absorb CO2.

In other words, even Copenhagen doesn't have a plan to achieve zero emissions. They'll rely on what amounts to offsets for over a million tons of CO2, roughly half of their current carbon footprint.

Still, their goals are astonishing: Copenhagen has an action plan to cut their already-low emissions in half over the next 15 years. Wow. That will be a signal achievement, and one that will no doubt provide valuable lessons for us in the Northwest, both in terms of strategies to reduce our emissions as well some clearer notion of what it means to be "carbon neutral."

Applying Copenhagen's achievement here in the Northwest makes for an interesting comparison because, as it happens, the city of Copenhagen is roughly the same size as the three big cities in the Northwest. Seattle emitted around 6.7 million tons of CO2 in 2008; Multnomah County, home to Portland, emitted about 8.5 million tons that year; while Vancouver claimed just over 2.5 million tons. (It’s important to keep in mind that these inventories measure different things in different ways, so comparisons between the numbers are not informative. For example, Vancouver’s number refers to a much narrower scope.) If each city followed Copenhagen’s lead and reduced its emissions by half -- a phenomenal achievement -- Seattle would need to offset more than 3 million tons of CO2, Multnomah-Portland more than 4 million tons, and Vancouver well over 1 million tons.

If Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver do as Copenhagen does, and succeed in cutting their emissions in half over the next 20 years, that will be worth shouting from the green rooftops. But even so, to reach carbon neutrality we’d be talking about somewhere in the range of $160 million dollars of investment annually by the cities for various carbon offset projects (assuming a price of $20 a ton for offsets). That’s a lot of money. And it’s an open question, at least to my mind, whether achieving “carbon neutrality” for a specific city for a specific point in time would really the best use of that money.

Now, in fairness, for all the hand-wringing they induce from people like me, offsets are not necessarily a bad idea. At their best, they can foster important advancements for developing countries, low-cost emissions saving in farm country, or ecological restoration. On the other hand, $160 million might be better spent making investments in strategies to further reduce emissions locally, even if those advancements wouldn't result in carbon neutrality. Yet on the third hand, it’s not exactly clear how to achieve those further reductions; even Copenhagen doesn't yet have a plan. I’d say we’re in a pickle.

Now before everyone accuses me of being a giant kill-joy, I should add that there are at least two reasons that a community may want to aim to be “carbon neutral,” even if what that really means is big offset purchases to supplement local carbon reductions.

Reason #1: “80% below 1990 levels by 2050” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So even if we don’t know what “carbon neutral” looks like, it seems somehow easier for people to get their heads around conceptually. People are inspired by the idea of carbon neutrality in a way that they clearly aren’t by “the terms of the Kyoto Protocol” or “80%.”

Reason #2: We need something to push us -- our elected officials, our businesses, and individuals -- to think big. Really big. If, as a planet, we’re going to achieve climate stability, the time for incremental change has passed. As Knute Berger put it yesterday when he proposed removing a major bridge in the Seattle area: “Why, in the 21st Century, aren't we repairing and restoring the environmental damage of the past instead of doubling down on it?”

That could be the kind of question people ask under the “carbon neutral” banner.

Yet I’m wary. The really game-changing climate policies are simply not at a neighborhood or city scale. They’re at the national and global scale – comprehensive and enforceable carbon limits or pricing.

While local areas can incubate ideas and build supportive constituencies, our climate action won’t ultimately add up to much unless it is comprehensive and much, much larger. So city-level aspiration should not be allowed to redirect our attention from national policy -- it should be leveraged to reinforce the big stuff. 

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by Eric De Place in Climate Change at 4:08 PM)

Interview with Kirit Parikh on India’s Low Carbon Growth Strategy

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

There was a time, not long ago, when the idea of a national low-carbon growth strategy for India would have been hard to imagine. "Low carbon" was seen to be at loggerheads with India's ambitious economic development agenda and was too controversial a concept to find voice in domestic politics. Yet in January 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a 26-member expert group to help develop a low-carbon growth strategy for India. The group, which hosts a formidable array of government, industry, academia, and civil society members, is being chaired by Dr. Kirit Parikh, former member of India's Planning Commission.

Worldwatch Fellow Anna da Costa interviewed Dr. Parikh about the group's plans for the coming year, and how India's efforts at home to address climate change are moving forward.

What led to the Low Carbon Expert Group being constituted?

I think it's quite clear that India realized it is vulnerable. It is in its great interest to have an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions, and from our own energy security point of view, there are many things we should do to move to low carbon growth. [We are interested in] whatever measures we can take that can stimulate and nudge the global community into a global agreement, are also in our interests. This leads us to examine the options, the costs, the alternatives, and the multiple benefits of moving to a low-carbon development pathway.

What types of recommendations can we expect to emerge from the group, and how will this work differ from or connect to India's National Action Plan on Climate Change?

The National Action Plan outlines the long-term measures that we should take. It doesn't have the required specificity in terms of what needs to be done, and we hope the low-carbon strategy will provide more detailed guidelines as to what measures can be taken. India has committed to meet a reduction in national energy intensity of 25 percent by 2020. We need to work out a strategy and the various specific measures that will enable us to meet this.

This seems like a major task. Is all of the analysis being conducted by the Expert Group or are you outsourcing certain elements?

The expert group, which has 26 members, has a very wide-ranging set of expertise. It is a wide group of stakeholders, many of whom have been working on this subject for a long time. We will pool the knowledge that exists [in the group] and put together a menu of what is possible. Time is very short, so we cannot do any further new research as such. We are very open to get any outside help, or contributions. We will put these recommendations out in an open, transparent manner, put them on the website, seek comments, and so on, and might even hold a public consultation on them at some stage.

Do you think the 25-percent energy intensity target you mention, that was announced by India before the Copenhagen climate conference, can be met with the current National Action Plan strategy?

You know, there are many things we are doing already. India's energy intensity has been coming down in any case. Business-as-usual projections should provide a fairly large part of the reduction we want to achieve. A little more effort should bring [energy intensity] down to the 25-percent [target]. I don't think there should be that much of a challenge or difficulty in doing that.

Is the aim of the low-carbon expert group to reduce India's emissions beyond what would likely occur on a business-as-usual trajectory?

It's to make sure we meet the 25-percent reduction in carbon intensity, to see if we can even do more and what kind of support we will need to reach that target. What can we do? What is win-win? What policies do we need? Are there barriers? Do we need finance? These are the kinds of questions that we need to answer.

A few years ago, it seems as though using the words "low-carbon development" as an element of India's political vocabulary would have been politically untenable. What has enabled this change, and does it signify a fundamental shift in thinking on the issue of climate change and development in India?

This is difficult to answer. I think you could give a lot of credit to the Prime Minister, who felt that although the rigid stand we had been taking in the past was morally and ethically correct, we need to get the logjam moving and should take some initiative. That is why at the Gleneagles conference [of the G8 in 2005, which India, China, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa attended], he promised that we are determined to have our per-capita emissions never exceed those of industrialized countries. The Western world didn't think that was any commitment, but if you think about it, that... itself was a major commitment. Why? Because if we want to reach [greenhouse gas concentrations of ] 450 parts per million by 2050, the average of industrialized countries will come to 2.5 to 3 tons per capita, and India will have to restrict itself to 3 tons per capita, which is a huge commitment.... So we are very willing to get the process moving. We are interested in getting a global agreement. That is part of the strategy. Let's get the process moving.

How likely is it that the recommendations of the Low Carbon Expert Group be implemented? What factors will need to be in place to see this happen?

I've chaired enough committees to know that not all recommendations get implemented. There are always political considerations. There are always stakeholders who have vested interests of various kinds. How things play out is a very different thing. So I would not say that I expect all of our recommendations will be implemented. What is important about these expert committees and groups is that they create a consensus and awareness amongst people, so that in due course things change and pick up.

Do you have a sense of how much India's low-carbon strategy is estimated to cost? To what degree is the government self-funding these initiatives, and how much is it hoped that finance will also come from the private sector and international public funds?

My feeling is that there are lots of things we can do that pay for themselves and don't involve any additional costs but have multiple benefits. Energy efficiency, for example, pays for itself. I think there are many [options] like that, but of course finance is required upfront, too. Without such finance we know that many economically attractive actions are not taken up by industry and individuals. But I cannot answer this question until we have done our work.

In your long experience working on India's economic development, you must have seen many kinds of sustainable development solutions. What are some of the most transformative solutions that you believe exist for India?

I think there are three solutions that show [particular] potential for the goal of sustainable development. One is definitely solar technology, and making its cost competitive with coal as soon as possible. That could bring a hugely transformative change. Second would be a major program of rainwater harvesting and watershed development. This could transform the whole water and agricultural scenario and is clearly of importance. Thirdly, if one were to speak in terms of the future, maybe the development of cellulosic ethanol that could make India truly energy independent in a realsense. This is looking [at the question] from the energy sustainability perspective.

But there are many, many things that have contributed to India's inclusive development. Inclusion is critical for sustainability. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which began in Maharashtra and is now across the country. You could say the Gram Swarojgar Yojana [a rural micro enterprise initiative] is also transformative. You might say that if you can get 100-percent literacy and school attendance for all children up to 14 years, that could be transformative. There are many things that we could do that really could make a tremendous difference to the economy. Of course, support for public transport in major metro areas can also be transformative.

Global negotiations tend to focus on what India needs to absorb from other parts of the world, particularly in terms of finance and technology. But do you feel there are areas where India has a lot to share with other countries in terms of global efforts to combat climate change and shift toward sustainability?

It is very clear that India is not just an absorber of technologies; it can really be a generator, inventor, and developer. Again, I support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's suggestion at Gleneagles that we should set up a network of collaborative institutions at the international level like the Agricultural Research Institutes under the [Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR].... If we can have that kind of institutional set-up for low-carbon or renewable technology and have the IPRs [intellectual property rights] shared globally as global public goods, that could be very important.... India can also contribute to the development of the technologies. So in some sense we may have an actual interest in IPR protection, but on the other hand from the global point of view, we think some of these should be made globally available as global public goods.

Anna da Costa is a Worldwatch Institute research fellow based in New Delhi, India.

This article is a product of Eye on Earth, the Worldwatch Institute's online news service.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 3:41 PM)

New Study Tracks ‘Outsourcing’ of Emissions Caused by Consumer Products

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

More than one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumer goods used in developed nations is actually emitted in other nations where the products are made, according to a new study. In the U.S., about 2.5 tons of carbon produced per person annually — or about 11 percent of U.S. per capita emissions — are emitted elsewhere, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science say. In Europe, it’s about four tons of carbon per person. In fact, in smaller European nations like Switzerland, the emissions associated with products manufactured outside the borders exceed the actual emissions produced at home.

Using 2004 trade data from 113 countries and regions, the authors of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were able to construct a global model of the flow of “imported” and “exported” emissions, most of which are “outsourced” to developing nations. The biggest “importer” by far is China, they said. “Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China,” said lead author Steven Davis.

This article originally appeared on Yale e360

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(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Climate Change at 3:32 PM)

John Wilbanks on Science Commons, and Generativity in Science

March 10th, 2010 Posted in Green News | Comments Off

John Wilbanks, the founder of Science Commons, is in the midst of a big move. His division of Creative Commons, focused on opening scientific research and innovation, is now five years old and is being “airlifted” to California to try to bring some of their ideas into the Creative Commons movement as a whole.

One way to think of the mission of Science Commons, Wilbanks tells us, is to spark generative effects in the scientific world much as we’ve seen them in the online world. He quotes Jonathan Zittrain’s definition of generativity, from “The Future of the Internet… and How to Stop It“: “Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences”. This raises some provocative questions, when applied to the world of science: “What does spam look like in a patent system? What does griefing look like in the world of biological data?”

The truth is that the scientific world is far less generative than the digital space. He proposes three major obstacles to generativity: accessibility, ease of mastery, and tranferability. He points out that, as science has gotten more high tech, it’s far harder to master. The result is hyperspecialization: neuroanatomists don’t talk to neuroinformaticists… “and god help you if you cross species lines.” And so universities are making huge investments to try to encourage collaboration: MIT’s just build a $400 million building – the Cook Center – to force collaboration between cancer researchers… and predictably, researchers are fighting the mandate to move in and work together.

People approach Science Commons based on encountering Wikipedia or free software, and say, We what ‘that’ for science.” Unfortunately, there’s not enough analysis of what makes those projects work. We’d think that science is the perfect space for this sort of peer cooperation, based on Thomas Merton’s observation: “I propose the seeming paradox that in science, private property is established by having its substance freely given to others…” Scientists solve a complex game theoretic problem with new research: they’ve got to disclose to get credit, but as they disclose, they enable competitors in the field. The assumption that science is easier than the cultural space to build a commons in might not be true.

Because John comes from a legal background (and from the Berkman Center and Creative Commons), he tends to think about legal constraints and protections in the field. He asks us to consider three aspects of the world of science: data, tools and texts.

Texts are protected by copyrights, and they’re actually pretty simple. The system is near universal, and as Creative Commons has demonstrated, it’s invertable through legal tools like Creative Commons.

Tools are as broad as ice cores from the Arctic Circle, bones from an archeological dig or stem cells. Contracts between institutions – materials transfer agreements – govern their movement, and patents govern them, especially in the life sciences and the energy field.

Data is protected by secrecy and sui generis protection laws. Fortunately, copyright doesn’t attach to raw data in databases, but there are legal tools we need to unlock other aspects of databases, including structure and compatibility.

While these constraints and protections are relevant, Wilbanks tells us that we also need to deal with “the three I’s”: incentives, infrastructures and institutions. Collectively, they work together to slow down adoption of open policies far more than laws do.

For years, the NIH has had a voluntary public access policy, asking researchers to make their text accessible for free on the web within 12 months. 4% of researchers did. Recently, NIH mandated compliance, and now compliance is over 70% and rising. While this only affects NIH-funded research (hugely important to US biological research, but less relevant in other spaces), institutions like Harvard and MIT are adopting open access publishing policies that mandate this behavior.

“The tools we use to open literature from copyrights don’t work in databases – we need different institutions.” Complicated data that isn’t correctly annotated isn’t helpful. And we need to focus on bottom up resistance, the fact that there’s no incentive or mandate to label or format your data. In the publication and text space, we have university and funder participation. We don’t have any of this in the data space.

The tools space involve “physical objects with physical existence – they are not subject to long tail, everything is free realities” of the digital world. And here the incentives work directly against us: “You don’t get funded by giving away your stem cells – the opposite, you get more funding for writing papers only you can write” because you’re the only guy with access to the tools. And so “the resistance is fractal – it shows up in the same form at high and low levels.” And it represents a huge barrier – he shows us the patent workflow for Telomerase. “Any new field with VC’s involved has a patent explosion underway. It’s not just US – China is outpacing us 8 to 1 in filing patents around clean energy.”

We need to consider the problems that we’ll face with an explosion of data. He quotes Bruce Sterling: “We used to produce data faster than humans could structure it. Now we produce data faster than machines can structure it.” Students are now assigned to develop a microbial portrait of a streetcorner – they swab lampposts and garbage bins and are able to get the organisms sequenced in a weekend. “We need a domain name system for data if web effects come into being.” Until we get to a strong enough web infrastructure, we won’t be able to get these positive effects.

Science Commons works on developing new types of contracts, but Wilbanks tells us that the heart of the work is lobbying people to use them and tracking the extent which they’re used. “Measurements lead to incentives in science – everyone wants to maximize on that metric”. The other major change that’s going to push the field forward is the emergence of new technologies, which may put forward new norms.

“Science is heading (back) towards the garage”. You can buy a gene sequencer on eBay for less than $1000 – which allows you to go from the physical to the digital. And you can get your novel genes sequenced on sites like Mr. Gene for $0.39 per base pair, bringing the digital into the physical. Citizen bioengineers are figuring out how to reprogram E. Coli into novel organisms that can detect arsenic in water. You can download tools from a database at MIT and synthesize your new creations at the site of your choice.

“We’re trying to let the explosion of creativity occur,” much as it did in the online space. “The evil people are going to use these tools anyway. If only the bad guys and the government have access, my money’s on the bad guys.”

“We need to decide whether we’re going to have a PC or Tivo for science,” Wilbanks says in closing. The PC model is uglier, but it’s far more generative and creative and it’s what we want to embrace in the long term.

A partial account of question and answers:

Salil Vadhan wonders how these ideas apply to his field, Computer Science. Wilbanks points out that there’s a spectrum of fields with respect to their openness, roughly spanning from math, physics and computer science (where the fields tend to be extremely open) to chemistry, which tends to be extremely closed. In fields that are highly specialized, the consequence is that it’s much harder to make useful abstractions. In open fields like math, Wilbanks tells us that Hippocratic principles prevent him from getting involved.

Eric Von Hippel wonders about the constraints that the patent system put on generativity. Wilbanks tells us that patents tend to be used like trading cards. Massive, mechanized disclosure is going to change this up. The pharma industry did systematic disclosure as a way to prevent patenting of genomes. “Data as prior art, channeled correctly, makes it harder to get an idiotic patent.”

I asked where Wilbanks would put pressure if he were starting the battle for scientific generativity today, independent on Creative Commons or his legal background. He explains that law is actually a pretty useful place to work from – “we don’t take research money, create text, tools or data,” which means we’re perceived as being fairly neutral. And law is an essential component. But the lever is possibly better placed at the point of funder relationships. Funders can demand that you don’t just release your data – you annotate it. You make sure your tools are accessible. And Creative Commons is a great convener to help funders figure out how to do this, with the legal bits disappearing into the framework.

This turns into a discussion of norms and law – Wilbanks quotes a colleague, who’s got the brilliant observation: “Norms scale far better than the law” –

David Weinberger asks his prefered trick question about the organization of the data we’re talking about releasing. Wilbanks correctly identifies it as “a religious question” and offers “the view of my sect”. That view is that we need standard formats like OWL and RDF, but that we need to let people form their own ontologies and let them fight it out in the marketplace of ideas. He’s suspicious of assertions of people (sometimes people involved with the semantic web) who push forward one particular ontology. This resolution is going to be messy… we need to lower transaction costs to allow people to wire big data sets together.

There are excellent conversations as well about privacy and incentives – check David Weinberger’s blog for what turn out to be very thorough notes, especially on the Q&A.

This piece originally appeared on My Heart's in Accra

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in New Science at 3:07 PM)

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