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Restorative Development: Sustainable Development’s Salvation

Sustainable development is very different from conservation. One of those differences is the “nailing jello to the wall” nature of its definition. At “green” conferences over the years, I’ve heard many definitions of sustainable development, including (1) a way to live comfortably within the confines of one’s economic, environmental, and social limits; and (2) thriving in such a way as to allow our children to thrive equally. Academics offer more rigorous definitions, but not one is yet accepted as a standard.

Conservation is, in concept, relatively simple (not easy): protecting irreplaceable natural assets, entities, and functions. Sustainable development, on the other hand, is a complicated dream, an intoxicating brew of enlightened policies, unpopular lifestyle changes, expensive (in the short term) process improvements, innovative designs/products/materials, hazy goals, and splendid values.

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The debate over restorative development versus sustainable development has been more harmonious than that between ecological restoration and conservation. Like lovers, the two concepts can “spoon” interchangeably: Champions of sustainable development can comfortably envelop restorative development as a part of their vision, and champions of restorative development see sustainable development as a vital element of their worldview.

MY PERSONAL SUSTAINABILITY CRISIS

A deep love of wildlife has been the common theme throughout this author’s life, and I suspect it ranks high on the passion scale with a fair portion of this book’s readers. Some readers are, no doubt, colleagues with whom I’ve been working under the banner of sustainability for many years. Friends, I’m calling it quits.

I spend a number of weeks each year hiking in the shrinking jungles of the world and diving on its dying reefs, and have finally realized it’s time to get serious. Do we really want to sustain things the way they are now? Is “not letting things get worse” the most inspirational goal we can shoot for? Of course, despite this polemic, the real goal of sustainable development isn’t just to sustain the status quo; it’s to rehabilitate human society so that it becomes less wasteful and less toxic. This, in theory, will allow planetary ecosystems to restore themselves. So, sustainable development is, in many ways, passive restorative development under a more mundane moniker.

Sustainable development is a noble concept and goal, and it has been the battle cry of many environmentalists for over two decades. However, it’s hamstrung by foggy definitions, a paucity of measurement criteria, a boring image, and often unperceivable results. “Thriving in a manner that allows future generations to thrive,” one of the many definitions of sustainable development, is a wonderful slogan, but it makes a lousy guide for business and government decision making on a day-to-day basis.

One of the early reviewers of this manuscript, sustainable development writer and editor Sheila Kelly, offers a “cultural” explanation for the unacceptably slow progress of sustainable development. She says that environmentalists who wandered deeply into the world of business were branded traitors by “deep green environmentalists,” and business leaders who became passionate about sustainability were branded traitors by their “deep brown” fellows. The already challenging goal of making both255conservation and business sustainable was thus aggravated by being shunned by one’s peers. Kelly introduced the resolution of this situation thusly: “Enter restorative development, stage left. …”

Sustainable development’s fuzzy goals and confused definition have greatly hindered it. Its leaders have allowed corporations and government agencies to display many nonsubstantial (even downright cynical) greening “efforts” under the banner of sustainability. Sustainable development is in fact painless for these corporations, because no one can prove that their token, lip-service projects are not progress towards sustainability. The dearth of metrics, if not remedied, will be the death of sustainability.

[The absence of sustainability standards makes sustainable development] a vague rhetorical aspiration rather than a real policy goal.

The few sustainability metrics we do have are so poorly defined that they make most competent, responsible planners highly uncomfortable. Almost any reduction of waste, sprawl, or toxins—no matter how minor—can be called sustainable (or at least movement in that direction).

Sustainable designs often cost more up front, and the compensating long-term savings or increases in productivity are sometimes hard to prove, other than through common sense. Even when the numbers work, communicating them effectively can require politically dangerous (read: more honest) changes in accounting, or in stockholder reporting methods. This isn’t to say it shouldn’t be attempted, just that it’s a far steeper slope to climb for approval than is typical with most restorative projects. Restorative development usually shows a profit, even using our new-development-biased accounting systems.

Calling for less dependence on sustainable development doesn’t come easily to me. I almost choke on the words at times, because the people and organizations I most admire are usually sustainability advocates. But my jumping ship to restorative development is motivated by the same intense love of health, beauty, and wildness that initiated my involvement in both conservation and sustainable development.

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Of course, the obvious response from levelheaded environmentalists is: “You’ve got to be kidding! We haven’t even made any serious progress towards sustainability! How can we even think about raising the bar to restoration?” The fact is, restoration is actually a more realistic goal, short- and long-term, than sustainability. This is proved by the presence of over a trillion dollars per year of documentable restorative development, versus who-knows-how-much real sustainable development… maybe a hundred million, maybe none at all.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IS DEAD: LONG LIVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT!

Two factors have stymied the progress of sustainable development, but they embody its salvation, as well:

1. Sustainable development encompasses all three modes of development: new development, maintenance/conservation, and restorative development. This confuses the perception of what sustainable development really is.
2. Sustainable development has been focusing too much attention on the most resistant mode, new development.

The good news is, as stated in item 1, sustainable development already includes restorative development. This makes the path to its future obvious. Focusing sustainability programs primarily (not exclusively) on restorative development will greatly accelerate progress towards that elusive Holy Grail, the “triple bottom line” development style that produces benefits to society, benefits to the environment, and company profits.

Thus, restorative development will likely be the savior of sustainable development, so we don’t have to choose between them. Restorative development is already the most productive—and most measurable— part of sustainable development. But those exciting restorative projects often get stifled and muffled by being buried within the context of sustainability. Burying something so vital and dynamic as “restoration” under a label as passive and boring (not to all of us, but certainly to the general public) as “sustainability” does it a great disservice. Restoration should be the star, with the more demure, introspective sustainable development its protégé, who will one day come into its own.

Real sustainability, as regards new development, is still a dream. It won’t become reality in time to save hundreds of species (not to mention 257millions of humans) so let’s come to grips with the fact that pollution will be with us for some time to come. That being the case, we need to put less attention on improving new development (making it less damaging), and put more effort into replacing new development. We need to replace it with something that will not just do no new damage, but will repair old damage. In other words, restorative development.

This isn’t to say that “greening” new development isn’t worthwhile; it’s vital, of course. The problem is that modestly improved—and still very damaging—forms of new development are being called “sustainable”. We should call these forms what they are: greener, less polluting, less toxic, less wasteful, and less dependent on nonrenewable resources. Such claims are easy to measure and document, and don’t overstate the progress. Calling greener forms of new development “sustainable” lulls us into thinking we’ve made far more progress than we really have.

Caution: Not All Restorative Development Is Sustainable

Sustainable development is often more about the built environment than it is about nature. Restoring the natural environment is obviously a “green” activity, but what about restoring the built environment? Restoring and reusing (i.e., recycling) a building is, by its very nature, “greener” than creating one from scratch. But that doesn’t automatically confer environmental blessings on all restoration projects.

Despite all of its intrinsic “green” characteristics (such as reuse of assets), restorative development is not synonymous with ecologically sound development. Plenty of environmentally unwise activities qualify as restoration, either as a result of poor execution, old technology, or flaws in the project design. All (real) restorative development is more sustainable than new development, but that doesn’t mean it’s as ecologically sound as it could be.

Example: Infrastructure restoration firms often restore and protect old steel bridges with lead-based anticorrosion compounds. Fighting corrosion is a $350 billion-per-year industry in the United States alone, so greening this aspect of restoration and maintenance would be no small thing.

Restoring the Empire State Building reveals a different aspect of “green” restoration: Restoring the building back to its authentic original condition would regress it to a state of horrible energy inefficiency. It would force the contractors to ignore decades of advances in design, materials, and equipment. We must balance and integrate the purity of 258the aesthetic or historical agenda with the use of safer, cleaner modern tools and technologies.

Restorative development should be subject to the same sustainability guidelines that govern (or will govern) new development. Chemicals used in restorative work should be as nontoxic as possible, and products used in restoration should be recyclable and made of recycled materials whenever possible.

The broader restrictions of sustainability apply, too, such as “meeting our needs in a way that allows future generations to meet their needs.” This would mean avoiding some of the destructive behaviors that are currently mistaken as forms of restoration, such as lip-service mitigation projects that destroy natural wetlands and replace them with poorly designed artificial wetlands located where no wetlands ever existed.

Mitigation projects are too often just a politically expedient method of allowing companies and communities to do whatever they want. Some mitigation is worthwhile, however, especially when the only alternative is new development without mitigation.

In this book, I am broadly defining the Restoration Economy to include all activities that renew, redevelop, or replace. I am not restricting it only to the greener activities that contribute to restoring the Earth. For example, restoring an oil refinery that’s been damaged by war is a legitimate form of restorative development, but it’s hardly something that is going to revitalize the planet. This shows how a “sustainability filter” could improve restorative development. The damage to the oil refinery

Restorative Development 259could be seen as an opportunity to restore the energy grid by removing the refinery and replacing it with a healthier, more modern technology, rather than just seeing it as an opportunity to restore the refinery.

Factors of scale, both spatial and chronological, can also confuse the issue: what’s restorative at one scale can be destructive at another, and vice versa. An example of destruction leading to restoration is the ugly, disruptive work done by bulldozers and backhoes during the first stage of a stream restoration.

An example of restoration leading to destruction is the return of gribbles—wood borers—that are chewing up the wooden pier pilings in many restored harbors. Water pollution had driven them away (along with the fish), but watershed and brownfield restoration projects have restored the water quality, and the infrastructure is deteriorating as a result.

Taking some of the research and other resources currently devoted to making new development more sustainable, and reallocating them to making restorative development more sustainable, might produce a bigger bang for the buck.

Some Background Reading on the Relationship of Sustainable Development to Restorative Development

Sustainable development is far too complex a subject to deal with in detail here. I’ll focus on just a few key aspects, and refer readers elsewhere to pursue it further.

The debate between the relative merits of sustainable development vs. restorative development reached a high point during the writing of this book, with the publication of Restoration Ecology and Sustainable Development, edited by K. M. Urbanska, Nigel R. Webb, and Peter J. Edwards (Cambridge University Press, 1998). As the title reveals, the dialogue was largely about the natural environment, restoration ecology, rather than the broader concept of restorative development, which includes the built environment.

The public’s full awakening to restorative development might eventually be driven by government, citizens, academia, or business: all have substantial, fast-growing restoration components. National-level government agencies tend to lag behind the growth curve of many positive trends, but we’ve already seen two exceptions regarding restorative development. One is the previously described role of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in catalyzing and nurturing the brownfields restoration industry, and the other is the U.S. Park Service’s key role in providing structure and “legitimacy” to the heritage restoration industry.

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Here’s another example of a government body’s being on the leading edge of the Restoration Economy. In 1994, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) published a report entitled “Technology for a Sustainable Future.” It identified four categories of needed technologies: avoidance, monitoring/assessment, control, and remediation/ restoration.

The council recommended that all four technologies be applied to the rehabilitation and restoration of eight key areas:

1. Natural disaster reduction/recovery
2. Coastal/marine environments
3. Biodiversity/ecosystems
4. Water resources
5. Air quality
6. Energy efficiency/climate change
7. Toxic substances and hazardous/solid waste (industrial use of biological processes)
8. Resource use and management (including infrastructure reconstruction/restoration)

The NSTC published an applications-oriented follow-up report a year later (1995) entitled “Bridge to a Sustainable Future: National Environmental Technology Strategy.” Both are recommended reading for anyone wishing to see the United States secure its global industrial leadership position in the twenty-first century.

The NSTC’s view of the twenty-first century was dominated by restorative development, but little attention was paid to these forward-thinking reports at that time. Part of the reason might have been the titles’ unfortunate, trendy use of “sustainable,” which obscured the reports’ pioneering focus on restorative development. It’s also likely that the council was ahead of its time—maybe five years or so. In these days of Internet connectivity, memes propagate like bunnies and paradigms turn on a dime, so the universally appealing vision of restoring our world is now spreading like wildfire. Those NSTC researchers are, no doubt, thrilled to see that restoration’s time has come.

No discussion of sustainable development’s relationship to restorative development would be complete without references to Paul Hawken’s work, specifically, his groundbreaking The Ecology of Commerce (1992) and the monumental Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (1999), the latter coauthored with fellow green giants Amory and Hunter Lovins.

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Both The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism are devoted to sustainable development, but the concept of restorative development bubbles throughout the texts. Because the sustainable development community doesn’t generally differentiate between new development and restorative development, it’s little wonder that “sustainable” and “restorative” are often used interchangeably in these texts.

Hawken and the Lovinses were certainly aware of active restoration, though. It was Amory Lovins who first pointed me towards Louisville, Kentucky, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, when I asked him for U.S. examples of restorative development. In the Ecology of Commerce chapter entitled “The Inestimable Gift of a Future,” Hawken writes:

Earlier in the same chapter, Hawken says “The second issue is to restore and re-create some of what we have lost. The idea that we can bottom out in the next few years and achieve sustainable development is a popular but short-sighted ideal. Bottom out, yes.” Given that Hawken says in this book that restoration must precede sustainability, why is 99 percent of The Ecology of Commerce about sustainable development? Because restorative development has mushroomed to an amazing degree in the decade between that book and this one.

Consider that Hawken probably researched that 1992 book for three to five years. Add a couple of years for writing and a year for publishing, and his data is pushed back into the mid-1980s. Much of the restorative activity I’m reporting in this book didn’t exist in substantial quantities back then. Even so, Hawken did mention a military base redevelopment, a couple of examples of urban reforestation, a re-use of old buildings, and 262even a brownfields remediation (back at the very birth of the brownfields industry!). I am merely documenting an existing phenomenon; Hawken, though, was extrapolating from the earliest—almost ephemeral—dribbles of restorative development. That was truly visionary.

Integrating Restorative Development with Sustainable Development: We’re Addicted to Growth, So Let’s Grow in the Right Direction

The marginal progress of sustainable new development’s long, noble fight to become part of the economic mainstream—to become “financeable,” as Strong puts it, above—has been eclipsed by the fact that restorative development already is the fastest-growing component of the economic mainstream.

Once restorative development is recognized and understood, many “sustainable development” organizations and resources will probably refocus in this more productive direction.

If sustainable development presently exists in reality, then it’s in the form of restorative development. Sustainable new development might even turn out to be an oxymoron. Restorative development takes what already exists and makes it better, so by its very nature, it’s mostly sustainable. New development, even the best “sustainable” examples, destroys what already exists, under the (often mistaken) assumption that the “new thing” will be better.

One caveat concerning sustainable maintenance/conservation: just as the ability to restore an ecosystem shouldn’t be used as an excuse to forfeit conservation, so too should our ability to restore buildings and infrastructure not be used as an excuse to delay or underfund maintenance. Nor should the promise of eventual restoration become a substitute for high-quality initial construction.

ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION

If we were to start differentiating the three modes of development in our dialogue—the trimodal development perspective—sustainability would 263take a major leap forward. Among other benefits, such differentiation allows community planners to specify development strategies that are, for instance, 45 percent restorative, 45 percent maintenance/conservation, and 10 percent new development. Without trimodal development language, that kind of clear specification is almost impossible.

The next step would be to stop trying to apply the uselessly broad term “sustainable development” to all forms of development. The language of sustainable development needs to be mapped to the trimodal development perspective. Doing so gives us “sustainable new development (SND),” “sustainable maintenance/conservation (SMC),” and “sustainable restorative development (SRD).”

The ultimate goal—sustainable development of all aspects of our world—would, in theory, automatically result from practicing all three modes of sustainable development. (Note: I’ll use these three new terms [or their initials] in this chapter only.) In case you’re wondering, SMC and SRD aren’t as redundant as they might sound, for the three reasons already put forward:

1. Most forms of maintenance use toxic materials and large amounts of non-renewable energy.
2. Many forms of ecosystem conservation are not sustainable, whether due to unreliable funding, lack of integration with local communities, insufficient size, proximity of deleterious influences, or poor biological management.
3. Many unsustainable activities legitimately qualify as restorative development, and illegitimate ones sometimes masquerade as restorative development (such as some forms of mitigation).

If we don’t break sustainable development down into these more manageable and clearly definable subsets, our future is likely to have more of the same: miniscule, incremental improvements in SND and SMC, plus exploding amounts of restorative development (both sustainable and otherwise). The restorative development will be wonderful, by and large, but it won’t be as green as it could be. And sustainable development will continue to be stymied by its lack of trimodal clarity.

This more-specific terminology gives each of the three basic types of sustainability initiatives its own clearly defined focus. It allows SND, SMC, and SRD to each progress at their own natural pace. The faster ones (SMC and SRD) will no longer be hampered by the slow one (SND). What’s more, SND will no longer be able to hide its foot-dragging behind SRD, which rightfully earns its favorable media attention. 264

The bad boy—new development—has dug itself in (for the most part) as the sworn enemy of everything green and sustainable. Some of the blame for this adverserial relationship can be accorded to combative environmental groups with holier-than-thou attitudes (mostly in the ‘70s and ‘80s), but the politically ensconced industries of new development are primarily to blame.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Why is restorative development generally so lucrative, compared to sustainable new development, and even compared to much brown new development? One reason is that the results of restoration are usually both rapid and dramatically visible. Another is that the work is often both urgent and important—importance gets a project funded, and urgency increases the profit margins.

For example, landing a contract to build a new bridge is always nice, but a contract to rebuild a bridge destroyed in an earthquake can be a gold mine. Just ask the firms that rebuilt the roads and bridges after the 1994 Northridge earthquake: The Federal Highway Administration (one of the most innovative government agencies) used design-build, a more efficient but then still-controversial, construction delivery method. The design-build firm reopened all the vital roads in just 87 days and completed the entire rehabilitation in only 291 days, for a tab of $400,000,000: not bad for less than a year’s work. The contract included bonuses for finishing ahead of schedule, which boosted profit margins even higher.

The public seldom decries such windfall profits, because the damaged asset—bridge, tunnel, power plant, fishery, watershed, or whatever—had been providing millions of dollars a day in commercial and societal convenience or other value, and the public wants it back… now! When people are hungry or thirsty—or when their business is going belly-up—they tend not to begrudge a handsome reward to whomever rescues them.

In contrast, the demand for companies to sustain anything in its current condition is far less urgent, even when the importance is equal. It’s the combination of importance, urgency, and noticeable results that works such magic on restorative development’s bottom line.

Unlike sustainable new development, the rewards of restorative development are perceivable on timescales relevant to humans, businesses, and governments. That single characteristic can make all the difference in budget and strategy decisions; thus, restorative development is an industry, whereas sustainable development remains a vision.

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The greatest progress in sustainable new development might well come from “intermodal competition,” as planners find they have more strategies from which to choose. New development’s players (sustainable and otherwise) will increasingly find themselves trying to measure up to restorative development. That’s a competition they can’t win, but I’d love to see them try.

To recap: restorative development is the opposite of new development, whereas sustainable new development is “just” an improved version of new development. New development, whether sustainable or not, still expands our domain—and our domain on this planet has limits. We can’t have too much restorative development—sustainable or not— but we can most assuredly have too much sustainable new development. It’s like the difference between saying “there’s no such thing as too high a quality of humans” and “there’s no such thing as too high a quantity of humans.”

Sustainable development has been the Next Big Thing among environmentalists and green politicians for some time now. But unless sustainable development focuses more on restorative development, it will probably remain the Next Big Thing forever.