Der Umgang mit Ressourcen baut im aktuellen Produktions- und Konsumsystem auf preiswerten Naturverbrauch und globale soziale Missstände. Um tiefgreifende Lösungen für die dringendsten Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts zu erreichen, ist eine Umgestaltung des derzeitigen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftssystems ein wichtiger Ansatz, diesen komplexen sozialen Herausforderungen zu begegnen. In den letzten Jahrzehnten wird die Circular Economy von einer zunehmenden Anzahl unterschiedlicher Akteure aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft als vielversprechende Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie diskutiert. Wertschöpfungsketten sollen dabei in Wertschöpfungskreisläufe transformiert werden, indem Produkte und deren Komponenten repariert, wiederverwendet oder recycelt – im besten Fall aber von Beginn an zirkulär designt – werden.

Kupfersuche in Brandenburg, Ölbohrungen in Niedersachsen – solche skurrilen Folgen weltweit steigender Rohstoffpreise erinnern an den Umgang mit wirtschaftlichen Zielkonflikten der DDR in den 1970er Jahren. Beispielsweise an die Kupfergewinnung im Mansfelder Land oder den Braunkohleabbau in der Lausitz – Unternehmungen, die im Mikrokosmos DDR sinnvoll erschienen, aber letztlich ökonomische und ökologische Desaster waren.

Das praxisorientierte Forschungsprojekt widmet sich den Grenzen und Potenzialen der Wiederaufarbeitung von Bekleidung – einer Nischenlösung der Circular Economy. Im Mittelpunkt der Forschungsarbeit steht die Frage, wie die Wiederverwertung von Abfallmaterialien aus der Textilindustrie als Teilflächen mit Hilfe von digitalen Technologien nach-haltig und effektiv gestaltet werden kann. Zudem wird erforscht, welche damit verbundenen ästhetischen Potenziale für den Entwurf neuer Bekleidung entstehen.

Der Textilindustrie wird hinsichtlich umweltschädlicher Emissionen ein schlechtes Zeugnis ausgestellt. Bisweilen nimmt sie sogar einen unrühmlichen zweiten Platz ein und hat damit unweigerlich eine grosse Verantwortung um das global gesetzte 1,5-Grad Ziel (COP 21) zu erreichen. Konkret müssen bis 2030 die von diesem Industriezweig ausgehenden Treibhausgasemissionen um 45 % reduziert werden. Neben neuen Konsummustern und Geschäftspraktiken gilt es insbesondere die produktionsbasierten Emissionen zu vermindern (Berg, 2020).

The open debate launched through the ‘Design Research Agenda for Sustainability’ within the paradigmatic ‘Changing the Change’ conference held in Turin in 2008, defined design for sustainability as “Everything design can do to facilitate the social learning process towards a sustainable society. That is, to sustain promising social and technological innovations and to re-orient existing drivers of change towards sustainability” (Cipolla & Peruccio, 2008: 42).

This thesis shows how the Process Analysis Method (PAM) can be applied to assess technologies used to mitigate arsenic from drinking water in rural India, using a set of sustainability indicators. Stakeholder perspectives, gathered from a fieldwork survey of 933 households in West Bengal in 2012, played a significant role in this assessment. This research found that the ‘Most Important’ issues as specified by the technology users are cost, trust, distance from their home to the clean water source (an indicator of convenience), and understanding the health effects of arsenic. It was also found that none of the ten technologies evaluated are economically viable, as many do not charge user-fees, which creates reliance upon donations to meet recurring costs. Utilisation of a technology is strongly related to sociocultural capital, but in many cases, features that contribute to sociocultural value, like regular testing of the treated water, are not included in the financial budget. It is suggested that increased awareness might change attitudes to arsenic-rich waste and its disposal protocols. This waste is often currently discarded in an uncontrolled manner in the local environment, giving rise to the possibility of point-source recontamination. All technologies proved to have difficulties in dealing with waste, except the Tipot and Dug wells which produce no waste. Of the methods considered, the BESU technology scored highest, but still only with 47-62% of the maximum scores achievable within each domain. This explains the widespread failure of mitigation projects across the region. The indicators and metrics show where improvements can be made. A model scheme based on these findings is outlined which could be applied with the objective of increasing utilisation and improving sustainability. It can be concluded that a product stewardship approach should be taken in regard to design, implementation and operation of the technologies, including the creation of a regulated toxic waste collection and disposal industry.

What makes a community sustainable? Is it the effective management of local environmental resources? Or meeting the social, economic and health needs of its population? For the five UBC researchers in the following pages, the answer is unequivocally both. From tackling water scarcity to environmental health and planning, these researchers are individually working to ensure local communities are equipped with the necessary knowledge to remain sustainable for generations to come.

Introduction: Sustainability is humanity’s collective ability to sustain development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. Preceding closely to the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) Report of 1987, the General Assembly has adopted the UN Declaration, in 1986 [GA RES. 41/128] and has re-emphasized its importance in the UN Millennium Declaration, 2000. Given this anthropocentric rights basis of sustainability it becomes necessary to understand what this ability and development are with respect to the individual human. Problems of relevance, whose resolution benefits more people in general, are often intractable to the methods of rigorous problem-solving (1). Systemic problems of development score high on relevance, low on being amenable to rigor (1) and are considered wicked in nature (2). Consequently, the concern for sustaining human development is wicked and hence calls for taking a design approach as design is considered good at resolving wicked problems(3). This suggests that the collective ability for sustainability with respect to the individual is design ability i.e. to specify solutions that satisfy requirements arising from having to meet self-determined individual (human) developmental needs. However, literature connecting design, sustainability and human development systemically is found lacking and calls for conducting integrative trans-disciplinary research. Prevention and remedial of consequences of technology to the habitability of earth requires the identification, understanding and control of interactions between humans and between humans and the earth systems. These interactions need to be identified generally and understood systemically in the context of being able to sustain human development. However, despite this need for research in interactions and an integrative framework for informing interventions (4) to prevent or remedy unsustainable situations literature that addresses this need is found inadequate. Research Objective: To develop a descriptive model of interaction to be able to identify and describe interactions and understand interactions at human-scale. To develop a prescriptive framework within which to situate the prevention and remedial of problems related to un sustainability by design and prescribe conditions that ensure coherence of design interventions to principles. Research Method: As is the nature of problems of relevance, the proposed research by nature spans multiple disciplines. Descriptive inquiry into widespread literature spanning conservation, development, systems theory and design is conducted before synthesizing a descriptive model of interaction that situates design cycle as a natural cycle based on interpretation of entropy and Gestalt theory of human perception. A manual discourse analysis of a section of the WCED report is undertaken to inquire into the conceptual system (worldview) behind sustainable development to understand human interactions based on worldview. Addressing the need for choosing alternative goals of development for sustainability, Sen’s capability approach to human development is adopted after critically reviewing literature in this area and synthesizing an appropriate integration of design ability, tools, (cognitive) extension and design capability for human development. Models based on theories spanning design expertise, psychology and systems thinking are reviewed and synthesized into a prescriptive framework and two intervention scenarios based on it. The framework, intervention scenarios and the model are illustrated with evidence from qualitative bibliographic analysis of several cases related to sustaining human development in principle. Results: Sustainability is proposed as a human ability; this human ability is proposed to be design ability to sustain human development. A descriptive model of interaction that situates anthropogenic action as a design cycle is proposed. Based on this model, identifying entities and interactions is demonstrated with examples. It is proposed that humans interact, designing, due to and based on their worldview. Expansion of capabilities as stated in capability approach to lead to human development is ‘extension’ of design ability to design capability mediated by tools. Personal and interpersonal interactions at human scale are described through tool-use categories. A prescriptive framework for sustainability by design that holds human needs as central to interventions for sustainability is proposed. Based on this framework, pro-active and reactive scenarios of design intervention for prevention and remedial of un sustainability are constructed and demonstrated using several cases. Summary: Problems of relevance like sustaining human development are wicked in nature and require knowledge and action mutually informing each other. Addressing the inter-disciplinary nature of the problem requires a design approach as design is known to integrate knowledge from several disciplines to resolve wicked problems. The imperative to be able to sustain human development provides the widest profile of requirements to be met and design is shown to be central to meeting these requirements at the various scales that they surface. Sustainability is defined as humanity’s collective ability to develop meeting needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations for meeting their own needs. This collective ability translates to the individual’s design ability to specify solutions that satisfy requirements arising out of having to meet self-determined developmental needs. The process of ‘expansion’ -- of capabilities that free people choose and value – that realizes human development is the process of tools affording the extension of design ability to design capability necessary for progressively satisfying requirements arising out of self-determined needs of increasing complexity. It is proposed that humans interact, designing based on and due to their worldview. Personal and interpersonal interactions at human scale are described through tool-use categories. A prescriptive framework for sustainability by design is developed stating conditions to guide systemic design interventions for preventing and remedying unsustainability within pro-active and reactive scenarios respectively. A descriptive model of interaction is developed to situate and enable understanding of interactions. The framework, scenarios and the model are illustrated using several cases related to sustaining human development.