Kimberley Roelvink
In the text Islands at the Periphery, S. Moncada, M. Camilleri, S. Formosa en R. Galea, the focus is on the sustainable development of the EU and how islands are separated from these goals. There are 3 main problems why all the islands are excluded;
1) restrictive definition of island,
2) peripherality and insularity and
3) the lack of harmonised statistical data on fundamental factors.
The EU policy tended to be incremental, but this lead to problems with the incorporated islands; the islands have different types of community feeling and are fragmented. For islands, the cohesion feeling is extremely important, but the islands live from the tourism, agriculture and fisheries. Sustainable challenges, projects or regulations could have a great impact on these sectors and influence a large part of the community. The lack of interest from these islands could be related to the size and way of living in contrast with Europe. The cohesion bond within these communities and brings a strong attitude. Why should they change the way they live, for hundreds of years, what effect can one small island have on the whole Europe. If they change, where do their food come from then, when agriculture and fishery are less? And last but not least all sustainable measures are ugly and will deter the tourist.
It’s important to fill the gap, between developed countries, which mostly have strong improving science position, intellectual inhabitants, flourishing economy and a lot of possibilities for starting projects, and the islands, which have declining industries, geographical or natural handicaps, sparsely populated areas and are lagging behind. The research of Moncada also investigated the situation on the “Wadden Eilanden”. According to their research the island has tree main problems;
Low potential economic diversification: most of the population earn their income in summer with tourism, if these income disappears living standards will decrease significantly and people are forced to move toward the mainland to find work.
The negative impact of island development: There is a strong pressure from developers to boost the tourism activities and enlarge the housing market, to enlarge the profit that can be made out of the island. Next to this, the land-use and the current way of urban design are not sufficient to manage the present and future development.
Tourism pressure: Tourism is a major income for the island, but it also result in height consumption rates of energy, water, land, infrastructure and facilities. It also infects the population density, during the season, there is a high pressure on the territory and its resources.
In the text Innovation, politics post-Rio+20: hybrid pathways to sustainability? by A. Ely, A. Smith and A. Stirling, the main problem for sustainable innovations are discussed. According to this document, the economic and political conditions are the major problem. The regulations are not clear at al and mostly forced from the top. The writers describe that bottom-up projects would work better, this is called hybrid innovation and started around 2000. It's a green industrialisation, as a result from teaching industrial ecology as a subject. The outcome of the innovation is a combination of groups, individuals, companies and non-profit organisations all over the EU working together to find new solutions. Education is an important factor in this process, knowledge is needed to learn locals working with new techniques; for example, the intensification of agriculture, with genetic research and the new way of food producing as a result. This way of leads to more dynamic ways of working together, it makes also more complex and very unpredictable. In this concept, there are 3 main problems;
1) lack of money to bridges gaps,
2) political regulations and
3) no feedback or adjustments.
These problems are also underlined within the interview with Jacob Dijkstra, part of the government of Ameland and involved with the smart grid project. Within the law, there is an enormous part of rules and regulations for coping with energy etc. During the process of the project, there are a lot of struggles which are not incorrect with the new future system. Though, there is an exception rule, to build free for 500 households, but these also need to fix over 200 points before it’s possible to implement. The government is not willing to make acceptions even not when they are very well supported with statistics information. This means when you have a great innovative idea, you're not allowed to make it feasible. Also, the sharing of energy from solar panels with neighbours is forbidden, to transport waste to a biodigester is forbidden, to share heat between neighbours is forbidden, etc. This has to change. The transform path needs appropriation, commodification, risk governance, market and nonmarket mechanisms, investment challenges, diverse settings and distributed knowledge. As all text and also Jacob Dijkstra is teach your own very important in this innovation. Knowledge, reflection and innovation are the main keys for a new sustainable future. To keep people up to date, share new idea’s to contribute involving new projects and realising projects are the goal. Teach your own can contribute to create a totally new type of digital and real live connections and make brainstorm sessions happen, this in combination with a relief on regulations would make a sustainable future possible.