Triple Bottom Line Applied in Portland
Local efforts are using global equity and sustainability models to tackle consumption in the Portland area.
Many models of sustainability are based on the concept of a “triple bottom line,” that says we must plan for and measure economic, environmental and social outcomes. Unfortunately, economic and environmental factors typically receive most of the attention and precise accounting in the sustainability field. All too often, measures of social impact are simply tagged on at the end and rarely measure how differing populations may or may not be experiencing those impacts.
Julian Agyeman, an expert on environmental justice and sustainability and a professor at Tufts University, notes that “you cannot retrofit for equity.” To come up with solutions to sustainability problems, he argues, it is paramount that existing disparities are named at the outset and that the people who might carry the biggest burdens help shape and build the new system.
To be successful in creating a triple-bottom-lined sustainable Oregon, solutions must shift from measuring the movement of materials we produce and consume to satisfying the core needs of all people. Doughnut Economics and Just Transition are two models that directly put equity in the center of sustainable systems. Both global models are being applied to identify new solutions to our local consumption in the Portland metropolitan area.
A Safe and Just Level of Consumption
Kate Raworth, Senior Researcher at Oxfam Great Britain, believes that we can make this shift to an equity focus through a concept she calls Doughnut Economics. She says, “The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach” to framing the challenge.
Raworth argues that humanity’s 21st-century challenge is to meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet – that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and self-expression). And while doing this we don’t overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer.
Traditional sustainable consumption messages and programs focus on encouraging people to “consume less,” “live simply” and “make do.” These messages fall flat for communities who are experiencing a lack of basic needs. They also only focus on consumer choice, without addressing the systemic problems that cause over consumption and inequities.
The Doughnut Economics acknowledges the billions of people on the planet who fall short of meeting their basic needs. But it also describes a world where humanity is collectively overshooting our consumption at a level that is heading for collapse.
Doughnut Economics changes the goal from reducing all consumers’ consumption to identifying an economic system with a “safe and just zone” of consumption. In that system, the unsustainable and ecological limits of consumption are measured, with the goal to avoid an overshoot. But also measured is a foundation of basic well-being for all people, with the goal to ensure that no one falls short.
The goal is to stay in equilibrium within that safe and just zone. Instead of a model of an ever-growing economy, a safe and just economy is regenerative and distributive.
Portland and Doughnut Economics
Portland’s 2015 Climate Action Plan included the first city-level consumption-based emissions inventory that looks at the lifecycle emissions produced globally as the result of consumer spending by Portlanders. While the City of Portland is not tackling its fundamental economic structure, staff in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) are actively using the Donut Economics concept to create strategies to reduce consumption-based or lifecycle emissions. Today in Portland, there are at least 4,000 people sleeping on our streets and without adequate access to food, healthcare, education and other basics of the social foundation. So, Portland’s work to address these emissions also requires us to help some Portlanders consume more.
Portland’s Climate Action Plan calls for BPS to develop a sustainable consumption and production strategy to prioritize local government activities that will support a shift to lower carbon consumption patterns. The development of the strategy started in 2019. It uses the safe and just concept to ensure that whatever strategies are considered, each has a ceiling and foundation approach.
The City’s first phase took place in the spring and summer of 2019. Workgroups with staff and stakeholders examined the largest sources of consumption-based carbon emissions. They used this data from the consumption-based emissions inventory to brainstorm interventions in the areas of construction, electronics, food, government operations, goods, and services. Then they charted ways these interventions could reduce consumption for consumers who are overshooting in our community and lift up shortfall consumers.
The current phase is a partnership with C40, a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. The City of Portland was selected to participate in their Thriving Cities Initiative, a C40 pilot project focused on helping cities reduce carbon emissions and enhance quality of life for all residents through shifting to more sustainable patterns of consumption.
The initiative kicked off with a workshop for City staff with Kate Raworth, who shared her Doughnut Economics research and led City staff through activities using a city scale snapshot of Portland’s doughnut.
In the Spring of 2020, City leaders will partner with community-based organizations and business actors to determine how they can address unsustainable patterns of consumption and production and create a thriving city.
With the Sustainable Production and Consumption Strategy and the Thriving Cities Initiative, Portland is embarking on a journey to understand what it means to be a 21st-century thriving city.
Just Transition: Letting Community Lead
Like Doughnut Economics, Just Transition is an international concept with local activities. But where the origins of Doughnut Economics were academic, Just Transitions is born out of decades of grassroots environmental justice organizing to find common ground and shared benefit in the transition away from polluting industries. Just Transition highlights that economies based on growth are extracting resources from both the environment and workers – without benefit to them. Just Transition addresses pollution and toxics that are critical issues in the environmental justice movement, but it also addresses the urgency that climate change presents.
The movement works to advance ecological resilience, reduce resource consumption, restore biodiversity and traditional ways of life, and topple extractive economies. They celebrate a concept called “Buen Vivir,” which means that we can live well without living better at the expense of others or the planet.
A critical aspect of the Just Transition concept is that “frontline communities” must lead in the co-creation and co-delivery of strategies, programs and systems that come out of the transition from an extractive economy. Frontline communities are those that experience “first and worst” the consequences of climate change. These are communities of color and low-income populations. Their neighborhoods often lack basic infrastructure to support them, and they are increasingly vulnerable as our climate deteriorates. These are Native communities, whose resources have been exploited, and laborers whose daily work or living environments are polluted and/or toxic.
Local Just Transition
Communities in the Portland metropolitan area and Oregon are embracing the Just Transition concept and making substantive change using its tenants. The Oregon Just Transition Alliance (OJTA) is a project of OPAL, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Beyond Toxics, Pineros y Campesinos el Noroeste (PCUN), Rural Organizing Project, and Unite Oregon. They see Just Transition as the framework where frontline communities in Oregon can build existing and new relationships and nurture leadership to ensure the new economy works for them.
In Spring 2017, more than 50 community organizations organized the People’s Climate March. It was an opportunity for frontline communities to connect and find common ground. From that gathering, energy spread into projects large and small. Day laborers began to identify ways that they can play a role in the City of Portland’s emergency plans and that any job can be a green job through a project with Voz Workers’ Rights Oregon and the City of Portland. The Coalition of Communities of Color developed a program called Redefine to advocate for climate solutions that are led with racial and economic equity. Their principals demand policies that prevent further harm to communities of color, reinvest revenues to reduce disparities, create opportunities directly in under served communities, and ensure inclusive design and implementation.
Allies successfully developed, advocated and won a ballot measure called the Portland Clean Energy Fund. The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) was created by a local ballot measure (Measure 26-201) that is anticipated to bring $54 – 71 million in new revenue for green jobs and healthy homes for all Portlanders. The initiative ensures that the City of Portland’s Climate Action Plan is implemented in a manner that supports social, economic and environmental benefits for all Portlanders, including the development of a diverse and well-trained workforce and contractor pool in the field of clean energy. The measure passed with 65 percent of voters in support, making it Oregon's first-ever environmental initiative created and led by communities of color. The community coalition that created and led the ballot measure is working together with the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to design and implement the program.
Based in a rich history of community groundswell and academic innovation, it will be exciting to see how these initiatives grow and strive to address the local and global challenges of our time.
