Photo by Justin Baker
What is "Learning from the Past?"
By examining the ecological, political, economic, and social processes behind past unsustainable systems, we can begin to understand why our current system is unsustainable. To learn from the past, this site explores two past cases of unsustainable systems, and how these systems interact with various institutions and processes.
Explore these two past sustainability cases by selecting "The Postcolonial Transition" or "Refrigerators and the Governance Treadmill" in the "Learning from the past" drop-down menu!
What should users expect to learn? You should come away from this section understanding thresholds, how values lead to actions, how disconnects create problems, the importance of feedbacks, and what makes for ineffective vs effective governance.
What is it about these cases that's so important or interesting? These cases strongly demonstrate all of the above concepts. Importantly, the lessons we can draw from these two cases are highly generalizable to a host of other environmental concerns and events. Try applying the lessons from these cases to other environmental situations you are aware of!
What are the different perspectives or lenses employed in the analysis and how does the diversity of ideas contribute to our understanding of sustainability? The Postcolonial Transition case has a strong focus on how social and ecological dynamics affect threshold crossing. The majority of analysis is employed on the local scale of the New England system, although some cross-scalar connections are explored. The Refrigerators case has a strong political focus, and looks at a more recent, international-scale problem. It is important to remember that sustainability is not just local environmental or international issues, political or social ones, but rather includes all of these elements. By looking at a combination of older and more recent events with different focuses, we truly can see how wide-ranging sustainability is!