Calling for a Next-Generation Sustainability Framework at MIT

Abstract

MIT is positioned to excel in a next-generation approach to campus sustainability. With an active administration, emphasis on sustainable guidelines in planning campus construction and energy performance, and collaborative fabric of researchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and community partners, we are poised now to both accelerate our successful performance and provide leadership on the meaning of creating a “sustainable campus”. We have a particularly unique opportunity in doing so to transform the campus into a scalable living laboratory, a test bed for change, one which matches cutting edge sustainable urban strategies emerging from our classrooms with their implementation at the institute level. Our partnerships with the City of Cambridge and metro Boston and regional and global networks provide further opportunity to advance collective intelligence around shared problems that affect our shared resources and shared desire for a more sustainable future. Each critical decision we make on campus is an opportunity to think deeply about how to ensure the growth of human potential while maintaining the integrity of the natural systems that support life on the planet. A commitment to sustainability will enable a process that allows us to grapple with how best to weigh fiscal, environmental and human health impacts. We are now building the capacity to create this process. A core component of a next-generation approach is the creation of a decision-making platform for the campus that is founded on systems thinking and powered by responsive, robust data. The interactions between human health, environmental quality, and of course, fiscal responsibility are increasingly complex. Even routine decisions become complicated when we take into account the interconnectedness of the systems that sustain us. This chapter will provide insight into the development of a next-generation framework for campus sustainability that draws on case examples from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale, both based in the USA.