“continuity, maintenance, supported to be the same” (OED). This definition is belied by the discourses of ecology which are foundationally underpinned by the understanding that contemporary first world living standards are destroying the natural world as we know it and that significant changes are required to be made to the way that most of us measure our aspirations and conduct our lives (Sibbel, 2009). A number of analyses have drawn attention to the fact that sustainability is an overtly anthropocentric concept (Lee 2000; Hopwood, Mellor & O’Brien 2005; Mackenzie, 2005) which risks being narrowly confined by dominant discourses (Selby & Kagawa, 2010). Similarly, while the formal meaning of development is defined as “maturation, evolution, unfolding change” (OED), it is all too often hijacked to simply mean growth, particularly in corporate and industry contexts. Used together, the words “sustainable” and “development” connote a profound anomaly where a capacity for growth is “supported indefinitely by a finite earth” (Lloyd, 2009, p.515). As Australian universities have become more corporatised (Thagard and Shelley, 1997; Allen, 1998; Marginson, 1997A; Marginson, 1997B; Marginson & Considine, 2000; Szekeres, 2006), their operational strategies and plans (and budgets) have tended to be inflected by this discourse of growth while they simultaneously adapt to the rhetoric of sustainability. These anomalies in language and concept have been commented upon by Aras and Crowther who note that the “almost unquestioned assumption is that growth remains possible (Elliot, 2005) and therefore sustainability and sustainable development are synonymous” (Aras and Crowther, 2008, p281). Jickling and Wals (2007) have compared the paradox encoded within sustainable development discourse to George Orwell’s notion of “double think” where people can adopt contradictory meanings for the same word and accept them both. Diesendorf has previously acknowledged the definitional complexity of the various terminologies. For this reason he has chosen to use “sustainable development” as a shorthand phrase for “ecologically sustainable and socially equitable development” (Diesendorf, 1999, p.4). In this report, we seek to unpack some of the dichotomous meanings circulating in the sustainability discussions, to encourage a more critical and analytic approach to the rhetoric commonly employed and to promote awareness that we are all necessarily involved in an ongoing debate about the meaning of sustainability and how to achieve it (Aras and Crowther, 2008). The report will use the words sustainable and sustainability with specific reference to environmental sustainability, but in the stated belief that protecting the environment ultimately leads to better social and ethical outcomes. The words are also used with the implicit understanding that different disciplines bring alternate perspectives to bear on the meaning of the terms and the approach to the issues (Brown, 2007). For the reasons just described, the phrase “sustainable development” will not be used unless quoted from another document, in which case this will be specifically attributed in context. A further and more precise differentiation needs to be made here between ecological discourse and environmental discourse, terms which should not be used interchangeably or understood synonymously. As used in this report “environmental discourse/s” refers back to the above definition of sustainability/environmental sustainability. Environmental discourse, while expressive of an authentic commitment to sustainability
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The Functional Dynamics of Green Universities