sustainability through developing the capacity of all staff to become active contributors to local workplace solutions. The Sustainable Workplace Team is made up of volunteer staff representatives from most faculties and service units across the University. These people are the first point of contact for their colleagues on sustainability issues in the workplace. They are trained to provide support and information on environmental matters and to be a voice for staff in developing new workplace programs and policies. Each team member has the job of working with their fellow staff to implement an appropriate approach to sustainability that is specific to their roles and workplaces. There is a small grants scheme to enable staff to introduce local sustainability projects. Although the university has not signed Talloires, this program accords strongly with the 4th and 5th provisions of the Talloires Declaration, notably “foster(ing) environmental literacy for all and “practice(ing) institutional ecology”. In the context of the functional dynamic model it also indicates a healthy community comprised of “active, empowered citizens”.
Conclusion Evidently Australian universities are responding to global concerns about sustainability with a myriad of meritorious initiatives. These are expressed across the broad spectrum of institutional engagement: teaching and curricula design; research and planning; resource management and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the majority of the activity described over the previous pages is only that which stakeholders might reasonably be expected of publicly funded institutions. Levin (2008) argued that the 21st century University should be leading community responses to environmental issues. We contend that Australian universities generally are being shaped by global and community concerns: they are responding to rather than defining and leading the debate. While the sustainability strategies and planning methods employed by institutions are overtly engaging with community concerns, the tenor and language of discussion and reportage marks a deep complicity with dominant discourses and global market forces. The rationalist synthesis of the forces and voices of managerial accountability, EfS and mainstream politics provides an illusion of order and security in the face of the perceived radical threat of global climate change. The list of activities and directives engaging with environmental sustainability are produced by universities as documents of stakeholder answerability, community reassurance, cultural compliance and strategic self-promotion. As argued by Selby and Kagawa (2010) “engagement with the instrumental while sidestepping the ongoing discussion and debate on first principles and root values has conceded impetus in the field to the neoliberal marketplace ideology now tacitly embedded in international agendas”. Managerial solutions are problematised by ecological discourses which come with a degree of uncertainty and offer unacceptable levels of risk. Mueller has presciently observed that “the ecological crisis has the potential to marginalize many diverse people who are needed during these times of increasing ecological awareness and uncertainties” (Mueller, 2009). To minimize the threat posed by
The Functional Dynamics of Green Universities
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