Formal recognition of human rights?! In Australia?! {yahoonewstitle}
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Formal recognition of human rights?! In Australia?!
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All Australian’s should be aware that there is currently a Human Rights consultation taking place in Australia. The consultation committee is charged with address the following three questions:
1. Which Human rights (including correpsonding responsibilites) should be protected and promoted?
2. Are these human rights currently sufficiently protected and promoted?
3. How could Australia better protect and promote human rights?
Sub questions to help direct your thinking were: * What are the rights and liberties of Australians? * What should the rights and liberties be? * Where do I find them? * Where should I be able to find them? * Are there responsibilities that go with having rights and liberties? * How are rights and liberties protected? * could our rights and liberties be better promoted? * should we have a document setting out our rights and liberties? * What role does the Commonwealth Goverment play in protecting human rights? Businesses? Individuals? * Who should be obliged to protect human rights – the Australian Government? Businesses? Individuals? Elected Representatives? Unelected Judges? Someone else? * Are there any circumstances in which you think your rights should be suspended? If so, when? * Which human rights should be better protected and promoted? * Do you think that particular groups need special protections? * What should you be able to do if you think your Human rights have been breached? * Do we need a new Commonwealth law to protect human rights? * should our human rights be considered more formally by Government when they are making laws? * Do we need better ways to ensure that Government and it’s agencies respect our human rights? * What do you think the role of the Courts should be in the protection of human rights?
You will find information about the national Human Rights Consultation; National Human Rights Consultation Background Paper; consultation group discussion guide at www.humanrightsconsultation.gov.au/
:: :: Have your say :: ::
All Australians are invited to have their say and may parcipate in a consultation workshop or may make a submission by to the Human Rights Consultation Committe on the web or by post:
web www.humanrightsconsultation.gov.au/
postal The National Human Right Consultation Secretariat
Attorney-General’s Department
Robrt Garran Offices
BARTON ACT 2600
Closing date for submissions Monday, 15 Jun 2009. All submissions will be treated as public unless the author indicates it is confidential, then it will be treated as such and will not be made public.
A range of public submission are available on the site, so you can read what others have to say.
If you are for a Charter, please share the reasons behind why you support a Charter. If you are against a Charter, please share your reasons as to why you are against it.
:: :: Important Note :: ::
At this time the Government have refused to consider having Human Rights incorporated into the constitution and as such a charter is being considered.
For those that believe strongly that Human Rights should be incorporated into the constitution it is outside of the Committee’s charter. If you feel it should be included in the constitution and raise this as a concern, the concern will be addressed in the report to the Government which will be presented by 31 August 2009.
It was suggested some postives about having a charter might be:
* Something is better than nothing
* Australia’s track record with referendums is that getting a YES vote would be unlikely
* By having a Charter in the first instance, it may manifest a cultural change, may make a YES vote in a referendum in the future more likely (we’ve tried it, we’ll buy it/cultural change)
* It provides the opportunity to road test the laws and see how they interpreted before they are embedded in the constitution (it’s very hard to change something once it in a constitution – eg. American’s right to bear arms). By road testing how the laws are interpreted, it gives us the opportunity to fine tune them before they become entrenched in the constitution.
:: :: Related resources :: ::
* Let’s talk about rights – toolkit and information – www.hreoc.gov.au/letstalkaboutrights/info.html
* National human rights consultation – www.humanrightscoalition.org.au/index.php?option=com_cont…
* Human Rights Links: www.humanrights.org.au/links.htm
* What are human rights? www.humanrights.org.au/human-rights.htm
* Universal Declaration of Human Rights: www.humanrights.org.au/declaration-human-rights.htm (This page contains links to plain language versions of the rights)
* Your rights, your say (GetUp! Campaign – relates directly to the charter) – www.getup.org.au/campaign/rights/407
* Save the ‘Net (GetUp! Campaign – freedom of information/speech) – www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
:: :: Discussion :: ::
Discussion, statements and questions arising from the consultation I attended (I am listing points raised regardless of my personal feelings – these are just things that came up during the course of the evening):
The need for education about rights – generally and within our education system. One group discussed that this should happen in primary school due to retention issues at the high school level (early dropouts) and that knowledge of the 30 basic human rights should be as important as reading and writing.
Such a charter may heighten accountability
Are unelected Judges the best choice in terms of fairness? (separation from Government?). Are Elected representatives in the best position to evaluate/judge community values? Do judges generally focus more on individuals than on the community? Judges are practiced in finding balance in opposing views – so woudn’t they be qualified? Wouldn’t unelected judges be more likely to represent the views of minorities who need protection? Would elected judges/representatives be more likely to do what is in the best interests of the Government?
Rights are like muscles and brains… if they are not exercised, you lose them. It is a responsibility of citizenship to actively stand up for our rights.
The right to be able to protest is important.
Is compulsory voting a huge impedement to Australia? (No further argument or explanation was given with this statement so I’m not of the rationale behind the statement – sorry.)
Freedom of thought
The right to express your culture
While many of us may agree on the basic ‘umbrella’ statements – we often don’t agree on the semantics – how would we address this conflict to ensure that if a Bill of Rights or Charter were implemented that it wouldn’t force values and beliefs on people and remove some rights of expression.
Can any piece of paper be enforced?
The constitution is the best we can aim for.
We need a government that is responsible TO the people. The people should have some way of being able to say we are not happy and demand a new government
Issues widely opposed by the people are often not addressed until there is a change of Government
We need to have a democracy in the community, workplace and in the economy
Does a charter lack enforceability?
If it is a charter, and is subject to the whim of Parliment it can be changed at any time.
International treaties and laws should override national laws and these are already in place. Australia does not enforce these laws and sometimes does not enforce/is not accountable for national laws. If these treaties/laws were enforced would we even have a need for this discussion
For something so important to all Australians, this consultation has been badly promoted and many of us here found out almost by accident – shouldn’t this be promted more widely in mainstream media (television advertising, full page ads in papers, radio, etc).
Are groups such as the homeless being consulted [answer from panel was yes – some representatives were meeting with a group of homeless people at a soup kitchen the same evening the consultation I attended was on – M.]
our system stifles debate and says that some rights are more important that others.
how do we balance two separate rights that conflict
should rights be unconditional – or are there instances where they should be revoked?
Responsibility to those who have had rights removed (eg. mental health patients who have had their rights removed for their own safety, etc and the incarcerated). When removing rights there is a responsibility to consider the rights of those who have had their rights removed and to protect them from abuse, uphold their dignity and show them respect). Don’t just take the easy way out and ignore the situation – take on the responsiblity that comes with revoking rights.
Have the incarcerated been spoken to as part of this consultation?
Often those who are unable to communicate effectively in spoken or written word are unheard and thus cannot have their rights addressed or make themselves heard and thus their rights are disregarded. As rights are often addressed by laws those who can not articulate in a spoken or written form in a language that is readily understood by the ‘system’ have no voice. How can we make it easy for them to know and address their rights.
Information about rights; where to seek assistance and general information should be available not only online and by telephone but also there should be a place to go where you can talk to someone in person (accessibilty/equity)
:: :: A relevant poem :: ::
First they came…
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
This poem has been reworded and used in numerous rights and freedom related campaigns. The basic message, obviously, is – it may not be you now but if you don’t stand up for others and then later you find yourself the target of injustice, who will stand up for you? Don’t be ambivalent… get off your butts!
Modern Movement Architecture and the Measurement of Sustainability
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Introduction
In the spring of this year, representatives of the United States’ Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), the U.K.’s Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BRE-EAM), and the Australian Green Star rating systems initiated meetings to align their assessment tools and develop common metrics to measure CO2 equivalents from building construction. Later this summer, BRE and the French Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (CSTB) declared their joint effort to create a Pan-European assessment method. These events represent both the global adoption of the sustainable construction philosophy and the need for developing consensus among standards.
The ideological commitment to producing sustainable buildings is an ethical response to both global and local environmental issues. However, the criteria for “green” building evaluation among international organizations continue to evolve. To some degree, the bias for operational efficiencies of new construction over the value of existing buildings has lessened in recent years. But the importance of economic and environmental metrics to construction planning and design is only likely to increase. Given the heightened political interest in global conditions, the metrics for sustainable construction have been widely adopted by national and municipal building regulators. This suggests an amended method for the evaluation of architectural resources for conservation.
Ultimately advocates for building conservation must become active participants in a potentially unfamiliar analytical dialog. Scientific and engineering methods and data must, to a certain extent, be adopted by the historic preservation professional. The “conventional” wisdom of conservation practice – namely that stewardship of our historic building stock is an act of sustainability – is increasingly subject to demonstration and verification.
In the wake of this paradigm shift, it is appropriate to consider the net effect of sustainable construction standards in practice. To date, the “green” building movement has mostly represented an incremental change rather than a radical rethinking of the built environment (Kibert, 2004). High-performance designs must also be recognized as experiments in the trial and error process to achieve “sustainable” buildings. The development of a new generation of construction materials and systems – engineered according to standards for low environmental impacts – appears remarkably similar to the post-WWII era when architecture readily embraced experimental products with limited life-cycle testing.
The existence of experimental building technologies in modern movement buildings has long been identified as a conflict to preservation’s paradigm to conserve original building fabric. This debate, however, rarely addresses the design movement’s underlying focus on “performance” – an essentially non-existent concept in pre-19th century architecture. The era’s mantra of “doing more with less” resulted in more than just a compression of construction assemblies- it introduced the operational logic of industry, specifically the machine, to the art of architecture. One could argue that the very presence of rapidly-deteriorating, petroleum-based products within 20th-century buildings suggests the need for a conceptual understanding of conservation more akin to automobiles than to pre-modern architecture.
In recognition of the modern movement’s nascent adoption of new material technology, and yet its significant reliance on durable construction methods, this essay considers the opportunities and constraints of various models for the assessment of sustainable building.
Birth of the Green
The “green” building movement reflects many societal factors, not least of which are the escalation in fuel prices and the growing popular concern for global warming. The present condition represents an epic paradox of civilization: although “cheap” energy supported exponential worldwide growth and modernization, the resulting competition and demand cannot be sustained by the original fuel source. Of course this observation is not new, but we among oil-consuming economies “fell off the wagon” sometime in the last three decades.
At the time of the last energy crises, the concerns for nature first written by Henry David Thoreau had matured into an environmental movement within western nations. In the developing century of thought, the human role of “stewardship” found recognition and asserted that mankind’s fate is linked to that of nature; concluding there can be no competition between the two. Therefore, civilization must mitigate the long-term impact of its reliance on natural resources. The definition of “mitigation” prompted a debate of natural vs. cultural priorities. An early example was the argument of land management versus preservation, lead by Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. Overall, the parallel movements have been unified by many seminal texts and thinkers, but an ideological tug-of-war has occasionally pitted one priority against the other. Today, some of this polarity has been diminished through the recent concept of the “triple bottom line”. This more inclusive, and arguably sustainable action model, suggests equal footing for economic, environmental, and social criteria.
Building Impacts
Proponents of high-performance construction often quote an estimate that during a building’s lifespan, the majority of its energy expenditure is consumed by building operations. Although this estimate does not hold true for the full history of extant buildings, conservators generally agree that this pattern of consumption typifies construction of the 19th-20th centuries. The lifespan ratio is commonly differentiated as 16% initial embodied energy, 10% recurring embodied energy, and 74% building operations.
Initial embodied energy in buildings represents the non-renewable energy consumed in the acquisition of raw materials, their processing, manufacturing, transportation to site, and construction. The recurring embodied energy in buildings represents the non-renewable energy consumed to maintain, repair, restore, refurbish or replace materials, components or systems during the life of the building.
Building upon the early research of architect Richard Stein and others, the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) commissioned a landmark study (Booz, Allen, Hamilton 1979) based on an extensive analysis of U.S. building industry data. Although the data for industrial processes has not been updated since its initial compilation, the original calculations represent the prolific period of post-WWII construction.
In most circumstances, initial embodied energy is significantly less than the energy consumed by a building over its lifetime. Green building research has therefore focused primarily on improving efficiencies in building operations and reducing construction waste and pollution.
Comparison of Standards
To date, the LEED program has certified over one thousand buildings, with thousands more waiting in application. The majority of these certifications have been voluntary. Following the early adoption by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), municipalities, and some universities, LEED certification has been mandated by many facility owners and operators. Since the incorporation of the LEED standards, alternative rating systems have been developed and warrant consideration in context.
The U.K.’s BREEAM rating system was introduced in 1990 and has been recognized as the first environmental building assessment tool. Following the U.N.’s “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, the international momentum for such standards grew. The non-profit U.S. Green Building Council was established in 1993 and introduced LEED in 2000. In the same year, the Canadian Building Owners and Mangers Association (BOMA) released the Green Globes rating system. It must be noted that both systems were heavily influenced by BREEAM, and in fact Green Globes grew out of a 1996 BREEAM franchise by the Canadian Standards Association. Unique to the BOMA revision, however, was their partnership with the joint U.S.-Canadian non-profit Athena Institute. Beginning in the 1990s, the institute was devoted to the research and development of material life-cycle assessment tools for new and existing building construction.
Today, BREEAM, LEED, and Green Globes are the most widely used of more than ten independently-authored “green” building programs developed internationally over the past 20 years. The top three have expanded their systems to other countries; Green Globes entered the U.S. market through the non-profit Green Building Initiative (GBI) in 2005 and is finalizing ANSI certification; LEED has been franchised for use by non-profit Green Building Councils in India, Brazil, and Canada.
By 2006, the emerging market competition for “green” standards became apparent when the GBI filed a grievance against the GSA for their endorsement and requirement of LEED certification. In response, the GSA signed a Memorandum of Understanding to operate “rating system neutral,” maintaining however that LEED is currently the “most credible rating system available to meet GSA’s needs” and will re-evaluate systems every five years.
It is difficult to forecast what the afore-mentioned rating system partnerships will yield. Although multiple standards allows for the intrinsic variability of the construction market (private/public, residential/ commercial/institutional), the use of variable metrics problematizes the comparison of impacts which are decidedly global in their nature.
Given the common roots and similar goals, the LEED and Green Globes standards are more similar than different. A 2006 comparison by the University of Minnesota identified eight generic categories common to both analyses: 1) Energy Use; 2) Water Use; 3) Pollution; 4) Material/Product Inputs; 5) Indoor Air Quality & Occupant Comfort; 6) Transport; 7) Site Ecology; and 8) Other Sustainable Design. On the surface, the Green Globes system was initially credited with providing a less expensive and more efficient means of building certification through an on-line mechanism. In some cases, however, the “yes/no” format of the web-based data system was criticized as being prone to interpretation. LEED recently-introduced version 3 has notably replaced their paper-based system with a web-based format. However in their substance, the two systems offer differing values for the conservation of existing buildings.
Promise of LCA
Life cycle assessment (LCA) attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of a product or service caused or necessitated by its existence. The assessment method provides a systematic view of the environmental aspects of a product from “cradle to grave.” This includes: 1) a description of the entire product’s life-cycle; 2) key environmental impacts from production and use of the product; 3) the product’s functional quality. Based on these three conditions, the LCA quantifies a product’s range of environmental impacts (Trusty, 2004).
In the concept of embodied energy, it was earlier noted that the energy required to operate a building over its life exceeds the energy attributed to the products used in its construction. This statement does not take into account other embodied effects such as toxic releases to water, effects during the resource extraction and manufacturing stages that greatly outweigh any releases associated with building operations. Byproducts from the manufacture of long lifespan materials, such as iron, steel, hydraulic cements, and lime, have a significant impact on global warming. As well, the extraction of iron, sand, and gravel also contribute to natural resource depletion.
Research conducted by the Athena Institute demonstrates the value of retaining structural and envelope systems, which on average account for half of a building’s embodied energy (Cole and Kernan, 1996). This ability for detailed itemized assessment is well suited to the modern movement’s development of core and shell construction technology.
For example, two scenarios of “Impact Avoidance” can be used to estimate the environmental effects that are avoided by rehabilitating a building. The minimum avoided environmental impact case involves saving only the structural system of an existing building, with the rest demolished and replaced. The avoided impacts equal the effects of 1) demolishing a structural system and 2) rebuilding a comparable structural system. This scenario is demonstrated by the curtain wall replacement project for the Lever House and in development for the United Nations secretariat tower. In both cases, the effects of demolishing the envelope are not avoided. The maximum scenario involves saving the envelope as well as the structure, with avoided impacts equal to the effects of: 1) demolishing a structural/envelope system and 2) rebuilding a comparable structural/envelope system. The rehabilitation of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam remains one of the most comprehensive examples of this alternative to date.
Until recently, both the LEED and Green Globes rating systems were criticized for not rationally weighting their assessment criteria according to environmental relevance. Although some LCA inconsistencies remain, Green Globes has been credited with including explicit rating criteria for both life-cycle strategies and building durability/ adaptability. LEED, however, historically has favored specific products according to LCA impact. LEED version 3 has re-distributed the credit values of its criteria according to LCA, but there is no single criterion that explicitly evaluates the cumulative life-cycle of a construction project. For example, the “Materials and Re-use” section requires the use of rapidly renewable materials to reduce the use of long-cycle renewable materials. However, there is no allowance for evaluating the impact of using a rapidly renewable material that must be replaced 10 times more frequently than its long-cycle alternative. Notably, a consortium of university facility managers has recently decided to eliminate the installation of bamboo flooring from future projects due to its limited service life in their prior LEED projects.
Conclusion
“In exploring the primary general categories of ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ design and construction (energy, durability, air quality, and environmental impacts) and the ability to develop and specify requirements and standards of performance, measurement is a critical issue. Specifically, if you can’t measure it, it is difficult to set up specific requirements and standards for it.” (Smith et al., 2006)
The professional evolution of preservation has lead to scientific methods and technologies to physically support the conservation of historic structures and sites. In turn, measurements have been conducted to demonstrate the positive economic impact of this mission. Despite some occasional reluctance, metrics have become fundamental to practice.
In deference to the legitimacy of environmental concerns, one cannot address today’s global condition using yesterday’s individualized arguments. This has occasionally been a shortcoming of the policy statements of historic preservation leadership. In the wake of the last energy crises, the aforementioned ACHP’s substantial investment in embodied energy research was an appropriate response. However, during that same period, the Secretary of the Interior Standards for Rehabilitation was revised for only a narrow consideration of energy efficiency. Although the topic was addressed (primarily the weatherizing of wood sash windows), it was not sufficiently encouraged, nor have the challenges of integrating both criteria been explored.
During the past boom of U.S. construction, the values of conservation and building integration largely lost out to the practice of tabula rasa- which the private development community has historically preferred for project expediency. Preservation advocates can attest to the large number of buildings demolished before the end of their technical service life due to a common list of “red herrings” that may now include operational inefficiency. It is too simplistic to conclude that modern architecture is logically produced and removed from the landscape based on its original bias for experimentation and technological innovation. To offer a counterpoint, there is a fundamental difference between “shortening the replacement cycle” of our mechanical systems versus our building stock and by extension communities and architectural heritage.
Architectural preservation has repeatedly been argued to be an act of sustainability. In the immediate future, LCA methodology suggests a potential bridge between the preservation community’s interest in increasingly rare building materials and techniques, with the environmental principles supporting “green” building standards. But as a caution against any suggestion of a “silver bullet”, LCA expert Arnold Tukker offers the following: “It will never be possible to solve controversial discussions about products with an LCIA [life cycle inventory assessment] method that is based solely on mathematical relations between interventions and protection areas. There are simply too many uncertainties, there is too much ignorance, and they can only be overcome by all kinds of subjective, subtle, and basically value-laden choices. …”
Preservation and conservation advocates are tasked with addressing the present paradigm shift. Future programs and processes within both academia and the profession must acknowledge the environmental impacts of construction. Simultaneously, those forces must impart the values of social interaction and cultural enrichment inherent to architectural heritage to expand the popular definition of sustainability.
References
Anonymous. 2009, April 10. American National Standard 01-200XP: Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings. Public Review Draft. Green Building Initiative.
__________ 2008, July 30. “USGBC Lists Certification Lineup for LEED 2009.” Greener Buildings online journal.
__________ 2003, November. “White Paper on Sustainability.” Building Design & Construction Magazine.
__________ 2004. “Towards Sustainable Use of Building Stock.” Joint Workshop on Sustainable Buildings. Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development/International Energy Agency.
__________ 2008. “Green Building Practices and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation.” Draft edition. Pocantico Symposium. National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Booz, Allen, Hamilton. 1979. “Assessing the Energy Conservation Benefits of Historic Preservation: Methods and Examples.” United States Advisory Council for Historic Preservation.
Campagna , Barbara A. 2009, June 15. “How Changes to LEED™ Will Benefit Existing and Historic Buildings.” Preservation Architect: The Newsletter of the Historic Resources Committee. American Institute of Architects.
Cole, R.J. and Kernan, P.C. 1996. “Life-Cycle Energy Use in Office Buildings.” Building and Environment, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 307-317.
Frey, Patrice. 2007, October. “Making the Case: Historic Preservation as Sustainable Development.” Draft edition. Sustainable Preservation Research Retreat. National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Kibert, Charles A. 2004. “Green Buildings: An Overview of Progress.” Journal of Land Use. Vol. 19:2.
Smith, Timothy M., Miriam Fischlein, Sangwon Suh, Pat Huelman. 2006, September. “Green Building Rating Systems: a Comparison of the LEED and Green Globes Systems in the U.S.” University of Minnesota.
Trusty, Wayne. 2004. “Renovating vs. Building New: The Environmental Merits.” The Athena Institute.
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