Veolia Environnement Sa · EURONEXT:VIE
Veolia Environnement Sa — Investor Presentation (2009)
19 slides from Veolia Environnement Sa's investor presentation, 2009
Slide 1: Bridging the ecologies of cities and of nature
Bridging the ecologies of cities and of nature Saskia Sassen Columbia University http://www.columbia.edu/~sjs2/ Beijing, Environment and Urbanization 09
Slide 2: Bridging the ecologies of cities and of nature
Bridging the ecologies of cities and of nature Cities are a type of socio-ecological system that has an expanding range of articulations with nature’s ecologies. Today, most of these articulations produce environmental damage. How we can begin to use these articulations to produce positive out
Slide 3: Using complexity
Using complexity The complex systemic and multi-scalar capacities of cities are a massive potential for a broad range of positive articulations with nature’s complex ecologies.
Slide 4: Cities are at the center of the environmental future
Cities are at the center of the environmental future. The massive processes of urbanization under way today are inevitably at the center of the environmental future. It is through cities and vast urban agglomerations that humankind is increasingly present in the planet and through which it media
Slide 5: The urban hinterland is now global
The urban hinterland is now global The urban hinterland was once a mostly confined geographic zone. Today it is a global hinterland. The expansion of the global economy has raised our capacity to annex growing portions of the world to support a limited number of industries and places.
Slide 6: Two aspects of cities that matter: multi-scalar and many ecologies
Two aspects of cities that matter: multi-scalar and many ecologies Multi-scalar: The diverse terrains and domains, a) onto which cities project their effects and b) from which they meet their needs. Ecologies of cities: a) Multiple mechanisms and feedback loops of urban processes. b) Articulatio
Slide 7: Cities create new socio-natural conditions
Cities create new socio-natural conditions. The enormously distinctive presence that is urbanization is changing a growing range of nature’s ecologies, from the climate to species diversity and ocean purity. And it is creating new environmental conditions: heat islands, ozone holes, desertificat
Slide 8: Cities as new kinds of socio-ecological systems
Cities as new kinds of socio- ecological systems As socio-ecological systems they often have planetary reach. For instance: The impact of cities on traditional rural economies and their long-standing cultural adaptation to biological diversity. Rural populations have become consumers of products
Slide 9: Is it urbanization per se or the particular types of urban systems
Is it urbanization per se or the particular types of urban systems Is it agglomeration and density as such? NO. It is the contents we have historically and collectively produced: specific types of systems to handle it all: transport, waste disposal, building, heating and cooling, food provision,
Slide 10: Re-orienting the material and organizational ecologies of cities
Re-orienting the material and organizational ecologies of cities We need to use and build upon those features of cities that can re-orient the material and organizational ecologies of cities towards positive interactions with nature’s ecologies. These interactions, and the diversity of domains t
Slide 11: Specific features of cities that help re: environment
Specific features of cities that help re: environment Economies of scale, density and the associated potential for greater efficiency in resource use. Dense networks of communication that can serve as facilitators to institute environmentally sound practices in cities. The temporal dimension b
Slide 12: Urban systems are built partly through systems of social relations and laws
. Urban systems are built party through systems of social relations and laws that support the current configuration. Beyond adoption of practices such as waste recycling, it will take a change in this system of social relations and the law itself to achieve greater environmental sensitivity and
Slide 13: The need to engage legal systems and profit logics
The need to engage legal systems and profit logics Urban sustainability requires engaging the legal systems and profit logics that underlie and enable many of the environmentally damaging aspects of our societies. The question of urban sustainability cannot be reduced to modest interventions tha
Slide 14: Non-scientific elements are very significant in cities
Non-scientific elements are very significant in cities While in some of the other environmental domains it is indeed possible to confine the treatment of the subject to scientific knowledge, this is not the case when dealing with cities. Non-scientific elements are a crucial part of the picture:
Slide 15: The city contains both environmental damage at different scales
. The city contains both, and in that regard can be described as instantiating a broad range of environmental damage that may involve very different scales and origins yet get constituted in urban terms: CO2 emissions produced by the micro-scale of vehicles and coal burning by individual household
Slide 16: A second way in which the city is multiscalar
. A second way in which the city is multiscalar is in the geography of the environmental damages it produces. Some of it is atmospheric, some of it internal to the built environment of the city, as might be the case with much sewage or disease, and some of it in distant locations around the globe,
Slide 17: A third way in which the city is multiscalar
. A third way in which the city can be seen as multiscalar is that its demand for resources can entail a geography of extraction and processing that spans the globe, though it does so in the form of a collection of confined individual sites, albeit sites distributed worldwide. This worldwide geo
Slide 18: A fourth way in which the city is multiscalar
. a fourth way in which the city is multiscalar is that it instantiates a variety of policy levels. It is one of the key sites where a very broad range of policies— supranational, national, regional and local—materialize in specific procedures, regulations, penalties, forms of compliance and types
Slide 19: In short…
In short… Cities are complex systems in their geographies of consumption and of waste-production and this complexity also makes them crucial to the production of solutions. Some of the geographies for sound environmental action in cities will also operate worldwide. The network of global cities be