Living laboratory takes shape

A Massey University project to create a “living laboratory” to tackle sustainability issues received a boost from a world-renowned researcher this month.

The Challenging Sustainability project, led by School of People, Environment and Planning head Dr Allanah Ryan, brings together researchers from across the University to work together with external stakeholders on problems confronting New Zealand and the world.

The group is focused on three collaborative projects in the central and lower North Island: an urban agriculture project with Wellington City council, a region-wide sustainability strategy with the Hawkes Bay Regional Council and a project with the Palmerston North City Council on peri-urban development.

Professor Chris Ryan from the University of Melbourne is Director of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL). Allanah Ryan says she “invited Chris to come because we have this idea to create a living laboratory, and we were really looking for a model from elsewhere that we might be able to learn from”.

Chris Ryan says VEIL is focused on looking at the “wicked” problems facing society. “We exist within an environment and an economy and a social organisation and culture that has been based on 200 years of reliance on fossil fuels,” he says. “Our existence depends on enormous flows of those fuels and yet we have a period of 15 years, according to the International Energy Agency, to turn that around. It’s a significant challenge.”

The lab brings together people from across the University of Melbourne and those outside it that are capable of thinking about solutions to these problems, he says. “We try to envisage plausible futures and then identify directions for research and innovation that will get us there in the next 25 years.”

Chris Ryan says the Massey project shows great promise. “It is a great group with really emergent ideas and there is a fantastic spirit here,” he says. “It has the feeling of something that’s reached its take-off point.”

The Challenging Sustainability team will produce a white paper summarising their experiences and findings and present it to the University in June.