Sustainability think tank for UNSW

In the book The City is the Frontier, author Charles Abrams calls the city a “...pulsating product of the human hand and mind, reflecting man’s history, his struggle for freedom, creativity, genius – and his selfishness and errors.” In a worldwide climate of increasing drought, crippling water shortages, more frequent natural disasters and intolerable levels of pollution, those errors have never been more apparent.

With this in mind, a new multidisciplinary group has been formed on campus to raise the profile of urban and regional sustainability and to advise government and industry. Called the Kensington Group, the cross-Faculty team is positioned as a high-level think tank that will complement the University’s Environment Network.

“The public is increasingly concerned about the lack of water supply security and sustainability for developed regions of Australia,” said group chairman, Professor Nick Ashbolt of the Centre for Water and Waste Technology and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“The concerns of the Kensington Group are that unsustainable knee-jerk responses will be made by politicians, such as recent decisions to desalinate seawater rather than work on decreasing society’s wastage of water or on recycling urban wastewaters in a more energy-efficient manner.

“The challenge is not just to manage growth but to explore the sustainability of cities and regional areas on many levels. The group plans to do this by leveraging the University’s considerable expertise in a forum that's accessible to the public.”

The full story can be read in this month's issue of Uniken.