Cornelia Butler Flora1 and Charles F. Curtiss2

1 Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, U. S.A.

2Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Agriculture and Life Sciences Research Professor,

Kansas State University

16.2 Introduction

Social sustainability is the capacity to create personal, social, political and economic envi­ronments that facilitate healthy human existence as part of the entire global ecosystem [1]. As cropping systems are changed to produce cellulosic energy crops, there will often be accompanying changes in land use, personal, group and community opportunities. Moving crops or cropland from food to fuel use means creation of new value chains that have impli­cations not only for the individuals involved but also on the interactions among individuals within the surrounding communities. These changes will likely have differential impacts on human communities depending upon their magnitude and implementation strategy. Inter­actions among individuals, which are crucial for mutual support, will ultimately determine social sustainability and acceptance of these new systems. Incorporating cellulosic energy crops into traditional cropping systems faces many physical, economic, and environmental challenges, as outlined in other chapters. But perhaps an even more important challenge that is often overlooked is how these new systems are organized and operated. Paying attention to these social implications is crucial for increasing the sustainability of healthy social structures in ways that will encourage humans to embrace and act on the goal of having a sustainable, well-functioning planet.

Social sustainability operates on many levels — the individual, the family, the commu­nity, ethnic and racial groups, politics, the economy, and local, national and international

Cellulosic Energy Cropping Systems, First Edition. Edited by Douglas L. Karlen. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

spheres. Social justice concerns play an important political role in the development of sustainability standards used by governments, private firms, and civil society [2-4]. As the market for cellulosic energy is global, standards are increasingly being set and enforced by international bodies, such as the International Standards Organizations, the International Financial Corporation, and private certifiers (e. g. Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels). In contrast to past endeavors, these standards are generally based on the process of production, not just observable qualities of the product.

Social sustainability does not mean that everything in a community remains the same, but implies balanced change and adaptation. Social resilience is the ability of a system to sustain itself in terms of human communities through adaptation and transformation. By looking at the potential impact of cellulosic energy cropping systems on human communities in terms of community assets and their interactions, the potential impacts can be anticipated. Using the community capitals framework [5], the potential of a variety of cellulosic energy cropping systems is analyzed in terms of their impacts on the stocks, flows and interactions of seven community capitals — natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial and built — and how those impact the community in terms of ecosystem health, economic security and social inclusion (Figure 17.1). This approach has been used in ex-post evaluations of a variety of interventions [6-8]. In this chapter, the impacts are analyzed based on potential interactions, as few studies have been made of social impacts of bioenergy cropping systems to date.