Puri Canals: “In sustainability, the first step is that we all act locally to regenerate our entire environment”
At Núñez i Navarro, we work every day in line with the values of sustainability with the goal of improving people's surroundings. And as a Group, we continuously question ourselves about the impact that our activities and those of our collaborators have.
At this address, one of our goals is to expand and raise awareness of expert voices in sustainability maintenance. Therefore, today we wanted to share a talk with Dr. Puri Canals, a biologist who currently works as an environmental consultant on the European Commission's EU Ocean Governance project for the Atlantic Ocean and the seas of Southeast Asia. A woman, an example of consistency, who has made sustainability the pillar that shapes her professional career, and her entire life.
Puri Canals is the president of MedPAN, the Network of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean which she helped to establish, and aims to facilitate exchanges between Mediterranean marine protected areas, with the goal of improving the effectiveness in the management of these spaces. She also teaches as an associate professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. In 2020, she was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi by the Generalitat de Catalunya in recognition of her professional career, entirely focused on social commitment to environmental issues.
When asked about the meaning of the word sustainability, Puri Canals smiles and reveals that even today there is a lot of confusion surrounding this concept because it is newly created, and she explains that “it was not until 1992, during the Earth Summit organized by the UN in Rio de Janeiro, that sustainability became part of the global policy package, as a goal for humanity. Since then, the concept of sustainability has turned into a commonly used term without there really being an understanding of what it means, so everyone defines it in their own way”.
However, the biologist presents us with a definition that includes the concept of sustainability "as that model of development and functioning of a society that allows to meet the needs of the current generation, without mortgaging the needs of future generations." And she warns: "this is a very general definition that everyone can agree on. But debates arise when we ask ourselves what are the needs of the current generations? Where do we set them? Where is the critical point? It is there, where we have to establish some levels, some standards and demonstrate whether or not those needs are sustainable. That is the challenge. Because beyond the basic needs for survival, such as food, air, and water, as a society we are incorporating new needs that make our lives more comfortable, such as housing, education, culture. Today, things that were unquestionable 100 years ago, such as having electricity at home, are taken for granted."
In this regard, Canals points out that “the issue of sustainability has to do, on one hand, with what these services are that we consider non-negotiable and that will depend on the context in which they are valued and, on the other hand, how we provide them. And here a whole range of possibilities opens up that question how sustainability is measured, how we compute the factors that determine whether an action is validated as sustainable or not. Because the package of indicators is also one of the great challenges that sustainability poses. And it is complex since it also depends on the environment in which it is applied, the context, the moment”. And he specifies: “there are no absolute values in many of the parameters. They are relative. Because there is not a single concept of sustainability, it must be contextualized, because it is related to the environment, to human societies, and to their functioning”.
Therefore, when talking about sustainability, it is very important to go back to the origin. An origin that we find, as the biologist reveals, “directly in the relationship of humans with the planet, with its natural resources and its functioning. It's not just a matter of materials, but of functioning. Because we can be maintaining the parts, but without the energy and material relationships, ultimately the system collapses. That's why it's always good to look at this relationship”.
To illustrate his explanation, Canals recalls how in 1992 “sustainable development was discussed and it was time to define, based on our observation, what those pieces were. And it was decided that there were 3, the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic. But I disagree with this definition. I understand the strategy of doing it this way, because we were in a world where the environmental aspect did not exist, the social aspect very little, and the entire focus of development was concentrated on the economic; therefore, it was necessary to show a certain equivalence between the three axes. But, in reality, the way the world functions is that there is an environment with ecosystems that make life possible and suitable for the human species”.
And emphatically states: “Without this, there are no humans. Therefore, the foundation of the system is nature. And this nature has a piece called the human species, which is structured into societies and, consequently, there is a base that is environmental and another piece on top that is social. These human societies, for the most part, have developed a system of exchange among themselves called economy. Which comes after society. It is therefore a pyramid in which the economy is situated at the top, but we have given so much weight to this layer that we are inverting the pyramid, and this means mortgaging the layers below, which cannot sustain it. The model of economic growth based on these relationships, where the top piece weighs more than the bottom, cannot be sustained”.
In this way, the biologist suggests focusing on the true relationship that is established among the three axes and on the impacts they generate: “For me, talking about sustainability, if we forget that the relationship is not in separate columns but is a pyramidal one, should always lead us to see what these relationships are that are established in any human activity that generates economic benefits. But it is also necessary to look underneath, at the base of the pyramid, what is the impact that is caused? Is it neutral, negative, or positive? And this is where we have today's challenge: to start generating activity in our society that has economic value but also implies an improvement in the environmental systems that sustain us”.
Canals exemplifies this idea by discussing acclaimed renewable energies, such as hydroelectric power: “It cannot always be classified as sustainable because if a dam has to be built 100 meters high, blocking the water flow in a hydrographic basin and preventing all movement of species in the water, etc., it shows that its production has had a significant impact.” He also mentions other cases where this type of practice is repeated, for example, with wind farms: “it is not the same to have a few turbines next to the place where the energy is consumed, as to have large power plants that require a giant transmission system, comparable to those of any nuclear or thermal power company.”
Because Puri Canals' vision of sustainability is one that, far from being philosophical, is born directly from the understanding of ecological functionality, from that which sustains us as living beings: “The first steps towards this sustainability were mainly about reducing environmental impacts, hence all the community directives on environmental impact, strategic environmental assessment, plans and programs, etc. but they were not completely eliminated. And then we find that in some areas of activity we have reduced the rate of degradation, but we have not reversed it. If all we do is lower the impact, then we are not recovering, we are losing more slowly, in some areas. In others, we continue to lose at an entirely accelerated pace”.
“Now, the biologist reminds us, “simply doing things better than we did 50 or 100 years ago is not enough. We must not only do them better, but we also need to compensate for the damage we have caused over the years. Therefore, we have to invest in many projects related to restoration, to the recovery of nature's ability to sustain our societies on the planet. And this is about aspects related to the land, the sea, the air... it's enormously complex.” And she clarifies: “Because it's not a checklist of technical items, like when you propose a product that you want to market. This involves an understanding of the complexity of systems, which, although there is a lot of information, we don't have all of it, nor will we ever have it, because each system has many sublevels.”
However, for Canals the main problem is that "we are educated in simplification and not in the management of complexity. That's why we tend to look for simple solutions, when in reality the system is very complex and any simple solution will only be effective if, when implemented in the system, it connects well with the rest of the pieces. Otherwise, it may be an immediate solution, but in the medium and long term, it will end up creating more imbalances".
Drawing from her extensive background in biological sciences, biochemistry, ecology, and physiology, Puri Canals has specialized in the cellular functioning of organisms, whether human or animal. In this regard, she states that the basic knowledge she has learned is that “living organisms have a series of balance systems called homeostatic, where each piece has a function, but it is not a function isolated from the rest of the pieces. And, precisely, the balance of these pieces and their functionality ensures the continuity of life. This is the same in a cell, or in a human body. And when these self-regulating homeostatic systems are unable to maintain balance, they die”.
“This is, exactly, what happens in the Earth system,” states Puri. “A lot of interconnected pieces within the system, where some support others and create this balance. When the balance collapses, the system disappears. These are networks of connections where matter, energy, and information are transferred. And this is what allows the system to be alive. From a biomimetic perspective, societies have many pieces that are super interesting on their own, they hold a lot of information, move a lot of energy, a lot of matter, but they act as isolated nuclei. They are not connected from one area to another and this causes the potential for change to be reduced by the inability to pass on this information and to establish operational systems.”
Therefore, if we imitate nature, in the context of human societies “it is very important to create connections that allow effective flows of information, energy, matter... Because today we are facing challenges that are complex, systemic, but we try to provide solutions from a linear thinking and from rigid structures that do not allow this systemic situation”, explains Puri Canals.
And it is very clear that the solution involves creating mechanisms that are key pieces, from which information and capabilities can flow to reach levels where they previously did not and to reach many more individuals, many more institutions. And all this needs to be accelerated, to provide timely responses that are truly useful for mitigating the degradation process we are in. Working through very well-designed networks that allow us to see which are the cores that can accumulate, distribute and above all amplify the information to move it to higher levels or lateral levels; from my point of view, is one of the best solutions we can have in the short and medium term to achieve much more capacity to act. Because other methods require much more time to generate these capabilities.
As a co-creator of the MedPAN network, she tells us that she is dedicated to “promoting this type of networks in a very specific field which is the management of protected marine areas, initially in the Mediterranean, but now also in the Atlantic and Southeast Asia. The idea is that, if you connect these people working in a specific protected area, like Cabrera or Medes, with the rest of the areas in the Mediterranean, they can expand their resources and will need less time. It's about training through exchange with other people who, working in the same field, with an equivalent base of knowledge, facing equivalent problems, share ways of doing things in the face of similar challenges”.
Networking also allows for the amplification of options and the increased ability to do things more effectively: “Networks enable accelerated learning, improved skills, and also allow for the connection of knowledge from teams on the ground, working, with those making decisions at a European level, at a global level... offering more information, more valid, more relevant, unfiltered and more realistic. You speed up all the flows of information and change. And it also allows you to incorporate other elements that were not in the initial system”.
Throughout her professional career, Puri Canals has put into practice what she preaches through perseverance and dedication. For her, motivation, knowledge, and resources are essential to implement more cooperative models: “the first step is for all of us to act locally to regenerate our entire environment. And to do this, we must love the environment in which we live, so as not to harm what we want as we are currently doing”.
Puri Canals emphasizes the effort that much of the business sector still has to make to align with this work system: “There is still a lot to do, although companies are increasingly introducing sustainable changes in their work practices”. At the same time, she maintains that “for a company to be able to create support networks, it must be large enough to integrate a wide variety of profiles, institutions, and actors effectively. Not to forget that the type of personal relationships should promote cooperation rather than competitiveness in the first place, both internally and externally”.
On the other hand, he is optimistic when he sees that more and more new companies are emerging that want to promote the improvement of the environment and society. Although, “often, they encounter a regulatory framework in the business world that encourages competitiveness and not competition”.
Undoubtedly, chatting with Puri Canals gives sustainability a new dimension from which it is possible to do things better. Before leaving, the biologist leaves us with a powerful statement, one that invites deep reflection, both individually and as a society, and that drives us even more to accelerate the engine of change towards a sustainable lifestyle: “There is only nature, and one of its pieces is mankind. The lack of connection among its parts leads us to believe that we can dominate it, as we feel like an individual completely alien to the environment. If, on the contrary, we felt we were nature, we would not mistreat it”.
