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Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. For humans, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions.
Healthy ecosystems and environments provide vital goods and services to humans and other organisms. There are two major ways of reducing negative human impact and enhancing ecosystem services. The first is environmental management; this approach is based largely on information gained from earth science, environmental science, and conservation biology. The second approach is management of human consumption of resources, which is based largely on information gained from economics.
Sustainability interfaces with economics through the social and ecological consequences of economic activity. Sustainability economics involves ecological economics where social, cultural, health-related and monetary/financial aspects are integrated. Moving towards sustainability is also a social challenge that entails international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles and ethical consumerism. Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms from reorganising living conditions (e.g., ecovillages, eco-municipalities and sustainable cities), reappraising economic sectors (permaculture, green building, sustainable agriculture), or work practices (sustainable architecture), using science to develop new technologies (green technologies, renewable energy), to adjustments in individual lifestyles that conserve natural resources.
Definition
A representation of the relationship between the three pillars of sustainability suggesting that both economy and society are constrained by environmental limits[1][2]
Scheme of sustainable development: at the confluence of three constituent parts.[3]
The word sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere (tenere, to hold; sus, up). Dictionaries provide more than ten meanings for sustain, the main ones being to “maintain”, “support”, or “endure”.[4][5] However, since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability and sustainable development, that of the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations on March 20, 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”[6][7]
At the 2005 World Summit it was noted that this requires the reconciliation of environmental, social and economic demands – the “three pillars” of sustainability.[8] This view has been expressed as an illustration using three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing.[9]
The UN definition is not universally accepted and has undergone various interpretations.[10][11][12] What sustainability is, what its goals should be, and how these goals are to be achieved are all open to interpretation.[13] For many environmentalists the idea of sustainable development is an oxymoron as development seems to entail environmental degradation.[14] Ecological economist Herman Daly has asked, “what use is a sawmill without a forest?”[15] From this perspective, the economy is a subsystem of human society, which is itself a subsystem of the biosphere, and a gain in one sector is a loss from another.[16] This can be illustrated as three concentric circles.
A universally accepted definition of sustainability is elusive because it is expected to achieve many things. On the one hand it needs to be factual and scientific, a clear statement of a specific “destination”. The simple definition “sustainability is improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting eco-systems”,[17] though vague, conveys the idea of sustainability having quantifiable limits. But sustainability is also a call to action, a task in progress or “journey” and therefore a political process, so some definitions set out common goals and values.[18] The Earth Charter[19] speaks of “a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”
To add complication the word sustainability is applied not only to human sustainability on Earth, but to many situations and contexts over many scales of space and time, from small local ones to the global balance of production and consumption. It can also refer to a future intention: “sustainable agriculture” is not necessarily a current situation but a goal for the future, a prediction.[20] For all these reasons sustainability is perceived, at one extreme, as nothing more than a feel-good buzzword with little meaning or substance[21][22] but, at the other, as an important but unfocused concept like “liberty” or “justice”.[23] It has also been described as a “dialogue of values that defies consensual definition”.[24]
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