What Is Sustainability?

  by Brian Kermath     1991-2005                                                                       Bibliography        Links

Although most elements of the "sustainability" concept have been around for a long time,¹ the term itself in its present context did not become a significant item of academic discourse until the 1980s following a few seminal publications (e.g., IUCN 1980; Brown 1981), and it did not become popularized until after the release of Our Common Future by the WCED in 1987. Since then, numerous publications have defined, redefined, and scrutinized the idea and applied it to most human activities. Although its charge is undeniably needed and its appeal nearly universal, some commentators have argued that sustainability is conceptually too vague to have much practical value.²  Others have suggested that the idea became so diluted and misapplied as to be meaningless in most forums (Bruno 2002; Bruno & Karliner 2002; Hunter 1997; Willers 1994).

Yet despite the many misinterpretations of what sustainability is (which stem in part from the definitional ambiguity that is common when single terms represent complex issues), considerable cooptation of the term (Beder 1994), and questionable claims of praxis, the concept has historical and theoretical foundations from which it grew (Lee 2000), which allow it to be articulated with methodological and scientific rigor making it credible and useful for analyzing and managing human activities, especially as they relate to natural resources, the natural environment, and development efforts.

On this point, it is worth noting that the idea does not simply involve attaching the broad meaning of the root-word "sustain" to a free-for-all of human activities, but rather it has antecedents that place it in a fairly clear and definite context. Calls for it grew out of concerns that economic growth-based development efforts � faced with tremendous and mounting population pressure, huge and growing socioeconomic disparities, increasingly degraded landscapes, and the reality that we are now for the first time in our occupation of the planet capable of and already pushing global biogeochemical thresholds to their breaking points � have performed poorly in meeting human needs and safeguarding the environment over the long haul.

In this context, "sustainability" represents an idealized societal state where people live to satisfy their needs in environmentally sound and socially just ways so as to not compromise the ability of other human beings from doing the same now and in the future. It is, in effect, an attempt to merge human development and nature conservation in a mutually beneficial way for the common good of the planet�s present and future generations. In practice, sustainability is more of the process of discovering, adopting, implementing, and establishing appropriate policies, strategies, institutions, and technologies to move society toward the envisioned idealized condition. Democracy is often viewed in the same way, as a process of working toward the ideal.

To achieve true sustainability, the two essential pillars of sustainability � "environmental integrity" and "social justice" � must be simultaneously realized and maintained over the long haul.

Here, "integrity" refers to the ability of the whole environment to properly function. To maintain environmental integrity societies must:

• work with Earth's components, connections, and complexities to design human systems that function as part of living landscapes, stressing adaptability, efficiency, harmony, and resiliency, and mimicking natural patterns, processes, and rhythms;

• design human systems for energy efficiency ideally to produce as much energy or more as is required to construct and maintain them;

• consume resources conservatively and efficiently and consider optimal values of nonrenewable resources and their potential values to future generations;

• maximize their reliance on clean renewable energy;

• use renewable resources no faster than they can be renewed and in a way that does no harm to human populations or Earth's life-giving systems;

• maximize the recycling and reuse of all resources;

• consider historically viewed "wastes" as "resources" to be used, but also to discharge them � to the extent that they must be treated as wastes � slower than they can be absorbed by the environment and in a way that does no harm to human populations or Earth's life-giving systems;

• eliminate the unnecessary production and use of toxins;

• extract ecosystem products (e.g., as in agriculture) without a net loss of natural capital;

• favor polycultures over monocultures and consider perennials over annuals in biological production systems;

• protect biodiversity at all levels (ecological, genetic, and species) and ensure the ecosphere's evolutionary potential;

• restore degraded environments to the extent possible.

"Social justice" refers to the fair and equitable access to, and distribution of essential resources and power, fairly applied laws and regulations, and the guaranteed opportunity for everyone to contribute to the pursuit of meeting human needs, improving the human condition, and fully realizing human potentials for everyone in safe and clean environments.

* * *

Sustainability, however, is easier to talk about than to implement and few enduring examples of its complete embodiment exist. Although many obstacles stand, chief among them is the reality that landscapes everywhere have been shaped by complex and committed constituencies � both endogenous and exogenous � that do not defect easily to new visions without assurances that changes would bring them more gains than losses. Moreover, the policies, institutions, and physical infrastructures that grew out of their vested interests and sunk costs (Gill 2000; Hughes 1996, 2002; Janssen et al. 2003; Janssen and Scheffer 2004; Ponting 1992; Tainter 1988; Weis and Bradley 2001; Wright 2004; Yoffee and Cowgill 1988), and the dictates of larger political economies (e.g., neoliberalism at the international/national level and clientelism at the regional/local level) often stand as "systemic limits" that obstruct or otherwise impair the necessary processes of change. 

Difficulties also arise when assessing "present and future needs," because "needs" are open to subjective interpretations that vary spatially, temporally, and culturally, often blurring the lines between "needs" and "wants." To compound the issue some wants can be met sustainably, while others cannot. Either way, in striving to fulfill their needs and aspirations, cultures often adopt unsustainable practices that become deeply rooted in the human landscape and the human psyche. Adding to the issue further is the willful masquerade of problem denial and the innocent or negligent attraction that communities and individuals have to a range of "social traps" with ill side effects. All of the above combine to produce a cultural inertia that is difficult to arrest or redirect.

Thus, sustainability is a philosophy with a new vision of the proper landscape. It is a concept in search of alternative worldviews, social structures, economic activities, accounting procedures, and technologies that empower and improve the lives of all present people and guarantee quality lives for future generations, while also maintaining natural integrity. For this to happen under present world conditions, policies and action, which began to take shape relatively recently (within the past two to three decades), must recast extant activities or fashion new ones, then fit them into existing landscapes and build constituencies to ensure that they become and/or remain culturally acceptable, economically viable, environmentally benign, politically doable, and socially just.

In its pursuit, sustainability:

• is guided by values that espouse civility, dignity, equity, freedom, frugality, justice, happiness, humility, patience, peace, privacy, resolution, solidarity, spirituality, tolerance, virtue, and wellness;

• responds with serious action to the sage advice of the wise thinkers who inspire the holistic improvement of the human condition;

• excels at "reading" the landscape's particular features including its biogeochemical processes and patterns of biota, geomorphology, geology, hydrology, soils, weather, and climate when approaching analytical, epistemological, pedagogical, and practical aspects of understanding Earth's complex systems;

• recognizes nature's limits and complexities and sees human beings as part of, and deeply dependent on Earth's life web in ways that we cannot fully understand;

• recognizes the interconnectedness of all things and the chaotic nature of complex systems;³

• understands that we are now for the first time in our occupation of the planet capable of, and already pushing global biogeochemical systems close to threshold breaking points,⁴ which we are largely incapable of accurately identifying and predicting;

• understands that once thresholds are crossed, chaos theory warns us that rapid, though highly unpredictable, adjustments to new and possibly very different ecological states may ensue;

• holistically employs disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary approaches and synthesizes a wide range of development and conservation philosophies, methods, strategies, and techniques as appropriate including those from: adaptive management, agroecology, agroforestry, basic needs assessments (HERE & HERE), biophilia, bioregionalism, carrying capacity, critical consumption, deep ecology, ecodevelopment, ecofeminism, ecological footprint analysis, ecological or green design (HERE & HERE), ecosystem management (HERE & HERE), ecosystem services valuation and payments for environmental services (PES), energetics, fair trade, full-cost accounting, Gaia theory, gender analysis, landscape ecology, life cycle analysis, native/traditional perspectives, natural laws, new urbanism, permaculture, political ecology, restoration ecology, sequence factors, smart growth (HERE & HERE), steady-state economics, and vulnerability analysis (special issue, case studies), among others;

• considers potential long- and short-term vulnerabilities in planning for catastrophe avoidance, while recognizing that the chaotic nature of complex systems and the mix of natural and growing anthropogenic synergisms make threshold breaking points difficult to predict;

• strives to engage, enlighten, and empower all stakeholders and build local capacity and participation for the long haul;

• encourages transformative learning;

• seeks to open the blinders and correct the myopia that derive from the bounded rationality and cultural inertia that characterize all societies, and in so doing strives to eliminate and/or avoid human-induced systemic limits, the willful denial of problems, and social traps;

• recognizes that although the field of possibilities is infinite, not all things are possible, and that all human realities represent only a small subset of what could have been and what could be;

• promotes community-based forms of production, consumption, organization, learning, decision making, and investing, while also understanding the value of connections to the larger society;

• inspires, cultivates, and nurtures accountability, adaptability, affection, an ecologically based sense-of-place and aesthetics, benevolence, civic duty, compassion, cooperation, creativity, literacy, passion, philanthropy, resiliency, respect, responsibility, and service;

• celebrates and values biological and cultural diversity and natural and cultural heritage;

• develops and employs appropriate technologies and stresses adaptability, durability, effectiveness, efficiency, and simplicity;

• encourages critical or conscious consumption that stresses efficiency, fairness, functionality, purpose, responsibility, and simplicity and considers the sequence factor in the production of goods and services;

• works estimates of natural capital � including ecosystem services (HERE & HERE) � and other historically externalized costs into full-cost accounting procedures and fixes development aid policies (e.g., grants, loans, and debt relief), discount rates, subsidies, taxes, and trade policies to reflect its values;

• measures progress broadly on quality of life and well-being for all, rather than narrowly on economic growth and per capita income. 

* * *

To understand sustainability sufficiently enough for meaningful analysis and successful real-world implementation, it is essential to make sense of its abstractness, holistic nature, and multiple dimensions. As with many complex concepts, models are helpful. Thus, I offer an Earth Systems Model (Figure 1), which depicts the planet's dominant systems and processes, some of the complexities that challenge our understanding and action, and some of the possible negative and positive outcomes that may be used as indicators for planning, managing, monitoring, and analyzing.

Figure 1: Earth Systems Model

Notes

¹ See for example Brown (1954), Carson (1962), Daly (1973), Ehrlich (1968), Goldsmith (1978), Goodland et al. (1978), Harden (1968), Illich (1974), Leopold (1949), Marsh (1864), Meadows et al. (1972), McHarg (1971), Miller (1978), Muir (1911), Odum (1971), Osborn (1948), Sauer (1956), Schumacher (1973), Smith (1929), Thoreau (1854, 1864), Udall (1963), and Vogt (1948). The idea also appeared as a central theme of a special issue of the Ecologist journal in 1972 (Ecologist 1972) and at the United Nations' Conference on the Human Environment also in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden. <<return to text

² For a range of critical discussions of the sustainability concept see Baker et al. (1997), Barbier et al. (1991), Beder (1994), Caldwell (1984), DiLorenzo (1993), Ekins (1989), Goodland and Ledec (1987), Hornborg (2003), Korten (1992, 1996), L�l� (1991), Mitcham (1995), Redclift (1987, 1991), Tisdell (1988), and Williams (1998). <<return to text

³ Chaos and complexity theories tell us that complex systems, like ecosystems, can maintain long-term dynamic equilibriums then suddenly jump to very different states without much warning. See Bradbury et al. (1996), Crutchfield et al. (1986), Gleick (1987), Goerner (1995), Levin (2000), Lewin (2000), Prigogine and Stengers (1984), and Waldrop (1992) on chaos and complexity; Roe (1998) on complexity and policy; and Scheffer et al. (2001) and Walliser (1995) on ecological thresholds. <<return to text

⁴ The literature presents ample evidence dating back several decades and numerous credible warnings to the world have been sounded. In the early 1970s the Club of Rome predicted that a global population overshoot would take place during the 21^st century with serious repercussions for humankind (Meadows et al. 1972, 2004); in 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987) warned that we must begin living sustainably to avoid future resource shortages; in 1992 about 1,700 renowned scientists signed the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, which cautions that we are pushing the planet's ability to support "life in the manner that we know" and in 1997 some 1,500 scientists signed the World Scientists' Call for Action (Union of Concerned Scientists 1992, 1997); in 1994 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences declared that we are approaching a crisis with respect to the interconnected issues of population, natural resources, and sustainability (NAS 1994:13); and the Ecological Society of America (1994) stated that "Attempting to provide an ever increasing number of people with a reasonable standard of living is certain to fail and to result in degradation of the Earth's renewable and nonrenewable resources." In 1997 a majority of world leaders met in Kyoto, Japan and adopted the "Kyoto Protocol," which acknowledges that human induced global warming is real and countries must act to reverse the trend of enriching atmospheric greenhouse gases. <<return to text

   A recent wave of publications on the looming energy crisis has emerged arguing that world petroleum production has peaked or will do so soon and that the downside of the peak will see escalating prices and a host of related problems (e.g., Campbell 2004; Deffeyes 2001, 2005; Hall et al. 2003; Heinberg 2004; Kunstler 2005; Lovins et al. 2005; and Roberts 2004). For scenarios that acknowledge the petroleum crisis but point to more optimistic solutions through a combination of conservation and alternative energy resources see Brown (2004, 2006) and Lovins et al. (2005). <<return to text

   For compelling accounts on our plight and the reasons for it see Adam (1998), Bazzaz (1998), Brown (2005, 2006), CEC (2001), Commoner (1990), Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1996, 2004), Fowler and Mooney (1990), Gleick (2004), Hall et al. (2003), Kennedy (2004), Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board (2005a), Orr (1992, 1994), Schnaiberg and Gould (1994), Speth (2004), Terborgh (1999), Turner et al. (1990), Watson (2002), and Woodwell (1990). <<return to text

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