In my work as an environmental researcher and Extension specialist, I spend a lot of time with people who work on “sustainability issues.”  I suppose my work is “sustainability related,” too.  And hardly a week goes by in the popular media without someone making a bold claim that this enterprise or that enterprise is “unsustainable.”  (Usually, it’s meat consumption in some form or other; more often than not, beef consumption is the bête noir.)

But I don’t have a good fix on what I mean when I use the word “sustainable” or any of its cognates.  So I want to get educated.  And I’d like to end up with a common understanding of “sustainability” that is general enough to apply to human enterprises of all kinds but concrete enough to imply enterprise-specific ways of measuring it.  How do I know when a human enterprise is sustainable or when it’s not?

A couple of ideas to begin.  First, of course, the famous Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, defined “sustainable development” as, “the kind of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  Fine, as far as it goes; it’s general enough, but not concrete enough.

Second, a question or two.  Is “sustainable” an adjective that can even apply to a particular enterprise (as in, “a sustainable seawater-desalination plant”)?  Does it, rather, apply to a political/administrative unit, like a city, a state, or a nation?  Or does it only make sense when applied to the earth as a whole?

Third, folks generally accept that “sustainability” has at least three dimensions – environmental, social, and economic – and that those three dimensions are on par with one another.  That is, we shouldn’t privilege one dimension over the other two.

The floor is open.  I’ll be posting on this from time to time, with no particular deadline.

#sustainability #Brundtland