“The quest for sustainability involves connecting what is known through scientific study to applications in pursuit of what people want for the future.”
– Lisa M. Butler, “Sustainability Theory and Conceptual Considerations: A Review of Key Ideas for Sustainability, and the Rural Context”
According to the UN Commission on Environment and Development 1987 report Our Common Future. Brundtland Report, “[Sustainability must] meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Sustainability Key Ideas
- It may be a fuzzy concept but in a positive sense: the goals are more important than the approaches or means applied.
- It connects with other essential concepts such as resilience, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability.
- Choices matter: “it is not possible to sustain everything, everywhere, forever”
- Scale matters in both space and time, and place matters.
- Limits exist (see planetary boundaries).
Realistically, there are broad, complex factors that we must consider when considering “social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long time”. The concept (sustainability) is “fuzzy”, it is connected to bigger, broader issues (resilience, adaption, etc.); scaling challenges, and our “limited planetary boundaries”.