When people think of sustainability, they often think about environmental sustainability; reduction in energy usage, recycling, managed forests, etc. These are all important parts of the puzzle, but do not encapsulate the breadth and complexity of the topic.
Typically, sustainability is broken down to three categories – environmental, social, and economic. Each of these needs to be addressed to build a complete system.
Environmental deals with the idea that our activities should not destroy nor deplete the environment and the resources we derive from it. Social sustainability focuses on providing access to basic needs (healthcare, education, and quality of life). If people are too busy concerning themselves with immediate needs like food and shelter, then they are less likely to keep environmental sustainability as a priority. Economic sustainability, or economic development, is the engine providing for the other two and is the hardest to develop or even assign goals for. It realizes the need to pull from both capitalistic and socialistic models.
But, why is this important? We lived for thousands of years without caring too much about it, so why now? Two reasons – a growing population and an increased quality of life with expectations to continue improving it. More people want more stuff and we are fast consuming the resources we have to make it. There is a set amount of oil, metal and land on the planet and so things derived from those are also limited.
Sustainability is essentially the method by which we live within our means, it is an extension of preparation. Most people consider it smart, even necessary, to think ahead to the next month, season, or year and plan for the future. We plan how we can sustain our income so that we can keep eating, paying rent, maintaining our homes and bodies, or providing for our hobbies and entertainment. This is the individual level of maintaining our economic engine to help provide for our basic needs so that we can improve and maintain our environment. Sustainability scales this up.
Maintaining a healthy environment is similar to fixing the roof of your home, keeping the lawn mowed or repairing a leaky water main. Both our homes and our environment need to be in working order for us to live up to our potential and expectation. If our homes fall into disrepair, they can become unsafe and we are no longer protected from the elements. Without clean water and air people die – there is no way around that. Without healthy soil, plants die and we lose oxygen; animal life suffers and biodiversity decreases.
Preparing for a successful future by employing sustainable practices is literally a matter of life and death, but it’s not an immediate threat and that makes it a tough action to take. It’s also difficult because it requires a high degree of cooperation and a cultural switch that sees people as pieces of a larger whole. We are not separate from nature. Nature is very much integrated with humanity and our success. It will become increasingly important to learn how to resolve ideological differences and build a greater level of trust. We will need to do away with our tribal bickering. Those days need to be over if we care to survive as a species in the long run.
These changes are not impossible, but they will be difficult. We won’t be perfect in implementing them and any solutions need to be realistic in considering our basic nature, but we certainly have it within us to at least move closer to a truly sustainable world and give our future generations a better chance at thriving the way we have.
Leave a Reply