MEA 100 Lecture 18: NOTES- What Is Sustainability
31 Jan 2019
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● The word ‘sustainable’ has become widely used to refer merely to practices that are
reputed to be more environmentally sound than others
● essence of ‘sustainable’-that which can be maintained overtime
● first known European use of the word=1713- German scientist= has led to the current
use
● 1987- United Nation’s defined ‘sustainable development’ as development that “meets the
needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs”
● 1989- Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert formulated a consensus in four system conditions for
sustainability- turned into the Natural Step (Organization)
➢ the four conditions:
➢ In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
1. concentrations of substances extracted from Earth’s crust
2. concentrations of substances produced by society
3. degradation by physical means
And, in that society:
4. people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their
capacity to meet their needs.
● William Rees- Canadian ecologist- developed the ecological footprint concept in the
early 1990’s- the amount of land and water area a human population would
hypothetically need to provide the resources required to support itself and to absorb its
wastes, given prevailing technology
● 5 axioms of sustainability ( self-evident truths)
➢ criteria:
➢ a statement must be capable of being tested using the methodology of science
➢ Collectively, a set of axioms intended to define sustainability must be minimal
(with no redundancies)
➢ the axioms must also be sufficient, leaving no glaring loopholes
➢ they should be worded in terms that a layperson can understand
1. any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will
collapse.
-exception: A society can avoid collapse by finding replacement resources.
-limit to the exception: In a finite world, the number of possible replacements is
also finite
2. Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources
cannot be sustained.
-no continuous rate of use of any nonrenewable resource is sustainable
3. To be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate
that is less than or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.
4. To be sustainable, the use of nonrenewable resources must proceed at a
rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or
equal to the rate of depletion.
-the rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a
specified time interval(usually a year) as a percentage of the amount left to
extract
Document Summary
The word sustainable" has become widely used to refer merely to practices that are reputed to be more environmentally sound than others. Essence of sustainable"-that which can be maintained overtime first known european use of the word=1713- german scientist= has led to the current use. 1987- united nation"s defined sustainable development" as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs . 1989- dr. karl-henrik robert formulated a consensus in four system conditions for sustainability- turned into the natural step (organization) In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing: concentrations of substances extracted from earth"s crust, concentrations of substances produced by society, degradation by physical means. And, in that society: people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. 5 axioms of sustainability ( self-evident truths) A statement must be capable of being tested using the methodology of science.
