Sustainability is a term that has exploded in recent years, both in terms of frequency of use and breadth of meaning. As such, finding (and defining) my own coherent understanding of what it means to be sustainable is an essential first step for my research. I see two potential problems in defining sustainability, the first being theoretical – how to form an abstract definition of the sustainable. In addition to this, a second problem is to form a definition that can be successfully operationalized – a term which can be applied to real situations as an achievable goal.
To illustrate briefly current discussion around the meaning of sustainability within geographical literature, I would point readers to Sally Eden’s discussion of the meanings and measurements of sustainability, and to Colin Williams and Andrew Millington’s introduction to the common extension of sustainability, “sustainable development”. To illustrate the wildly varying contexts in which ‘sustainability’ is operationalized, I would point readers first to the definition of ‘sustainable agriculture’ published by National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA), and then to the use of the term in Monsanto’s explanation of the need to expand the use of biotechnology, genomics and molecular breeding to allow farmers to achieve sustainable productivity gains.
Many commentators trace the emergence of the term sustainability to the publication of the report entitled Our Common Future by the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (the Bruntland Commission) in 1987, in which ‘sustainable development’ was defined as:
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Unfortunately, this definition – which has since been taken as the starting point for many discussions of sustainability – linked the term to the project of ‘development’, itself a highly contested term. However, the Bruntland Commission definition also highlights usefully the temporal aspect of sustainability. A key feature of that which is sustainable is that it takes into account the future, although I think that phrasing this is terms of the needs of future human populations is not always the most helpful way to express the core meaning of the term. In my view, the temporal aspect of sustainability can be more simply expressed as the ability of any given activity to continue in its present state ad infinitum. In this sense, the activity must be using resources only in a way in which the activity will continue to be possible in the future, avoiding discussion of who specifically we are ‘saving’ resources for in the future, and avoiding some of the explicit anthropocentrism of the Bruntland Commission’s definition.
More importantly, I feel that a common perception is that sustainability is about the environment, and therefore only accessible and relevant to those with sufficient disposable time and income to take interest in issues beyond personal and family well-being. I believe that sustainability is fundamentally concerned with both environmental and social justice in equal measure, and that sustainable environments and communities go hand-in-hand. Unless we have durable communities in which well-being is a priority, environmental sustainability will not be possible, and unless we take a sustainable approach to our interactions with our environment, these strong, durable communities will likewise not be possible.
It is in this point – the nature of the interactions and relationships between human communities and their environments – that I see the true definition of sustainability. The term relationship implies a two-way process between us (as individuals) and the places in which we live (comprised of both our human and physical communities). This sustainable relationship to place can be conceptualised as finding the balance between expressing our rights to take resources from these places (from the community and from the environment) and expressing our responsibilities of stewardship over these places (both the community and the environment). Thus, I would argue that I have a right to take certain resources from the place in which I live – for example, food, fuel, support from neighbours, use of local facilities – but in exchange I have the responsibility of stewardship over those same resources, in order to ensure that their use is sustainable. So for the examples given above, I would have a responsibility to ensure that my supplies of food and fuel were from sustainable sources, and that I return as much support to my neighbours as they offer me, and that I contribute to the maintenance of the local community facilities which I use. This is my answer to the first problem of definition: the abstract theoretical element.
To operationalize this term is much more difficult. The central problem in applying a definition of sustainability of this type is that in our ‘modern’ society, the trusted authority on the state of our environment (both human and physical) is science (both social and physical – divided on Descartes’ advice). Yet science can only describe – it can collect facts in as objective a way as possible (!) and attempt to describe for us the well-being of the places in which we live – in terms of the human community and the environment. Science cannot, however, tell us what we should do about it. As Eric Freyfogle states, “[science is not] a tool for passing normative judgements on the goodness or badness of various landscapes”, continuing to remind us that normative judgements come from people, who have adopted a set of values.
This leaves the key question in my mind when exploring sustainability: how do we make the link between knowing that our current practices are unsustainable, and deciding what to do about it? Who is qualified (and for whom) to make that normative jump from the ‘”is” to the “ought” statement?
