DEFINITIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
-From Our Common Future, UN World Commission on Environment and Development
Sustainability is equity over time. As a value, it refers to giving equal weight in your decisions to the future as well as the present. You might think of it as expanding the Golden Rule through time, so that you do unto future generations (as well as to your present fellow beings) as you would have them do unto you.
-Robert Gilman, Director of Context Institute
Sustainability is rooted in looking to the inherent workings of nature as a model, with the idea that the natural systems of the world do work in balance to perpetuate life, and by working in harmony with those natural systems, we can sustain our own lives.
-Debra Dadd-Redalia, Sustaining the Earth
Activities are sustainable when they:
-use materials in continuing cycles,
-use continuously reliable sources of energy,
-come mainly from the potentials of being human, i.e., communication, creativity, coordination, appreciation, and spiritual and intellectual development.
Activities are non-sustainable when they:
-require continual inputs of non-renewable resources,
-use renewable resource faster than their rate of renewal,
-cause cumulative degradation of the environment,
-require resources in quantities that could never be sustainable for all people,
-lead to the extinction of other life forms.
-M. Nickerson, Guideposts for a Sustainable Future Project
Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
-From Our Common Future, UN World Commission on Environment and Development
Sustainability is equity over time. As a value, it refers to giving equal weight in your decisions to the future as well as the present. You might think of it as expanding the Golden Rule through time, so that you do unto future generations (as well as to your present fellow beings) as you would have them do unto you.
-Robert Gilman, Director of Context Institute
Sustainability is rooted in looking to the inherent workings of nature as a model, with the idea that the natural systems of the world do work in balance to perpetuate life, and by working in harmony with those natural systems, we can sustain our own lives.
-Debra Dadd-Redalia, Sustaining the Earth
Activities are sustainable when they:
-use materials in continuing cycles,
-use continuously reliable sources of energy,
-come mainly from the potentials of being human, i.e., communication, creativity, coordination, appreciation, and spiritual and intellectual development.
Activities are non-sustainable when they:
-require continual inputs of non-renewable resources,
-use renewable resource faster than their rate of renewal,
-cause cumulative degradation of the environment,
-require resources in quantities that could never be sustainable for all people,
-lead to the extinction of other life forms.
-M. Nickerson, Guideposts for a Sustainable Future Project