User:Ahm248/Sustainability

Economic opportunity[edit]
Sustainable business practices integrate ecological concerns with social and economic ones (i.e., the triple bottom line). The idea of sustainability as a business opportunity has led to the formation of organizations such as the Sustainability Consortium of the Society for Organizational Learning, the Sustainable Business Institute, and the World Council for Sustainable Development. The expansion of sustainable business opportunities can contribute to job creation through the introduction of green-collar workers. Research focusing on progressive corporate leaders who have integrated sustainability into commercial strategy has yielded a leadership competency model for sustainability, and led to emergence of the concept of "embedded sustainability"—defined by its authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva as "incorporation of environmental, health, and social value into the core business with no trade-off in price or quality—in other words, with no social or green premium." Embedded sustainability offers at least seven distinct opportunities for business value creation: better risk-management, increased efficiency through reduced waste and resource use, better product differentiation, new market entrances, enhanced brand and reputation, greater opportunity to influence industry standards, and greater opportunity for radical innovation.

However, according to many climate activists, companies have appropriated the language of sustainability and popular environmental consciousness to convince the customer that they have an individual duty to be as sustainable as possible, and they can accomplish this task by purchasing goods and services from the particular company. With this model, the company may not need to change its practices radically, if at all, to profit off of their claims to sustainability. For example, one company that has readily adopted notions of sustainability in its marketing strategy is one of the largest oil companies in the world, Beyond Petroleum (BP) formerly known as British Petroleum. According to Julie Doyle, a leading scholar of environmental communication at the University of Brighton, “BP’s public acknowledgement of this issue was therefore consistent with the political and environmental concerns of the time, but was also oppositional to other oil companies such as ExxonMobil who continued to deny climate change.” Those who hold Doyle's view claim that BP could differentiate itself from its competitors and simultaneously present an image of innovation, progressiveness, and greenness, while obfuscating the inherent contradiction of a green oil company.[Doyle]

Cultural dimension[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Cultural sustainability.[edit]

Cultural sustainability as it relates to sustainable development (to sustainability), has to do with maintaining cultural beliefs, cultural practices, heritage conservation, culture as its own entity, and the question of whether or not any given cultures will exist in the future. From cultural heritage to cultural and creative industries, culture is both an enabler and a driver of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Culture is defined as a set of beliefs, morals, methods, institutions and a collection of human knowledge that is dependent on the transmission of these characteristics to younger generations. Sustainability is defined as the ability to sustain or continue. The two concepts have been intertwined within social and political domains, and as such, have become one of the more important concepts of sustainability.

Additionally, different cultures have different conceptions of sustainability in general. Particularly, many Indigenous cultures believe that there is strong interconnectedness between humans and nature. While the Western view is concerned with what humans can gain or reap from nature as a result of the perceived division between man and nature, many Indigenous cultures are more concerned with giving back to nature as a result of their understanding of the entanglement and interdependence of the natural and human realms. This is relationship is often based on reciprocity, as Indigenous people work to safeguard the environment as it sustains them. This requires humans learning to participate in the natural cycles by refraining from extracting too much from the environment. Thus rather than perceiving nature in terms of resources, but as a network where every organism has responsibilities, knowledge, and lessons to learn about how to balance rights and responsibilities in reciprocal stewardship.

Affluence, population and technology[edit]
Strategies for reaching sustainability can generally be divided into categories. Most governments and international organizations that aim to achieve sustainability employ all the approaches, though they may disagree on which deserves priority. The three approaches, embodied in the I = PAT formula, can be summarized as follows:

Affluence: Many believe that sustainability cannot be achieved without reducing consumption. This theory is represented most clearly in the idea of a steady-state economy, meaning an economy without growth. Methods in this category include, among others, the phase-out of lightweight plastic bags, promoting biking, and increasing energy efficiency. For example, according to the report "Plastic and Climate", plastic-production greenhouse gas emissions can be as much as 15% of earth's remaining carbon budget by 2050 and over 50% by 2100, except the impacts on phytoplankton. The report says that for solving the problem, reduction in consumption will be essential. In 2020, scientific research published by the World Economic Forum determined that affluence is the biggest threat to sustainability.

Population: Others think that the most effective means of achieving sustainability is population control, for example by improving access to birth control and education (particularly education for girls). Fertility rates are known to decline with increased prosperity, and have been declining globally since 1980.[citation needed]

Technology: Still others hold that the most promising path to sustainability is new technology. This theory may be seen as a form of technological optimism. One popular tactic in this category is transitioning to renewable energy. Others methods to achieve sustainability, associated with this theory are climate engineering (geo – engineering), genetic engineering (GMO, Genetically modified organism), decoupling.

Ecological: Scientists are starting to get more creative with their approaches to sustainability. Some of these solutions outline methods that do not seek to return ecosystems to a particular reference state, rather to enhance the ability for ecosystems to persist through increasingly stressful conditions. In some cases, marine ecologists are proposing to mitigate the effects of species and habitat declines as well as the negative effects of overfishing by local and regional management actions. These tactics may include catch and effort restrictions, regulating fishing quotas, and others that consider cultural, temporal, and economic circumstances. One strategy that is being implemented more and more is the use of Marine Protected Areas. In this way the focus is to increase the quantity of key habitats and keystone species to maintain and restore the function and complexity of ecosystems. In sum, this model unities marine policy, greenhouse gas emission mitigation, habitat restoration, removing marine litter, management of harvesting practices, and cultural understanding.

Another approach is to promote adaptation potential through the creation of adaptation networks that facilitate numerous opportunities for natural selection across ecological conditions. These adaptation networks would be designed to promote selection by connecting habits across a range of environmental conditions and habitat types, each with a diverse gene pool and set of species. As a result, more advantageous organisms will be able to emerge and persist. In this way, rather than trying to predict which species may survive and maintain them in a static way by controlling ecological disturbances, this process would allow communities to adapt to their ever changing surroundings. Additionally, managed areas would be located close to one another to encourage gene flow for genetic diversity. These networks would span regional boundaries. In both Marine Protected Areas and adaptation networks, actions to mitigate the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic human-environmental interactions are also included.