User:Nick carson/sandbox/sustainability

Sustainability, in the broadest sense, is the ability to sustain a certain process or state at a certain rate or level, hence the term; sustain-ability. The concept of sustainability applies to all aspects of life on Earth and is commonly defined within ecological, social and economic contexts. Due to factors such as overpopulation, lack of education, inadequate financial circumstances and the actions of past generations, sustainability can be difficult to achieve.

In an ecological context, sustainability is defined as the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into the future. In a social context, sustainability is expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. When applied in an economic context, a business is sustainable if it has adapted its practices for the use of renewable resources and is accountable for the environmental and social impacts of its activities.

To be sustainable, regardless of context, the Earth's resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished. There is now clear scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably, and that an effort is needed to keep human use of natural resources within sustainable limits. This has brought sustainability to the forefront of public consciousness and is seen by many as being a natural progression in human evolution as we develop the thought and means to sustain our own existence on Earth.

Scope and Definition
- establish the various contexts in which sustainability is applied, starting from the most general and moving to the more particular

In the broadest sense, sustainability is defined as the ability to sustain a certain process or state at a certain rate or level. The term carries a variety of definitions depending on the context in which it is applied, the most common contexts being; ecological, social, economic and holistic. To be sustainable, regardless of context, the Earth's resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished naturally, thus in the broad definition of Sustainability, greatest importance is placed on the ecological context as all other contexts are dependent on the sustainable use of the Earth's resources

Difficulty in defining sustainability stems in part from its complexity, in that it can be seen to encompass all human activity. Although science forms the basis of sustainability concepts, it is sometimes also perceived as a general concept like liberty or justice, which is accepted as being of critical importance to humanity and life in general, and can also be viewed as a "dialogue of values" that defies consensual definition. Like many other terms, "sustainability" is also open to various political interpretations.

The unavoidable constant in all cases is that all sub-definitions and contexts rely on the sustained management and use of the Earth's resources, thus Ecological Sustainability is regarded as the most important, holding priority above other definitions. It is explored in the field of systems ecology, a cross-disciplinary field influenced by general systems theory.

Other Contexts
When applied in the social context, sustainability is expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Social sustainability is also seen as being an umbrella term encompassing various other social systems and concepts such as social justice, environmentalism, community ownership, etc. It is applied to various socially sustainable practices and concepts such as; ecovillages, eco-municipalities, sustainable cities, sustainable building, etc. This definition relies on the sustainable use of the Earth's resources, to sustain the human population and its social systems.

When applied in an economic context, it is defined as the qualification and viable continuity of interaction, inter and intra entreprise, and is used as a synonym for supporting business practices, processes and systems enabling the long term development and growth of an activity. Economic sustainability remains a contentious, debated issue as many believe that current economic systems are inherently unsustainable and thus progressions incorporating elements of social sustainability must take their place. Economic sustainability relies on the sustainable use of the Earth's resources, without which, economic, financial and business matters could not exist.

When applied in the ecological context, sustainability is defined as the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into the future. This definition is most often applied to the way human beings use and manage the Earth's resources, and is most often applied to the various sustainable resource management disciplines such as; Tree farms, sustainable agriculture, aquaculture, renewable sources of energy such as the wind, sun, etc. Ecological sustainability encompasses the most important definition of sustainability, as without the Earth's resources, humanity and all of its social and economic systems could not exist.

A holistic approach to sustainability is also often applied, this encompasses every aspect of how human beings interact with life and resources on Earth. Holistic sustainability can be seen as being a reiteration of the broadest definition of sustainability, regardless; the ultimate goal of both, achieving sustainability for all life and their systems on Earth, is the same.

Disciplines of Sustainability
- include links to socio-sustainability related main articles

- include links to economic-sustainability related main articles

- include links to ecological-sustainability related main articles


 * Biotechnology
 * Green building
 * Permaculture

History
NOTE: go through ecology, agriculture, logging, environmentalism, economics, culture, everything, and read through their histories and see where sustainability is referenced, any significant concepts or advancements, and incorporate them here...

The concept of sustainability existed long before modern humans evolved; through the evolution of plant and animal species to adapt to their environments and their interactions with eachother, life on Earth naturally developed in balance to ensure the simultaneous survival of various species of life, thus all life on Earth relies on other forms of life to exist. Sustainability is the natural state of life on Earth and was only removed as a separate concept when human beings began to fail to sustian their own existence, through the rapid evolution enabled by increased intelligence, which led to technologies such as agriculture, mass harvesting of resources and electricity generation, amongst others.

These advancments in technology increased the populaton of human beings as they manipulated their surrounding environment without the comprehension of the future effects of an unsustainable existence, utilising their intelligence without understanding how to use it properly. Although the majority of the human population still do not comprehend their unsustainable lifestyles or understand the subsequent effects, the concept of sustianability has been increasingly collectivly understood by human beings since the late 20th century, becoming widely known, if not fully understood, by the turn of the century.

18th & 19th century: Early Concepts & Writings
- 1800's, first writings & concepts dealing with sustainability

Some of the first human beings to think and write about the way in which living organism interact with and relate to their surroundings included Aristotle and particularly his student, Theophrastus, both of whom had interest in many species of animals. Theophrastus described interrelationships between animals and their environment as early as the 4th century BC. However, these concepts remained explored by very few individuals and it wasn't until the 18th century that they were to be explored collectively in greater detail.

In the late 18th century, overpopulation was explored by Thomas Malthus who analyzed population growth and noted the potential for populations to increase rapidly, often faster than the food supply available to them. This scenario, as outlined in Malthus's 1798 publication; An Essay on the Principle of Population, is referred to as a "Malthusian catastrophe". In the late 19th century, Eugenius Warming, through his work, began the scientific disipline of ecology as the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their natural environment.

Early 20th century
- Hotelling's Rule, beginnings of the modern concepts of sustainability

By the turn of the 20th century, the industrial revolution had led to an unprecedented increase in the human consumption of resources, for many decades this was seen as a positive thing for humanity as it increased overall health and wealth and further increased population. In 1931, Harold Hotelling proposed Hotelling's rule, an economic model exploring non-renewable resource management. It showed that efficient exploitation of a nonrenewable resource would, under otherwise stable economic conditions, lead to a depletion of the resource. The rule stated that this would lead to a net price or "Hotelling rent" that reflected the increasing scarcity of the resource. Simmilarly, Hartwick's rule provided an important result about the sustainability of welfare in an economy that uses non-renewable resources.

Mid 20th century: Environmentalism
By the mid 20th century ecology was established as a scientific disipline; the foundation of the United States Wilderness Society in 1935 and work exemplified in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold in 1949, informed the growing environmental movement and a spread interest in ecology as a science. A Sand County Almanac was a combination of natural history, scene painting with words, and philosophy. It is perhaps best known for the following quote, which defines his land ethic: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." The concept of a trophic cascade is put forth in the chapter 'Thinking Like a Mountain', wherein Leopold realizes that killing a predator wolf carries implications for the surrounding ecosystem.

In 1956, M. King Hubbert established the "Hubbert peak theory" which accurately predicted that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. . Then, in the 1960's, Environmentalism gained widespread attention after the release of many works, the most notable being Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962. Many subsequent works followed into the 1970's including; Small Is Beautiful – A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, by E.F. Schumacher in 1973 and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth in 1975, amongst many others. This increased attention was also aided in part by the acceptance of Environmentalism by various subcultures during a time of civil dissobedience and positive change.

Late 20th century
- more recent advancements in sustainability, to be further described in description

The combined effect of the popularisation of Environmentalism and peak oil production in the United States, led to a global increase in the awareness that human use of many of the Earth's resources was not sustainable and was escalating at a critical rate. The 1973 and 1979 energy crises served as valuable research material for future global peak oil scenarios and led to a further increase in public awareness of issues of sustainability, however these crises were averted when the United States increased their oil imports to meet demand.

The development of renewable sources of energy in the 1970's and 80's, primarily in wind turbines and photovoltaics, and increased use of hydro-electric, presented some of the first sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear energy generation. These developments led to construction of many of the first large-scale solar and wind power plants during the 1980's and 90's. The 1990's saw the small-scale reintroduction of the electric car, exemplified in the General Motors EV1 and REVA and the popularisation of solar car racing. These factors combined with consistent yet minority, public pressure, facilitated further increase in the public awareness of issues of sustainability and many local and state governments began for the first time, to implement small-scale policies to deal with such issues.

21st century: Global Awareness
Since the turn of the century, more specific and detailed models and concepts have been proposed in an effort to transition human civilisation towards becomming sustainable. Important concepts that have arrisen include; the Car-free movement, in which urban environments are designed considering all aspects of the system, and the Cradle to Cradle concept, as defined in the 2002 publication Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Michael Braungart and William McDonough, in which toxic, synthetic and organic materials are separated into different life-cycles and models are proposed for the efficent use of materials in manufacturing and production.

Global oil production is generally accepted to have peaked in 2006, while many large corporations and energy organisation's predictions suggest this is yet to happen and will occur between 2010 and 2020, depending on the origin of the prediction. Regardless of when it has or will occur, peak oil production has severe implications, particularly for westernised countires which rely heavily on road freight and private automobiles, for the way people transport themselves, food prices and subsequent economic effects. The beginning of many such effects are already being felt, as represented by record high oil prices peaking during mid 2008.

The work of Bina Agarwal and Vandana Shiva amongst many others, has given South Asia and the Indian subcontinent a more international perspective of ecology and sustainability. In 2002, the United Nations passed a resolution for the declaration of the decade 2005-2014 to be known as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and began implementing international projects and programs to educate the human population on issues of sustainability.

The changes across all aspects of humanity, specifically the advancements in technology, over the last few decades is sometimes referred to as the beginning of the New Industrial Revolution, which would see the transition of economies, energy generation, water and waste management, towards sustainable practices, which may subsequently lead to a widespread collective realisation of the need for humanity to sustain its own existence.

Description
- describe the current/present-day state and concepts of sustainability

Overview
- may or may not be required as per quantity of content in this section

Key Principles and Concepts
- outline the key principles and concepts of sustianability, environmentalism, progression, evolution, holism, etc

Sustainable Social Systems
- social context description, social justice, community ownership, progressive sustained social systems, include links to relevant main articles

Sustainable Economic Systems
- economic context description, progression of current economic systems, grassroots economics, underground economics, etc, include links to relevant main articles

Sustainable Resource use
- describe sustainable resource use and ecological contexts, may or may not require subsections, include links to relevant main articles

Water
- sustainable water management

Energy
- include subjects such as the sun, wind, geothermal, include links to main articles on renewable energy

Matierals
- include concepts such as C2C, toxic material separation, sustainable materials, dealing with existing toxins & links to main articles

Measuring Sustainability
- include concepts such as Ecological Footprint and other methods of measuring sustainability

Measuring the sustainability of human-related systems involves measuring the way in which such systems interact with their surrounding environment. This is usually expressed as:


 * The pressure imposed through human use of natural resources and production of waste
 * The current and past states of the environment
 * The scale and effectiveness of human responses intended to increase sustainability.

Measures of human pressure on the environment
The ecological footprint is an aggregate measure of the scale of human demands on the natural environment. To provide the resources, and absorb the wastes, of the average global citizen in 2005 required 2.7 global hectares of biologically productive land and sea - this is 30% higher than the 2.1 global hectares of productive land and sea which represent the total capacity of planet Earth to produce resources and absorb wastes (leaving no ecological capacity to support non-human ecosystems). The resulting ecological deficit must be met from unsustainable sources - use of stored resources including fossil fuels, and "mining" natural resources including forests and fisheries at greater than their rate of regeneration.

Yet most of the world's population has an ecological footprint equal to or less than 2.1 global hectares, and nations in this category span a wide range in terms of quality of life.

The aim of Sustainable Develoment is to reduce environmental impact while improving quality of life for those currently disadvantaged. By this definition, only Cuba has achieved sustainable development during the period from 1978 to 2003, and this was due in part to an oil embargo imposed upon them. Elsewhere, the trend over time has in almost all cases been increasing human development, at the cost of increasing ecological footprint.

Comparing the per capita demands of humans on the environment can obscure the important role of population growth. Overall pressure on the environment is a function of population as well as of levels of consumption and the efficiency of resource use.

The State of the Environment
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment provides the most comprehensive current synthesis of the state of the Earth’s ecosystems. The report refers to natural systems as humanity's life-support system, providing the necessary services for humans to flourish.

At a fundamental level human impact on the Earth is being manifest through changes in the global biogeochemical cycles of chemicals that are critical to life, most notably those of water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.

Human activity is also having a rapidly escalating and potentially critical impact on the biodiversity of ecosystems, reducing their resilience and their capacity to support humans and life in general.

A wealth of information generated by national, regional and city-scale State of the Environment reports generally confirms the global picture that human societies are becoming less sustainable over time.

Responses which improve sustainability
To date, measures of pressure on the environment show increasing resource use per capita and in total, and measures of the state of the environment show accelerating environmental degradation. It follows that current actions to improve sustainability are not yet sufficiently effective, and not applied on a sufficient scale. Nonetheless there are many small-scale examples of positive action towards sustainability. Information on the effectiveness of responses can be valuable, long before positive impacts on the environment as a whole, or reductions in per capita resource use, become apparent.

Monitoring the direct human impacts on the state of the environment and of oceans and freshwater systems, the land and atmosphere represents management at the end of a long series of causal factors (known to ecologists as drivers) that are initiated by human consumption, our demand for food, energy, materials and water (see indirect impacts below).

Many organisations and individuals, and some cities and countries, are achieving measurable progress towards managing
 * Population - include reference to countries with stable and declining populations
 * Food - measurable improvements to the efficiency with which food is produced (could get political!)
 * Water - cities with declining water use per capita
 * Waste - the zero waste movement, cities with growing recycling and declinig disposal rates
 * Energy - reductions in energy intensity and efforts to be carbon neutral
 * Materials - efficiency gains in use of materials

Sustainability Sciences
- summary of sustainability as a scientific discipline, include info on scientific evidence for anthopogenic climate change, other scientific sustainability-related information

Application/Implementation
- describe the consensus as to how we can go about achieving sustainability, basically; how to put the concepts/description into practice, include links to main articles where appropriate

Water
- discuss sustainable water use/management

Food and Agriculture
- discuss the need for localised agriculture & food production

Energy
- discuss how to transition our energy infrastructure to renewables, include links to main articles on renewable energy

Matierals
- discuss the utilisation of appropriate materials, non-toxic, non-carcenogenic, etc

Waste
- discuss utilising waste as food for other biological systems, reducing waste, consumerism

Population Control
- discuss how to sustain the human population to cope with the available resources

Technology
- discuss the need for investment in research of appropriate technology to make it a viable alternative

Social Systems
- discuss education, changing habits, social justice, progression of current social/government systems

Urban Structure
- discuss transit-oriented urban environments, localised services, eradication of private automobiles in urban areas, sustainable building

Economic Systems
- discuss how to progress to better, more consistent, sustained economic systems

Protection and Regeneration of Biospheres
- discuss preservation of remnant ecology undisturbed by human activity and how to rezone areas of land for regeneration of native ecology

Difficulties in the Application of Sustainability
- just summarise the difficulties in achieving sustainability, may require a few subsections, keep concise

Current Efforts in Applying Sustainability
- only include major international efforts where sustainable concepts are being put into practice, such as the UN decade for education of sustainable development

External Resources

 * Worldchanging, the leading sustainability blog
 * Microdocs: Elements of sustainability
 * Timeline of Literature on Sustainability
 * Timeline of Literature on Sustainability

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