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What is sustainability?
Philip Sutton
Director, Strategy,
Green Innovations
http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/
1 July 2004
Written for Eingana, the journal of the Victorian Association for Environmental Education.
Introduction
A search on the web reveals hundreds of definitions of sustainability and sustainable development[1]. And Tony Douglas of Essential Media Communications[2] has found that the community at large finds the term sustainability confusing but they are very clear about what unsustainable means.
How can we deal with the immense diversity of opinion and with the confusion that some people feel? Is there a correct definition of sustainability or sustainable development?
The meanings of words gain their legitimacy from shared use so in the final analysis there is no ‘correct’ meaning[3]. But words also help shape our understandings so the key question needs to be not “what is the correct definition?” but “what do we want sustainability to mean?”
The origin of the word sustain
‘Sustain’ has been in the language for thousands of years. It comes from the Latin sustenare meaning "to hold up" ie. to support. From there it evolved long ago to mean to keep something going or extend its duration, with an overtone of providing the support or necessities that made the extended duration possible eg. a sustaining meal. These days, for commonest non-specialised use of the word the closest synonym is ‘maintain’.
Sustain and its derivatives (eg. sustainability, sustainable, sustaining) were first used in a micro or personal context. However several hundreds of years ago the Swiss and Germans invented a form of forestry designed to keep the forest going as productive systems over the very long term and this was called, in the English speaking world, sustainable forestry. This idea was then extended to sustainable fisheries.
From there it was not such a big step for the term to be applied, during the 1960s and 70s, in the macro context of environmental issues where there was a need to sustain the whole environment and human society. This usage was established by the time of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm.
The drifts in meaning
Having reached a macro level of application sustainability was most often talked about in terms of ‘sustainable development’. The 1980 World Conservation Strategy produced by IUCN put forward the concept of ‘sustainable development’ meaning development that would allow ecosystem services and biodiversity to be sustained. The 1987 Brundtland Report shifted the meaning of sustainable development to mean “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Then the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio set in train processes such as Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21 that resulted in many people coming to the view that sustainability equals the integration or balancing of environmental, social and economic issues or simultaneous progress in the environmental, social and economic domains, often in the context of strong programs of consultation and participation.
Many people however felt uneasy with the notion of ‘development’ as it is often associated with the destruction of environmental and social attributes that they value, so they felt better talking about ‘sustainability’ rather than ‘sustainable development’. So, over time ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ came to be treated by many people as synonyms. This trend was reinforced because some people found the term sustainable development to be a bit of a mouthful and they used ‘sustainability’ as a convenient (if inaccurate) shorthand.
As the scale of the task of achieving a sustainable environment and society has become apparent many people have tried to insulate themselves from the enormity of the challenge by retreating into small incremental changes. So some people have started to say that sustainability is a process of change and not an end state, and that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination.
As the terms sustainability and sustainable development have been used more and more in government and corporate circles, because of increasing discussion of environment and development, the business world has started using the terms more and more for its own purposes. Curiously in this context ‘sustainable’ has quickly reverted to its earlier simple meaning of ‘able to be maintained’. So sustainable profits, or sustainable competitive advantage mean profits or competitive advantage that can be maintained for the longer term.
A typology of definitions
The huge diversity of definitions of sustainability, sustainable development and other related terms can be understood better if they are grouped using the following typology:
- definitions based on the essence
(‘x’ is/means ‘y’; eg. ‘sustainability’ is/means the ‘ability to sustain something’, ‘sustainable development’ is ‘development that can be maintained’, ‘sustaining[4] development’ is ‘development that sustains something’) - definitions based on strategies for achieving the thing being defined
(the achievement of ‘x’ requires eg. ‘y’; the achievement of sustainability requires, for example, the integration of environmental, social and economic issues) - definitions based on the outcomes of the thing being defined
(‘x’ results in ‘y’; eg. sustainable development results in the meeting of needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations) - definitions based on what a movement with that label tries to achieve
(‘X’ is what the ‘X’ movement strives for, ie. ‘X’ encompasses ‘y’; eg. sustainability is what the Sustainability movement strives for ie. Sustainability encompasses the protection of the environment and people, peace, and end to poverty, the meeting of human needs, enhancement of human wellbeing, promotion of happiness, etc., etc. etc.)
Furthermore any of these types of definitions can be framed in a more general or a narrower context eg. applied to whole systems eg. society and the environment or just to specific contexts eg. ‘the environment’ or a particular species, or to specific human communities or a particular economy.
If a type 2, 3 or 4 definition is written so that it sounds like a type 1 definition, that is, ‘x’ is/means ‘y’, then it will be very misleading. Unfortunately a great many definitions of sustainability or sustainable development violate this principle, for example, the famous Brundtland definition of sustainable development. The Brundtland definition is a type 3 definition.
How the Brundtland definition is most often paraphrased: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
How it was actually written in the 1987 Brundtland report: “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”. (definition quoted from p.8 of the Report)
How the Brundtland definition could be more accurately paraphrased: “Sustainable development is development that results in the needs of the present being met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
What do we want sustainability and sustainable development to mean?
It’s now time to return to the question asked at the start of this article: “what do we want sustainability to mean? And what do we want all the other words derived from ‘sustain’ to mean?
It would be desirable for preferred definitions:
· to build on and not confuse the core meanings of ‘sustain’ and its derived words as they exist in the common language
· provide the clearest and most solid basis for effective action.
As Tony Douglas has found, people know very clearly when they see cases of unsustainability. Unsustainability can be identified when people see something being eroded or faced with the risk of being wiped out or made extinct. People recognise these situations whether they apply to people, their society, the economy or nature.
But for some reason people at the moment tend to find the definition of sustainability confusing. This could be for several reasons:
· because people tend to jump to type 2 definitions (ie. defining a concept in terms of the strategies needed to bring it about) and they are not sure in practical terms what needs to be done to achieve sustainability
· because the commonly used definitions of sustainability are confusing: for example, type 2-4 definitions are very often disguised as type 1 definitions – so the essence of the concept is obscured
· because people have heard of more than one definition and they do not understand why there is so much diversity and they find it hard to choose the best definitions
· because some people try to make one term or family of terms mean everything: if people create a movement to try to achieve an all-round better society and world and they label that movement the Sustainability movement then they will tend to try to define sustainability as everything that is good and desirable, thus obscuring the core meaning of the word.
In common usage there is no doubt that ‘sustain’ and its derivative words are based on the core meaning of ‘maintain’ or ‘extend in duration’. And it turns out that this meaning is critical for effective action.
If something (an actual tangible thing, or an attribute of a tangible thing, or an understood and not outlandish potential[5]) is threatened with erosion or extinguishment then this threat to its sustainability needs to be kept in the centre of our mind, otherwise we may fail to craft actions that are equal to the problem in terms of the scale and urgency of action. This is even true when problems are to be solved through proactive efforts to create a long-term systems-based positive future[6].
So what would be useful type 1 definitions? The following are simple and powerful definitions:
‘sustain’ means ‘to maintain through time’[7]
‘sustainability’ (noun) means ‘the ability or capability to maintain or sustain something’
‘sustainability’ (adjective) means ‘having to do with maintenance or sustainability’
‘sustainable’ means ‘durable or able to be maintained or sustained’
‘sustaining’ (adjective) means ‘having the propensity to maintain or sustain’
‘sustainment’[8] means ‘the act of maintaining or sustaining something
So, a ‘sustaining economy’ would be one that tends to sustain something of value. A ‘sustainable firm’ would be a company that was able to last for a long time. A ‘sustainability policy’ would be a policy that deals with sustainability issues whereas a ‘sustainable policy’ would be one that was able to persist through time.
With these definitions, how do we know what is being sustained? We must look to the context of what is being talked about to find out. If the context does not provide a clear meaning then we must be alert to the fact that we don’t actually know what is being sustained and we must actively seek clarification.
If we ourselves want to communicate clearly we should provide context to our language and make it clear whether we are talking about, say, ecological sustainability or social sustainability or economic sustainability or whether we are talking about holistic or triple bottom line sustainability (eg. covering the environmental, social and economic domains.)
These days an interest in sustainability is highly acceptable, so many actions or programs are labelled as sustainability initiatives. But if the proponents of the action or program cannot tell you what it is that they are attempting to sustain then the chances are that the action or program is in fact not about sustainability at all or at the very least is poorly framed to achieve the implicit sustainability goals!
If you want to frame effective sustainability actions then the very first questions to ask are:
· what am I trying to sustain or what do I want society to sustain?
· for whose[9] benefit is sustainability being pursued?
· what is the appropriate scale and urgency of action?
Sustainable development
It is extremely unhelpful to understanding if people use the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ interchangeably ie. as synonyms. Sustainability is about continuity and development is about change. Combining these produces, not necessarily an oxymoron, but a change process where some things are transformed while other things or attributes are maintained. Since there are many things about life that we want to change (exploitation, unhappiness, poverty, destructiveness, etc.) and there are many things we want to sustain, where they exist or can be recreated (the rest of nature, trust, tolerance, honesty, happiness, health, etc.) then the notion of sustainable development can be very valuable.
Where people feel uncomfortable using the ‘D’ word (development) sustainable development can be defined so as to make it clearer what we mean by development - by using the notion of genuine progress:
ie. ‘sustainable development’ means ‘genuine progress that can be sustained because the underpinnings of the environment, society and the economy are maintained’.
A more proactive form of this concept would be ‘sustaining development’ which would mean ‘a change process that delivers both genuine progress and the maintenance or sustainment of …. (whatever the society wants to sustain)’
The Race to Sustainability
The definitions recommend above are very simple. But when we try to work out what needs to be done to sustain the environment and our communities globally the necessary action program inevitably becomes very complex indeed. So what should we make of the journey and destination concept? Which is more important?
If we are concerned with sustainability because there are things in the environment or our society or the economy that are likely to be seriously eroded or that might cease to exist altogether, and if we depend on these things or we care about them for some reason[10] then there is no doubt that the ‘destination’ matters critically. If we don’t get to the destination (ie. a condition of sustainability) then the things that we want to sustain are eroded or cease to exist. The ‘journey’ (the process of achieving sustainability) is of course vitally important. But only as a means of getting to the destination (the desired future state). In the race to sustainability, we fail in our primary purpose if we don’t get to the finishing line[11].
The ‘destination’ of sustainability is not a fixed place in the normal sense that we understand destination. Instead it is a set of characteristics of a future system. A useful clarifying analogy is to compare the achievement of sustainability with the achievement of personal health. Our lives or our quality of life are at risk is we fail to achieve the destination of health. But getting to the destination of health doesn’t mean that our lives become static. The number of ways that a person can live their life while being healthy is enormous and the options can change over time too. So too with sustainability. Achieving the ‘destination’ is the purpose of the journey but when we get there society and the environment will not be static.