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It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society and its members are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals indefinitely. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire globe. It is a sometimes controversial topic.
Put in simpler terms, sustainability is providing for the best for people and the environment both now and in the indefinite future. In the terms of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainability is: "Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." This is very much like the "seventh generation" philosophy of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy, mandating that chiefs always consider the effects of their actions on their descendants through the seventh generation in the future.
The original term was " sustainable development," a term adopted by the Agenda 21 program of the United Nations. Some people now object to the term "sustainable development" as an umbrella term since it implies continued development, and insist that it should be reserved only for development activities. "Sustainability", then, is nowadays used as an umbrella term for all of human activity.
In economics, sustainable growth consists of increases in real incomes (i.e. inflation-adjusted) or output that could be sustained for long periods of time.
The modern concept of ecological sustainability goes back to the post- World War II period, when a utopian view of technology-driven economic growth gave way to a perception that the quality of the environment was linked closely to economic development. Interest grew sharply during the environmental movements of the 1960s, when popular books such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) and The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (1968) raised public awareness.
There are two related categories of thought on ecological sustainability. In 1968 the Club of RomeThe Club of Rome is a German-based global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It raised considerable public attention with its report The Limits to Growth which has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations ma, a group of European economists and scientists, was formed. In 1972 they published Limits to GrowthLimits to Growth was a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing global population, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Donella Meadows was its lead author. The book used the World3 model to simulate the consequence of interactions between th. Although discredited by many, it predicted dire consequences because the earth was using up its resources, and it advocated as one solution the abandonment of economic development. Groups sympathetic to the general premise that the world was growing too quickly and/or using up its resources formed, including the Worldwatch InstituteThe Worldwatch Institute bills itself as "an independent research organization that works for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society, in which the needs of all people are met without threatening the health of the natural environment or t in 1975. In a different category, other groups formed to focus less on population growth control and slowing economic development, and more on establishing environmental standards and enforcement.
Many people have pointed to various practices and philosophies in the world today as being inimical to sustainability. For instance, critics of American society state that the philosophy of infinite economic growth and infinite growth in consumption are completely unsustainable and will cause great harm to human civilization in the future.
One of the critically important issues in sustainability is that of human overpopulationOverpopulation may indicate any case in which the population of any species of animal may exceed the carrying capacity of its ecological niche. In common parlance, the term specifically refers to the relationship of human population to the planet Earth.. A number of studies have suggested that the current populationFor the use of the word population in statistics, see statistical population. In the most common sense of the word, a population is the collection of people—or organisms of a particular species—living in a given geographic area. Populations are studied in of the Earth, already over six billion, is too many people for our planet to support sustainably. A number of organizations are working to try to reduce population growth, but some fear that it may already be too late.
Critics of such efforts, on the other hand, fear that efforts to reduce population growth may lead to human rights violations such as involuntary sterilization and the abandoning of infants to die. Some human-rights watchers report that this is already taking place in ChinaThis article is on the geographic and cultural entity. For other meanings, see China (disambiguation). China ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , Hanyu Pinyin: Zhongguo, Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo) is a country in continental East Asia with some oute, as a result of its one child per family policy.
The Food and Agriculture OrganizationHeadquartered in Rome, Italy, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations programs seek to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living; to improve the production, processing, marketing, and distribution of food and agricultural (FAO), which was given the Task Manager responsibility for reporting World Progress on implementing four Chapters of Agenda 21 (Land, Forests, Mountains, Sustainable Agriculture & Rural Development) by the United Nations, acknowledges:
The World Business Council for Sustainable DevelopmentThe World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD is a coalition of 175 international companies united by a shared commitment to sustainable development via the three pillars of economic growth, ecological balance and social progress. The WBCS, founded in 1995, has formulated the business case for sustainable development and argues that "sustainable development is good for business and business is good for sustainable development".
Some organisations which have attempted to incorporate sustainability values into the global economy are International Council on Mining and Metals and the Global Mining Initiative .
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