Sustainability

Another key concept - adapted from a piece written in 2018

In September 2015 193 world leaders agreed to 17 global Goals for Sustainable Development – the SDGs – the successors of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If these Goals are to be completed, it will mean an end to extreme poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. If world governments have a plan to save our planet through these SDGs, then some may argue it is our job to make sure they stick to it.

What does sustainability mean?

‘Sustainability’ is a bit of a buzzword these days, often misused by politicians and business leaders. It has become a word that people use to demonstrate they are being, or appearing to be, more environmentally-friendly - ‘green’.

One study found that there are 500 different attempts in academic literature to define sustainable development. So, in one sense, it could be seen as an evolving and developing concept. Generally, it is about improving situations today in a way that does not damage the future or must be paid for tomorrow. The Brundtland Report (1987) was the first to coin the term sustainable development, providing this definition:

‘Sustainable development is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

Some, such as WWF, have developed this and stressed the environmental aspects:

‘Sustainable development is maintaining and enhancing the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems.’

In 1999 the UK Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) defined it as ‘A better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come’. Note, the emphasis here is on people, rather than the environment.

The British diplomat and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell defined the term succinctly as ‘Treating the Earth as if we intended to stay there’, a statement which cleverly links the environmental and people themes together.

Three goals are said to comprise sustainable development:

Economic sustainability: individuals and communities should have access to a reliable income over time.

Social sustainability: all individuals should enjoy a reasonable quality of life.

Environmental sustainability: no lasting damage should be done to the environment; renewable resources must be managed in ways that guarantee continued use.

One way to show these ideas, and how they can be managed, diagrammatically is the 3-legged stool of sustainability (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The three-legged stool of sustainability

Links to the concepts of carrying capacity and ecological footprint

The WWF definition above links sustainability to carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of an area refers to the largest population that the resources of a given environment can support. The term also has its origins in ecology and is used widely in agriculture. The Reverend Thomas Malthus famously put forward the concept of a population ceiling where a saturation level is reached when the population equals the carrying capacity of that environment.

Carrying capacity is also influenced by development, the living standards of people and in turn the consumption patterns of a population. The latter is also a function of attitudes. As a society becomes more ‘westernised’, then consumption rates increase. This can be evidenced by the increasing consumer consumption rates of people in emerging economies such as China and India for goods produced by Prada, Gucci, and BMW. Some writers have said that current patterns of consumption in some parts of the world are no longer sustainable.

The term ‘ecological footprint’ is also relevant here. An ecological footprint refers to a measurement of the area of land or water required to provide a person (or society) with the energy, food, and other resources they consume and render the waste they produce harmless. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle (and consumption rate). While the term ecological footprint is widely used, methods of its measurement vary. You can calculate your own personal ecological footprint on the website Ecological footprint calculator - ClimateHero .

One pessimistic scenario produced in 1972 by the Limits to Growth scientists of the Club of Rome stated that human demand for resources would exceed nature’s supply from the 1980s onwards, ‘overshooting’ it by 20% by the end of that century. Were they correct? Some have developed this idea by suggesting that each year should have an ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ – the day when the productive capacity of the planet has been used up for that calendar year. In 2000 it was 1^st November; in 2023 it is 27^th July. One over-riding view of the link between sustainability and carrying capacity is that it perhaps seems pessimistic.

Sustainability in urban areas.

Curiously, only one of SDGs has the word sustainable in its title: Target 11: Sustainable cities and communities. The UN states in its introduction to this goal: ‘Balancing the immediate needs of today without compromising the needs of tomorrow is at the heart of being a sustainable city.’ This is a clear throwback to the original Bruntland definition in 1987.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) uses three ‘pillars’ to rank 100 global cities in terms of their sustainability. They are:

The people pillar: this is based on indicators of health (life expectancy and obesity), education (literacy and quality of universities) income equality, work life balance, dependency ratio, crime, housing and living costs. They are said to capture the quality of life within a city.

The planet pillar: this ranks cities in terms of their energy consumption and renewable energy share, green space within cities, recycling and composting rates, greenhouse gas emissions, their risk of natural catastrophe, drinking water quality, sanitation quality and air pollution. They are said to capture ‘green factors’ in a city.

The profit pillar: this examines performance of a city from a business perspective, combining pressures of transport infrastructure (rail, air, and traffic congestion), ease of doing business, tourism, GDP per capita, the city’s importance in global economic networks, connectivity in terms of mobile and broadband access and employment rates. They capture the city’s ‘economic health’.

Based on these indicators WEF identified the top ten sustainable cities in 2016. They were, in order of sustainability: Zurich, Singapore, Stockholm, Vienna, London, Frankfurt, Seoul, Hamburg, Prague and Munich. They have not been updated since.

Conclusion

When considering the notion of sustainability, and referring to the Bruntland Report definition given earlier, perhaps we should ask three questions:

(1) What are the ‘needs of the present’?

(2) Is it possible to meet these needs today?

(3) Will it still be possible to meet these needs in the future?

The most likely answer to the final question is ‘no’. Countries, urban areas, and people will always consume non-renewable resources, pollute the environment and embody risk, despite our best efforts to avoid them. Perhaps once there is a recognition that we cannot, and will never, become wholly sustainable, attention can focus instead on ways to make our world more sustainable than it is at present – which is perhaps a more positive outcome to aim for?