Sustainability
We're going to define sustainability quite differently from normal
definitions because the most popular definition in the world, the Brundtland
definition of so called "sustainable development," is flawed. It's so
flawed it should be tossed on the rubbish heap of history's biggest
catastrophic mistakes.
First we'll give you our definition, followed by a look at why
"sustainable development" is not just flawed. It was designed to deliberately lead problem solvers
astray, because guess who "development" benefits most, even more than
developing nations? Why large for-profit corporations, of course.
Our definition
Sustainability is the
ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely.
For more practical detail the behavior you wish to continue
indefinitely must be defined. For example:
Environmental
sustainability is the
ability to maintain rates of renewable resource harvest, pollution creation,
and non-renewable resource depletion that can be continued indefinitely.
Economic sustainability is the ability to support a defined level of economic production
indefinitely.
Social sustainability is the ability of a social system, such as a country, to function
at a defined level of social well being indefinitely.
A more complete definition of sustainability is thus environmental, economic, and social sustainability. This
forms the goal of The Three Pillars of Sustainability.
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Sustainability Definition
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Why the popular
definition of sustainability is flawed
The above definition of sustainability goes against the norm. The
most popular definition of sustainability is that from the Brundtland Report of
1987, which said: 1
Sustainable
development is
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it
two key concepts:
The concept of 'needs', in particular the
essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be
given; and
The idea of limitations imposed by the state of
technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present
and future needs.
The drawback to the Brundtland definition is it’s more
inspirational than practical. It’s not precise and measurable, so no one can
agree on what it means. This caused the definition to be plagued by controversy
from the day it was published. The definition has also fallen into the trap of
scope creep by including solving the global poverty problem. (This and the
promise of development were included to bring undeveloped countries on board.
Otherwise they were against solving what they perceived to be a problem created
by developed countries.)
Should poverty really
receive “overriding priority” over
environmental sustainability? No, because if the environmental sustainability
problem isn’t solved, then no other problem will matter due to catastrophic
collapse. If the poverty problem isn’t solved, the world changes little. The
poverty problem has existed for as long as Homo
sapiens has. It’s nothing new. But the global environmental sustainability
problem is new and threatens existence of our species. That’s why it deserves
top priority.
Furthermore, “development”
means economic growth to most nations, especially the developing
ones. But that just makes the sustainability problem worse, since the economic
system is already unsustainable. In theory, as Hermann Daly and others have
suggested, “development” should mean both qualitative and quantitative growth.
Qualitative growth (an increase in quality of life) can be very sustainable.
But quantitative growth (economic growth) cannot be sustainable once it passes
its limit, which it already has.
Meanwhile, "development" means sales growth for Corporatis profitis. Sales growth means profit growth. Short
term growth in profits at the price of long term degradation of the environment
is just fine with large for-profit corporations. After all, short term
maximization of profits is their top goal. So the more corporations can push
the Brundtland definition on the world, the higher their profits.
Unfortunately, that also means the lower the sustainability of
society's actions.
Therefore the Brundtland definition is too flawed to use.
Here's the real surprise. Actually
the Brundtland definition is not defining sustainability.It's
defining sustainable development. What quietly happened long ago was the world's
problem solvers redefined sustainability as sustainable development and then
defined that. But sustainable development is a solution. It is not the problem
to solve.
Thus the Brundtland definition is not only too flawed to use. It
has defined the wrong problem to solve.
The right problem is the one in the definition at the top of this
page.
How the flawed
Brundtland definition came to be
The story of now the world's most popular definition of
sustainability came to be (along with how it was flawed from the start) was
told by Maurice Strong in his book Where
on Earth Are We Going, 2000, pages 120 to 123. Speaking about the Stockholm Conference
of 1972, of which he was secretary general, Maurice wrote that:
The biggest single threat to the conference was the ambivalence,
even antipathy, that developing countries felt toward the whole issue of
development.
From the beginning, developing countries had regarded the West’s
concern with ‘the environment’ as just another fad of the industrialized
countries; in their view pollution and environmental contamination were
diseases of the rich, which could only divert attention and resources from
their principal concerns: underdevelopment and poverty. They were
understandably sensitive to the possibility that measures designed to protect
the environment would impose new constraints on their development. Most of them would gladly exchange a little pollution for
the benefits of economic growth. There was a growing
movement to boycott the conference.
I knew the conference would fail if we couldn’t persuade the
developing countries to take part, and I knew they’d never agree to come unless
their concerns were addressed. The draft conference agenda I’d inherited didn’t
even attempt to do so. On the contrary, it was heavily skewed toward issues
affecting the more developed countries—air and water pollution and
deterioration of the urban environment. If I was to get anywhere, I’d have to
radically remake the agenda—which had already been accepted by the Preparatory
Committee.
I went away to do some serious thinking. Then, when I was clear in
my own mind what approach we should take, and with the astute guidance of the
committee’s Jamaican chairman, Keith Johnson, I called its members together for
a special meeting.
I laid out for them my revised agenda. The key concept called for a redefinition and expansion
of the concept of environment to link it directly to the
economic development process and the concerns of the developing countries.
This was a key error. It linked the global environmental
sustainability problem to the poverty problem and the desire of less developed
countries to catch up with the rest. Maurice continued:
Well, it sounds good. Nice linkage. But it means what? I could see
their skepticism.
The basic thesis, I said, is simple: environmental and economic
priorities are intrinsically two sides of the same coin. Of course, there will
be conflicts and trade-offs in particular cases, but I pointed out that it was,
after all, the process of economic development that has an impact on the
environment, both positively and negatively. Only through better management,
therefore, can the basic goals of development be achieved—to improve the lives
and prospects of people in environmental and social as well as economic terms.
My new agenda recognized that national priorities were dependent on the stage
of development currently attained and would therefore vary.The key was to insist that the needs of developing countries would
best be served by treating the environment as an integral dimension of
development, rather than as an impediment.
While Maurice and the other planners had the best of intentions,
not treating the environment as an “impediment” means it need not be the
highest priority. This was the
precise point in history where the proper priority of the environment over all
else was rationalized away in a politically expedient tactical maneuver. Once a
bargain like this is made, it tends to be difficult or impossible to reverse.
The Stockholm Conference planners went on to redefine
sustainability as sustainable development and to define that as mentioned
earlier. In doing so, they sowed the seeds of expectations that may have tipped
the problem into insolvability. If most of the world expects and even demands
economic growth as a priority over solving the sustainability problem, then how
can the sustainability problem possibly be solved?
The early environmental movement never asked these questions,
because most environmentalists are altruists. They want to help others. The
poor need lots of help. I too feel for their plight. But unless we get our
priorities right from the start, what we've done here is create a problem
that's impossible to solve.
For me, and I hope you too, the right priority is the one embodied
in the definition at the top of this page.
Getting the definition right by getting our priorities right
There is a bird's nest of interdependencies between the three
types of sustainability mentioned at the top of this page. Social
sustainability depends on economic sustainability, and vice versa. Social and
economic sustainability depend on environmental sustainability. To a much
smaller extent, environmental sustainability depends on economic and social
sustainability. But the dominant dependency is that from a systems thinking viewpoint, the human system is a dependent subsystem of the larger
system it lives within: the environment. Therefore, of the three, environmental
sustainability must be society's top priority.
However, this priority is anything but clear in the standard
definition of sustainability. This originated in the Brundtland Report in 1987,
which defined sustainability as sustainable
development, and sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Here's what Herman Daly, a widely respected ecological economist,
wrote in Beyond Growth:
The
Economics of Sustainable Development, in 1996, page 1:
“Sustainable development is a term that everyone likes, but nobody
is sure of what it means. The term rose to the prominence of a mantra—or a
shibboleth—following the 1987 publication of the UN sponsored Brundtland
Commission report, Our Common Future, which
defined the term as development that meets the needs of the present without
sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
“While not vacuous by any means, this definition was sufficiently
vague to allow for a broad consensus. Probably that was a good political
strategy at the time—a consensus on a vague concept was better than
disagreement on a sharply defined one. By 1995, however, this initial vagueness
is no longer a basis for consensus, but a breeding ground for disagreement.
Acceptance of a largely undefined term sets the stage for a situation where
whoever can pin his or her definition on the term will automatically win a
large political battle for influence over out future.”
Which is just what happened. Daly defines sustainable development
as "development without growth beyond environmental limits." But
economists like him were unable to get others to see things this way. He
describes the dire results on page 9:
One way to render any concept innocuous is to expand its meaning
to include everything. By 1991 the phrase [sustainable development] had
acquired such cachet that everything had to be sustainable, and the relatively
clear notion of environmental sustainability of the economic subsystem was
buried under 'helpful' extensions such as social sustainability, political
sustainability, financial sustainability, cultural sustainability, and on and
on. Any definition that excludes nothing is a worthless definition.
Which is why we define sustainability as the ability to continue a
defined behavior indefinitely.
Throughout this website, whenever we say just “sustainability,” we
usually mean environmental sustainability, because if that is not achieved,
then none of the zillions of other types of sustainability matter.
(1) The definition of sustainable development is
from Our Common Future, by the
World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 43.
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