The first step in creating a sustainable future is
building a foundation where everyone knows exactly what the ground rules are
and trusts that they will be applied equally and equitably. This starts with
adopting an ecologically sound and legally defensible definition of
sustainability to provide the consistency necessary for planning, a tool to
analyze proposals, and a yardstick to measure progress. Here is the proposed
definition, containing three necessary clauses which inform, support and
strengthen each other:
Sustainability:
1) The integration of human social and economic lives into the
environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain rather than degrade or
destroy the environment;
2) A moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not
necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs
of future generations;
3) Entails determining, and staying within, the balance point among
population, consumption and waste assimilation so that bioregions, watersheds
and ecosystems can maintain their ability to recharge, replenish and
regenerate.
Sustainability provides a common goal that peace, justice, and democracy
advocates can use as the "big tent" that can support effective
coalitions for change. Sustainability provides a new way of being in the world.
Sustainability is not an abstract concept, it is life.
Perhaps sustainability can be best understood through its opposite—death to the
planet—known as ecocide. After all, there will be no peace, justice or
democracy on a dead planet.
Concepts that emerge
from the definition of sustainability include the fact that an area can’t
consider itself sustainable at the expense of another region, and that
sustainability is not exclusively an environmental movement; it is a community
movement.