What is Sustainability?

Just to be clear, I think I need to define sustainability. Fortunately, Richard Heinberg has pretty much nailed it with his collecting together definitions from a number of sources and distilling them into five axioms. They can be accessed from this link:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/851

However, a summary is, I think, useful. To be sustainable, a society needs to consume resources only at or below the renewal rates for those resources. Clearly, consumption of a resource beyond its renewal rate will eventually result in depletion of that resource or, at best, an inability to maintain the rate of consumption. A corollary to that is that consumption of resources must not adversely affect that societies ability to sustain itself; in other words, our behaviour must not damage our habitat.

Of course, it may be possible to override the sustainability axioms for short periods of time, but only with a view to becoming sustainable. For example, if the society recognizes that, over the long term, any finite resource consumption must end, and plans for that, then short term use of finite resources, consumed with some sustainable target in mind, then the society may remain sustainable, since unsustainable consumption is not intended to continue. There are many other discussions that can be had about the details of the axioms but I think they are very good general guidelines.

The implications of the axioms are sometimes difficult to accept but they include zero ecnomic growth and zero population growth (or an active plan for zero growth in both areas). Economic growth must, over the long term, result in increased consumption, even if short term efficiency drives have some success. Indeed, a society that even consumes non-renewable resources, at all (never mind increasing), cannot be sustained in that behaviour. Again there are discussions to be had about some resources but there is no escaping the general rule.

It can be seen that a sustainable society cannot be anything like societies that the develop world has, or that the developing world aspires to. This is a difficult notion to grasp.

Lastly, it must also be stated that, as far as consumption of resources is concerned, societies could attempt to go it alone, in terms of sustainability. However, global cooperation is probably needed to ensure that our habitat is not adversely damaged by unsustainable societies.