Sustainability History Project

[This post written by J. Orr, B. Green, & B. Bazsó]

As we try and come up with our own definition of sustainability, we have difficulty fitting everything involved into a single sentence or two. We believe that our idea of sustainability is in response to the idea that current practices in social equity, economics, and the ecosystem cannot continue. Having said that, we believe that sustainable practices are the ones that make an effort to have the lowest possible negative impact on all three areas.

From the readings of Gibson, Kates et, al., and Langhelle, we as students have identified the concept of the three pillars of sustainability to be one of the core concepts of sustainability. The most accepted idea of the three pillars includes ecology, economics, and social equity. We think that this is an important concept because you can’t develop sustainability in only one area without considering the other two. You cannot separate people from the environment, or equity from economic considerations. You can think of the three pillars as a stool, where only three legs will allow you to sit on it. If you remove even one, it is no longer functional. The process of achieving sustainable development needs to give consideration to all three pillars of sustainability, but it is difficult to satisfy people from all three areas.

The process of achieving sustainable development will have both gives and takes, and involve very complex calculations concerning the impact on each area. This is not a cut-and-dry process, and involves a lot of extrapolation. A lot of the open questions involving sustainable development involve the way to properly measure the impact or sustainable benefit in each area.

A net gain or loss will be very difficult to assess, and may even be different depending on the subjective stakeholder opinion. Different points of view need to be considered, this requires that as many different points of view including the public are consulted and heeded during the decision making process. This idea brings us to one aspect of social justice or equity in sustainable development and the consideration of impacts on society.

It is paramount, from a social sustainability perspective, that all stakeholders be engaged and involved in the decision making process regarding changes that impacts their lives. Bearing in mind the different viewpoints that come with different stakeholders, there is great potential for diverging interests and final agreements likely reflect a compromise based on some trade-offs accordingly. Even though the ideal, and proposed approach by Gibson (2006), is the “multiple reinforcing gains,” simply put: everyone involved gets what they want, the reality of situations regarding sustainable practices or policies often represent a compromise of some sort. This is not necessarily bad, and provided that all stakeholders approach the quest for a solution with the “multiple reinforcing gains” attitude, the resulting agreement should be the best possible outcome, even if it is a compromise.

In summary, we believe that the three pillars of sustainability are an integral part of sustainability as a whole. We also believe that in the process of achieving sustainable practices, all three pillars need to be considered and consulted. For some practices, trade-offs may be required between differing interest areas, and all areas need to be considered for a sustainable practice to be successful.

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Works Cited:

Gibson, Robert B. “Sustainability Assessment: Basic Components of a Practical Approach.” Impact Assessment and Appraisal 24: 3 (Sept. 2006), 170-182.

Robert W. Kates, Thomas M. Parris, and Anthony A. Leiserowitz. “What is Sustainable Development?” Environment 47: 3 (Apr. 2005), 8-21.

Oluf Langhelle. “Sustainable Development: Exploring the Ethics of Our Common Future.” International Political Science Review 20: 2 (April 1999), 129-149.

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