What is Sustainability?

Taken from wikipedia-- In the terms of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainability is: "Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

This is very much like the seventh generation philosophy of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy, mandating that chiefs always consider the effects of their actions on their descendants through the seventh generation in the future.

The following is a piece from In Context written by Robert Gilman

There is, at this time, no generally agreed-upon definition of an eco-village. For the purposes of this issue, we will define an eco-village as a

"A human-scale..." * Human-scale refers to a size in which people are able to know and be known by the others in the community, and where each member of the community feels he or she is able to influence the community's direction. There is considerable practical evidence, both in modern industrial societies and in other cultures, that the upper limit for such a group is roughly 500 people. In very stable and isolated situations it can be higher, perhaps as high as 1,000, while in situations typical of modern industrial societies it is often lower, even less than 100.

"...full-featured settlement..." * A "full-featured settlement" is one in which all the major functions of normal living - residence, food provision, manufacture, leisure, social life, and commerce - are plainly present and in balanced proportions. Most current human settlement in the industrialized world - urban, suburban, and rural - is entirely divided by function: some areas are residential, some are for shopping, some are industrial, etc. These districts are usually too large to be human-scale, even within a single function. In contrast, the eco-village is a comprehensible microcosm of the whole of society.

This does not mean that eco-villages have to be fully self-sufficient or isolated from the surrounding community. As an ideal, an eco-village will have as many jobs within it as there are employed people who live in the eco-village; but some of the villagers will go outside the village to work, and some of the jobs in the village will be held by people who reside outside the village.

There are also many specialized services that clearly cannot be located in each eco-village - hospitals, airports, etc. Yet with cooperation among villages, essentially any large institution could be successfully run by clusters and networks, permitting a fully functioning modern society to be mostly comprised of eco-village units.

"...in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world..." * This idea brings the "eco" into the eco-village. One of the most important aspects of this principle is the ideal of equality between humans and other forms of life, so that humans do not attempt to dominate over nature but rather find their place within it. Another important principle is the cyclic use of material resources, rather than the linear approach (dig it up, use it once, throw it away forever) that has characterized industrial society. This leads eco-villages to the use of renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) rather than fossil fuels; to the composting of organic wastes which are then returned to the land rather than sending these to a landfill, incinerator, or sewage treatment plant; to the recycling of as much of the waste stream as possible; and to the avoidance of toxic and harmful substances.

"... in a way that is supportive of healthy human development..." * This fourth principle recognizes that eco-villages are, after all, human communities, and without genuine human health at the core, these communities are unlikely to be successful. What is "healthy human development"? To attempt a complete definition would take a book, at least! Suffice it to say here that I see this as involving a balanced and integrated development of all aspects of human life - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. This healthy development needs to be expressed not just in the lives of individuals, but in the life of the community as a whole.

"... and that can be successfully continued into the indefinite future." * This last principle - the sustainability principle - forces a kind of honesty on eco-villagers. Without it, it would be easy (or at least easier) in the short-term to create human-scale communities that seemed to be harmoniously integrated into nature and to be full-featured, but in fact were in some not-so-visible way living off the capital accumulated in other parts of the society; or dependent on unsustainable activities elsewhere; or not inclusive of a major aspect of life (such as childhood or old age). The sustainability principle brings with it a profound commitment to fairness and non-exploitation - toward other parts of today's world, human and non-human, and toward all future life.

Sustainable Community * The more general term "sustainable community" includes eco-villages, but it also includes clusters and networks of eco-villages, and non-geographically based "communities" (such as businesses) that are nevertheless human-scale in their components, diverse, and harmoniously integrated into the natural world. In this sense, an eco-village is a distinct place, either as a rural village or as an urban/suburban neighborhood. A city could not be an eco-village, but a city made up of eco-villages could be a sustainable community.

Google Sustainability on the web