Week 1 What is Sustainability

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ICS 5: Global Disruption and Information Technology

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What is Sustainability?

“Sustainability is giving future generations as many opportunities as, if not more than, we have had

ourselves” (Serageldin, 2006)

“Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet

their needs.” (Brundtland, 1987)

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Sustainability (NSF)

“a sustainable world is one where human needs are met equitably without harm to the environment or sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

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Environmental Sustainability

(Australian gov’t)

Environmental sustainability is the ability to maintain the qualities that are valued in the physical environment.

For example, most people want to sustain (maintain): • human life

• the capabilities that the natural environment has to maintain the living conditions for people and other species (eg. clean water and air, a suitable climate)

• the aspects of the environment that produce renewable resources such as water, timber, fish, solar energy

• the functioning of society, despite non-renewable resource depletion

• the quality of life for all people, the livability and beauty of the environment

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Environmental Sustainability (US

President’s Council on Sustainable Development)

America’s challenge is to create a life- sustaining Earth, a future in which

prosperity and opportunity increase

while life flourishes and pressures on

the oceans, Earth and atmosphere

diminish.

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Three legged stool

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Nested model

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Different stakeholders…

Have different opinions.

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The Value of a Definition

Allows others to understand your

argument, and determine whether or not

they agree.

Avoids miscommunication.

Helps distill one’s thoughts.

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A Note on Definitions

Not necessarily critical

Mt. Everest

Tenzing Norgay & Sir Edmund Hillary,

1953

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Strategic Essentialism

Working together despite differences.

Different environmental groups, etc.

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Global Climatic Disruption

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What it’s called…

Global warming

Global climate change

Global weirding

Global climatic disruption

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Glo

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Biodiversity

Interactive Tree of Life

• http://itol.embl.de/itol.cgi

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Biodiversity

Where is most of the biodiversity?

Where is most of the money interested in

preserving biodiversity?

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Biodiversity Breeds Robustness

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Extinction

Can’t recreate a species

Can’t know all about what has been lost

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The Sixth Extinction

by Leaky and Lewin (1995) Five major extinctions in the four billion year history of life.

Dr. Richard Leakey, the world's most famous paleoanthropologist: Every year,

between 17,000 and 100,000 species vanish from our planet, he says. "For

the sake of argument, let's assume the number is 50,000 a year. Whatever

way you look at it, we're destroying the Earth at a rate comparable with the

impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet, or even a shower of vast

heavenly bodies."

Fifty per cent of the Earth's species will have vanished inside the next 100

years; mankind is using almost half the energy available to sustain life on the

planet, and this figure will only grow as our population leaps from 5.7 billion to

ten billion inside the next half-century.

Such a dramatic and overwhelming mass extinction threatens the entire

complex fabric of life on Earth, including the species responsible for it: Homo

sapiens.

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Nevertheless…

Certain species thrive:

• Cows

• Soybeans

• Palms

• Rats

• Cockroaches

• Dogs

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Population

>7 billion

7,000,000,000

Scientific Notation

• 7 x 10^9

• 7E+9

http://www.worldometers.info/

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IPAT

Impact =

Population x Affluence x Technology

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Affluence

Resources

per person

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Impact of Technologies

Enable both increase and decrease in

both areas

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Outcomes

Live sustainably

Undergo massive population reduction

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Problem vs. Predicament

Solution or no…

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ICS 5: Global Disruption and Information Technology