Re: [DE] What is Sustainability?

At 06:34 21/06/99 -0700, Eric wrote [edited by David MacC]:
>Here are some more attempts at defining "sustainability". 
>
>In order for a society to be sustainable, it must not impact 
>nature's functions and diversity in ways significant enough to 
>impair such functions and diversity. ...
>
>.. Sustainability is ... the point at which the health of the ecosystem is 
>no longer impaired by human action.
>
>In order for a society to be sustainable: 
>1) Resources must not be used faster than can be replenished .. and
>2) Human waste .. must be able to cycle back within natural time frames.
>
>Other thoughts:
>Ideas such as continuous cycles, natural time scales, efficient and local
>use become important.
>.. ways of judging the health of ecosystems are necessary.
>
>Does living in accordance with Deep Ecology principles require
sustainability?
>Thoughts anyone?
>

**  I gave examples of when I believe human activities were still
sustainable, at the bottom of my DE post on Thu, 18 Mar 1999 10:10:03 +1300: 
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/deep-ecology/mar99/0072.html

** Regarding definitions; my post to DE on Fri, 19 Mar 1999 08:56:46 +1300,
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/deep-ecology/mar99/0076.html
finishes:
  "My two uses-of or meanings-for the word 'sustainable' require scale to
be specified. Time, and numbers of individuals. Also, as with (nearly) all
real life cases, there is a natural error, uncertainty, fluctuation-range
involved - not precision.

** The large-scale meaning is the most reliable. 'Sustainable' here can
mean continuing into the indefinite .., and refers to an ecosystem, which
can include humans. There will be change involved - an ecosystem is
dynamic, with numbers and location of individuals changing day by day for
animals, and season by season for plants. I include the rare possibility of
a species going extinct, and a roughly equal probability of a new one
arising. Thus sustainable includes: having no recognisable trend, over a
time-scale of thousands (or at least hundreds) of years, and almost
certainly longer.

** The small-scale meaning, used by people on this and the Positive Futures
list I am still on, refers to humans in their environment, and most times
means the answer to: "what life-style can I adopt for the rest of my life,
that (if all in the world adopted it) would enable the world we know (i.e.
including within living memory) to continue with only slow change
(tolerable by our environment) if any?" A common component is to have only
local impacts, so that you yourself have some chance of keeping track of them.

** Mike insists on a definition - I refuse to do more than this.

David.
(David MacClement) mailto:d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html#top
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