Understanding Sustainability

This section provides explanations for the following words and phrases that need to be understood in order to fully understand sustainability. They are:

Sustain

Develop

Community

Economy

Community Capital

Carrying Capacity

Equity

In addition, many different groups and individuals have defined sustainability in their own terms. Following are basic definitions for the key terms listed above in the context of sustainability.

Sustain: to continue without lessening, to nourish, to allow to flourish. Notice that, in the context of sustainability, 'sustain' does not mean that nothing ever changes. Nor does it mean utopia, that nothing bad ever happens. Sustainability is not about maintaining the status quo or reaching perfection. A sustainable community seeks to maintain and improve the economic, environmental and social characteristics of an area so its members can continue to lead healthy, productive, enjoyable lives there.

Develop: to improve or bring to a more advanced state.

Notice that, in the context of sustainability, 'develop' does not mean continually getting bigger. People start out as infants and grow until they become adults. They don't continually get larger, but they do continue to develop: they go back to school, make new friends, learn new skills, start a new hobby, or travel to new places. In the same way, a sustainable community does not grow larger indefinitely. Sustainability does not mean sustained growth. At some point, a sustainable community stops getting larger but continues to change and improve, to develop in ways that enhance the quality of life for all its inhabitants. Sustainable development improves the economy without undermining the society or the environment. Sustainable development focuses on improving our lives without continually increasing the amount of energy and material goods that we consume. A sustainable community does not consume resources -- energy and raw materials -- faster than the natural systems they come from can regenerate them. We are currently living unsustainable lives. If we are not careful how we use and dispose of resources, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have a poorer, more polluted world to live in.

A sustainable community is one where development is not unlimited growth; rather it is the enhancement of what already exists in the community. A sustainable community is not stagnant; sustainability does not mean things never change. On the contrary, it means always looking for ways to improve a community by strengthening the links between its economy, environment and society. A sustainable community is also not a utopia. It is not a community where nothing ever goes wrong. Sustainability does not mean that businesses never fail or that people never go hungry or that pollution never happens. Sustainable means that when problems arise, we look for solutions that take into account all three parts of the community instead of applying a quick fix in one area that causes problems in another.

Community: a group of people who live and interact within a specific geographic area. In the context of sustainability, a 'community' can be a small rural community, a large metropolitan region, a nation, or the entire planet. What makes an area a community is shared interactions among the people in the community. These interactions include:

Economic transactions: buying and selling goods and services to each other.
Social relationships: being friends and neighbors, sharing, cooperating, solving common problems together.
Environmental interdependence: relying on common resources or the services of common ecosystems like forests, farmlands, water supplies, and air supply.

Economy: the way that goods and services are produced, distributed and consumed. The word economy comes from two Greek words meaning 'house' and 'manage.' Economics is about how we manage our households, both our individual households and our collective community 'households.' People need material goods to survive: food, water, energy, a place to live, and clothes to wear. These goods are all based on resources from the natural environment in which we live. However, for many people, 'economy' is a complex topic related to money. Newspaper, radio and TV reports reinforce the idea that understanding the economy requires special training: 'The economy grew at nearly a 6% annual rate in the first quarter, fueled mainly by consumer spending; growth in real gross domestic product may top 1 % this month.' This sounds impressive, but it leaves us wondering, 'How does an economy grow? What is real gross domestic product? Does this affect me and my family?' The technical jargon of economics obscures the fact that most people actually do understand the basic meaning of 'economy,' and also understand that the economy is tightly connected to society and to the environment.

So, in the context of sustainability, economics is about the material goods and services that we use in our lives-from basic necessities to the special 'extras' that make life more enjoyable.

Community Capital: the natural, human, social, and built capital from which a community receives benefits and on which the community relies for continued existence.

The term 'capital' is most commonly used to refer to money and material goods. However, in the context of sustainability, communities have several different types of capital that need to be considered -- natural, human, social, and built capital. Together, these types of capital are referred to as community capital. All four types of capital are necessary for communities to function. All four types of capital need to be managed by a community. All four types of capital need to be cared for, nurtured and improved over time. Community capital can be thought of as a triangle.

Natural Capital

At the base of the pyramid there are three blocks of natural capital: natural resources, ecosystem services, and the esthetics or beauty of nature.

Natural resources are all of those things that we take out of nature and use: water, plants, animals, and materials from the earth such as fossil fuels, metals and minerals. All of these are things that we use up, either as raw material or as part of a production process. The end result is either a finished product, waste material or both.

Ecosystem services are natural processes that we rely on in some way. For example, soil in an acre of farmland can produce food that we eat or material for clothes that we wear. Wetlands filter water and soak up flood waters. Estuaries provide habitat for shellfish and other food that we eat. If we are careful not to overuse them, these natural processes will provide us with services indefinitely. However, if we are not careful in how we use them, we can degrade them. Farmed carelessly, soil on a farm erodes or loses essential nutrients. Sediment in wetlands reduces their ability to filter water. Fill a wetland and it no longer provides a buffer against flooding. Runoff into coastal waters and overharvesting can degrade or deplete shellfish beds to the point that they are no longer viable.

The third block of natural capital is the esthetics or beauty of nature. Flowers in a window box, a view of a mountain range or seashore, a park on a warm summer day, the song of a bird, and a sky full of stars on a clear winter night are all parts of the beauty of nature. In addition to contributing to our general quality of life, the beauty of nature is essential to tourism and recreation, which form the basis of some communities' economy.

Social and Human Capital

The next level of the community capital pyramid is social and human capital. This level has two blocks -- people and connections: Human capital is each individual's personal skills and abilities, physical and mental health, and education. Social capital is the connections in a community -- the ways in which people interact and relate to each other. The simplest connections are connections to family, friends and neighbors. On a larger scale, we form connections through community and volunteer organizations, the ability of groups of people to form governments to deal with common problems, and the ability of people to form companies to create goods and services to satisfy the needs of the community.

The five blocks of natural capital and human and social capital form the base of community capital. With these five blocks, communities create the sixth block, built capital.

Built capital

Built capital includes roads, heavy equipment, factory buildings, houses, and apartment buildings. It includes basic necessities like food and clothing. It also includes things that, although not strictly necessary, many people in developed countries would be loath to do without, like dishwashers, cars, telephones and computers.

A Sustainable Community

A sustainable community takes good care of all its capital, natural, human, and social in addition to its built capital, in order to continually improve the quality of life of all its inhabitants. To invest capital is to manage it in a way that improves its value, so that the capital provides benefits now and in the future. When you invest monetary capital, you earn interest so the value of that capital grows. When you invest in natural or social capital, its value also grows, but in ways much harder to measure:

Educating children, providing preventive health care, eating right, getting plenty of exercise, training workers, and developing peaceful relations with
Preserving prime farmlands and wetlands, preventing pollution, using resources no faster than they are renewed, and managing wastes in ecologically sound ways are all examples of investing in natural capital.

When a child grows up hungry and uneducated or a wetland is paved over, our community capital is degraded. All around the world there are examples of communities using up their natural and social capital, living off the principal rather than living off the interest:

The world's fisheries such as Georges Bank off the coast of North America have been seriously depleted.
In Brazil, the rainforests are being cut down at an ever increasing rate.
In the U.S., aquifers of clean water are being drawn down without hope of recharging them.
There is a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.
Crime and drug use are tearing apart the fabric of society.

These are examples of unsustainable communities, communities that are living off the principal of their community capital instead of investing that capital and living off the interest. A sustainable community wisely manages all its capital -- using and improving the social, natural and built capital in ways that allow that capital to continue to support that community in the future. Living off the interest of community capital is one way to define the next term: carrying capacity.

Carrying Capacity:

the population that can be supported indefinitely by its supporting systems. In ecological terms, the carrying capacity of an ecosystem is the size of the population that can be supported indefinitely upon the available resources and services of that ecosystem. Living within the limits of an ecosystem depends on three factors:

the amount of resources available in the ecosystem,
the size of the population, and
the amount of resources each individual is consuming.

A simple example of carrying capacity is the number of people who could survive in a lifeboat after a shipwreck. Their survival depends on how much food and water they have, how much each person eats and drinks each day, and how many days they are afloat. If the lifeboat made into an island, how long the people survived would depend upon the food and water supply on the island and how wisely they used it. A small desert island will support far fewer people than a large continent with abundant water and good soil for growing crops.

In this example, food and water are the natural capital of the island. Living within the carrying capacity means using those supplies no faster than they are replenished by the island's environment: using the 'interest' income of the natural capital. A community that is living off the interest of its community capital is living within the carrying capacity. A community that is degrading or destroying the ecosystem on which it depends is using up its community capital and is living unsustainably.

Equally important to community sustainability is living within the carrying capacity of the community's human, social and built capital. Carrying capacity is much harder to measure for these types of capital, but the basic concept is the same -- are the different types of capital being used up faster than they are being replenished? For example:

A community that allows its children to be poorly educated, undernourished, and poorly housed is eroding its human capital.
A community that allows the quality of its social interactions to decline through lack of trust, respect, and tolerance is eroding its social capital.
A community that allows its buildings, roads, parks, power facilities, water facilities, and waste processing capability to decay is eroding its built capital. Additionally, a community that is creating built capital without considering the future maintenance of that capital is setting itself up for

Equity (or inequity): In the context of sustainability, the term equity has to do with fairness -- whether all people have similar rights, opportunities and access to all forms of community capital.

Inter-generational equity has to do with fairness between current and future members of a community. It doesn't mean that we neglect our current needs, but that we try to achieve a reasonable balance between satisfying our needs now and setting aside enough to provide for needs of the future. We are currently living unsustainable lives. If we are not careful how we use and dispose of resources, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have a poorer, more polluted world to live in. Aiming for inter-generational equity means we want to give equal consideration to our own immediate needs, our own future needs, and our children's and grandchildren's future needs.

The term equity is also used in connection with the idea that all people throughout the community, be it a town or the entire world, have the same basic needs that must be taken into consideration. This concept is often referred to as intra-generational equity, meaning justice among the present population. The preservation (or acquisition) of basic human rights and the fulfillment of basic human needs are the fundamental driving forces behind economic transactions, social interactions, and resource consumption. When people are operating under duress in any of these areas, concern for immediate needs overwhelms any consideration for long term needs, thereby undermining the whole principle of planning for the future. So, current or intra-generational inequity can lead to future or inter-generational inequity.

Understanding these seven definitions -- sustain, develop, community, economy, community capital, carrying capacity, and equity -- is the first step toward understanding sustainability. The next step is to understand sustainable development and sustainable community. There are probably as many different definitions of 'sustainable development' and 'sustainable community' as there are people and communities trying to define it. In the next section of the web site we have gathered a number of different definitions that have been proposed.

Workshop materials sponsored by US EPA Office of Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities (OSEC) under a cooperative agreement with Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Developed and produced by: Hart Environmental Data www.subjectmatters.com/indicators