What Are The Main Components of Sustainability?

Sustainable development, sustainable community, sustainable industry, sustainable agriculture.  You may have heard these words using in many different ways, but what does "sustainability" really mean and how can you tell if your community is sustainable?  Sustainability is related to the quality of life in a community -- whether the economic, social and environmental systems that make up the commuity are providing a healthy, productive, meaningful life for all community residents, present and future.

How has the quality of life in your community changed over the last 20 or 40 years?

        -How has your community changed economically?
                -Are there few or more good-paying jobs – are people working more and earning less or are most people living well?
                -Is there more or less poverty and homelessness?
                -Is it easier or harder for people to find homes that they can afford?

        -How has your community changed socially?
                - Is there less or more crime?
                -Are people less or more willing to volunteer?
                -Are few or more people running for public office eor working on community boards?

        -How has your community changed environmentally?
                - Has air quality in the urban areas gotten better or worse?
                -Are there more or fewer warnings about eating fish caught in local streams?
                -Has the water quality gotten better or worse?
 

Solutions to one problem can make another problem worse.  For example, creating affordable housing is a good thing, but when that housing is built in areas far from workplaces, the result is increased traffic and the pollution that comes with it.  Piecemeal solutions tend to create opposing groups.  How often have you heard the argument ‘If the environmentalists win, the economy will suffer,’ and its opposing view ‘If business has its way, the environment will be destroyed.  Piecemeal solutions tend to focus on short-term benefits without monitoring the long-term results. The pesticide DDT seemed like a good solution to insect pests at the time, but the long-term results were devastating.

Rather than a piecemeal approach, what we need is a view of the community that takes into account the links between the economy, the envionment and the society.

http://www.sustainablemeasure.com/Sustainability/

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