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The concept of sustainability and its meaning for the development of social, ecological and economical systems

This essay highlights the concepts of sustainability, community, governance, citizenship and scale. To achieve sustainable development a holistic approach including all these areas is important. Interconnections between them are necessary and all these concepts can only work in relation to each other.

In 1972, during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Stockholm, it was first recognised that the conservation of the natural resources is important and that this will be a huge challenge. Many conventions have been made in the meantime and one of the most important one is the Brundtland Report.

Other important events were the Eart Summit in Rio in 1992, where important declarations like Agenda 21 were enacted and the Johannesburg World Summit in 2002, dealing with sustainable development issues (Lexikon Nachhaltigkeit 2010).

An important issue concerning sustainability and sustainable development is the distinction between these terms. Sustainability is a ‛long term concept’ and is rooted in ecology, respectively in german forestry (Lafferty, Langehelle 1994, p. 4). The term development’ was connected to sustainability by the Brundtland Report (1987).

The Brundtland commission defined sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (UN 1997). Sustainable development, as defined in the Brundtland Report means positive development. But obviously, the definition is very vague and there have been many discussions on what sustainable development is meant to be (Lafferty, Langehelle 1994, p. 2).

There are many different ideas concerning the term of sustainability such as ‛human needs, social equity between generations, social equity within our generation, the carrying capacity of nature, biodiversity, political cooperation, economics’ and so forth (Lafferty, Langehelle 1994, p. 27). To meet the requirements of so many different fields, the concept cannot be clearly defined, as the background of every issue is different.

A huge variety of definitions exists and all of them are different as they are the result of different backgrounds. Certainly, there are some similarities such as they are all justified to our future and they attempt to give us an idea of what sustainable development could be. As those concepts are subject to an immanent ‛openness of meaning’, it is difficult to adopt them (Lafferty and Langehelle 1994, p. 25).

Furthermore all natural and social systems are complex systems with a non-linear development (Miller, Twining-Ward. 2005) which makes it even more difficult to define what exactly sustainable development should be. The key seems to be to strengthen the concept through more discussion and to design something like a common agreement about what the main goals should be (Lafferty and Langehelle 1994).

Having described the problems concerning the definition of sustainability the next important factor is whether our current economic and social systems facilitate a sustainable development or not.

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Requirements for achieving sustainable development

Our current socio-economic system is based on capitalism which is characterized through a few elements such as 'voluntary exchange, rule of law, contract and the most important one – private property' (Adler 2001). Another aim of capitalism is to reduce or minimize the influence of the state.

Adler (2001) asserts that capitalism would directly lead to sustainable development by introducing private property to all available common goods. Underlying the assumption that people or companies won’t damage their own belongings (e.g. polluting a river by dumping waste) due to the inherent related value. In my opinion this may be true if the added value is higher than the costs of waste disposal, however, what happens if not? The character of capitalism is to maximize profit and one would rather waste the river than not if the profit would be higher.

In contrast to this point of view Davidson (2000) assert that our current system, which is in line with satisfying consumer needs and self interest, cannot meet the requirements for sustainable development. These requirements can be reached by the ‛radical’ or strong concept of sustainable development which includes a ‛strong degree of environmental protection, intra- and intergenerational equity, participation and a broad interpretation of the subject area’ (Jackobs 1995, cited in Davidson 2000, p. 29).

The counterpart to this would be the ‛conservative’ or weak concept of sustainable development which would be on par with ‛business as usual’ (Jackobs 1995, cited in Davidson 2000, p. 29). The self-interest driven market system leads to decreasing ethical values and an understanding of a good life that is closely associated with an accumulation of material goods.

As sustainable development within the context of maximizing profits and self-interest is not possible, a redefinition of the current economic system is essential. Furthermore, it is essential to develop a new policy approach, including all important levels and areas, as it is definitely not enough to just change our economic system (Davidson 2000). The Department of Environment and Conservation (2003, p. 22) developed ‛process principles’ such as ‛integration of the triple bottom line, accountability, transparency, engagement, precaution, hope, vision ,symbolic and iterative change’.

In the conceptual model introduced by Hancock ‛human development’, which contains issues of ‛health, social well-being, environmental quality, ecosystem health and economic activity’,is the main aim (Hancock 1996, p. 18).

Fig. 1: Conceptual Model for a sustainable development (Hancock 1996, p. 20)

Underlying this superior model for sustainable development, there are important key elements such as community, governance and citizenship and they support the arising of ‛human development’ (Hancock 1996, p. 18). The following part of this essay explains the major ideas behind community, governance, citizenship and scale as well as their interconnections.

Community and Sustainable Settlements

Due to their interconnection with economy and government, the role of communities within the western Australian sustainability strategy is important. ‛Values and Visions’ must be anchored in communties to achieve sustainable development (Department of Environment and Conservation 2003, p. 222). Therefore, communities are ‛providers of values’ and these values can be integrated by interaction between the community, economy and government (Department of Environment and Conservation 2003, p. 224).

People can be involved into the community through participation and their interaction with government and economy will lead to sustainability. There are many projects with the aim to foster sustainable development in e.g. ‛community services, housing, education’, and so forth. An example of a community services project is the Kalgoorlie Project against youth crime.

A main goal was to consult community and to encourage young people to participate in the process (Department of Environment and Conservation 2003, p. 223). In Hobart, the South Hobart Sustainable Community is working towards sustainablility. Their goals are to foster the community, use new technologies to do so as well as ‛learning form other groups’. Main issues are sustainable transport, energy, community building, food growing, social events and so forth (South Hobart Sustainable Community 2010).

Those villages are living the idea of sustainability by choice and implementing all these aspects will be much more difficult in other settlements and will require a change of our way of living. This leads further to another important aspect concerning politics, government and governance.

With regard to the holistic approach mentioned by Hancock (1996, p. 20) the structures of our current governments are unsuitable. We need new, integrated approaches that are open towards non-government perspectives (Gleeson, Darbas, Lawson 2004, p. 348). Furthermore Gleesen et al. (2004, p. 348) states that these new approaches, respectivley governance should include ‛decision making, public sector reform, accountability and citizen engagement’.

It is important that the society supports decisions made by government and therefore a combination of both, government and governance is essential. Planning processes in cities should be adapted to these strategies as they are a good tool to impede or at least to abate the risk of ‛civil protests’ (Gleeson, Darbas, Lawson 2004, p. 348).

The Committee on Environment and Heritage (2005, p. 39) states, that it is important to implement ‛a national governance structure’ to ensure a successful governance process on all administration levels. Therefore governance is not only limited to communities, but should be applied to all levels of government. By introducing the civil society into the process of decision making, sort of affiliation to the place can be engendered.

Deforges, Jones and Woods (2005, p. 440) assume that citizenship can be defined through interactions with space. Therefore citizenship is the belonging of individuals to a community, which can be defined through the interactions of the individum with the community. Though the face of citizenship changed over time and today there are many different types of citizenships (Deforges, Jones and Woods 2005, p. 440).

Conspicuous was a turnover from national citizenship to local citizenship (downscaleing) and furthermore a trend to a supranational citizenship (upscaleing). A good example for this upscaling process is the ‛Europe for Citizens’ program by the Executive Agency Education, Audiovisual and Culture of the european Union. European Citizens should be involved in ‛cooperative activities’ as well as ‛transnational exchanges’ to foster the cohesion of the society (EACEA 2009).

Compared to active citizenship a passive citizenship is characterised by less or even no participation (Barry 2006). Swyngedouw (1997, cited in McCarthy 2005, p. 744) calls this up- and downscaling process of functions ‛glocalization’. Reffering to Yuval, Davis and Painter (1999, 2000 and 2002, cited in Desforges, Jones, Woods 2005, p. 441) citizenships today are “multi-layerd” or “multi-level” citizenships.

Thus, people are citizens of different communities on different levels. In context of sustainable development this would implicate that citizens do have certain responsibilities towards all of these levels. This perception allows the connection of actions on a local level – e.g. waste production of households or energy consumption – with the global level on which the environmental problem of climate change occurs.

One the one hand it is important to research the scale of phenomenons respectivley the different scales on which they occur. Due to the theory of fractals, the same phenomenon can occure on different scales and therefore the concept of generalisation is important (Montello 2001). Scale is a concept to look at things from different point of views and on different levels of abstraction.

According to Montello (2001) scale has different meanings and all of these issues are kind of important. There are three main types of scale, namely ‛cartographic, analysis and phenomenon’ scale (Montello 2001, p. 13501). The cartographic scale deals with issues of generalisation, like easing, enlarging, classification (Hake et al. 2002) and so forth. As every map is just a model of the reality, inaccurancies are preassigned and should be taken into consideration (Heywood et al. 2006).

According to Montello (2001) the quality of input data measured by resolution or granularity in case of raster elements is important. In case of vector based data sets the scale of the underlying datasource is cruical (Heywood et al. 2006). Mixing up data from different sources, using data outside their original context or adapting administrative regions to any other levels can result in serious mistakes.

With regard to planning processes, serious political wrong decisions can be the consequence. Hence, geodata quality is a very important issue with regard to measure sustainability respectively sustainable development.

According to all the issues mentioned, sustainable development can only be achieved, if the key components introduced in this essay, such as community, citizenship and governance are implemented on all scales. As a huge part of the world’s population will live in urban areas until 2030, sustainable development within communities is essential.


Reference List

Adler, J. (2001). ‛Capitalism and Sustainability’. The Good Society. Viewed March 2010.

Davidson, J. (2000). ‛Sustainable Development: Business as Usual or a New Way of Living?’ Environmental Ethics 22 (1), pp. 25-42.

Department of Environment and Conservation. (2003). State Sustainability Strategy. Viewed March 2010.

Executive Agency Education Audiovisual and Culture. (2009). ‛Europe for Citizens’. viewed March 2010.

Gleeson, B., Darbas, T., Lawson, S. (2004). ‛Governance, sustainability and recent australian metropolitan strategies: A socio-theoretic Analysis’. Urban Policy Research 22 (4), pp.345-366.

Global Ecovillage Network – Europe. (2010). ‛What is an Ecovillage?’ Viewed March 2010.

Hancock, T. (1996). Healthy, Sustainable Communities: Concept, Fledgling Practice and Implications for Governance. Alternatives Journal 22 (2), pp. 18-22.

Heywood, J., Cornelius, S., Carver, S., (2006). ‛An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems’. (3rd ed.). Harlow. Pearson Education Limited.

Berry, J. (2006) Resistance is Fertile: From Environmental to Sustainability Citizenship. Viewed March 2010.

Lafferty, W.M., Langhelle, O., (1999). ‛Sustainable Development as Concept and Norm’, in Lafferty, W.M., Langhelle, O. (eds.), Towards Sustainable Development: On the Goals of Development – and the Conditions of Sustainability, Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 1-29.


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