C

ESS Sustainability

  • Sustainability

    • meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations, maintaining and enhancing the health and viability of socio-ecological systems over the long term. It involves practices that do not deplete resources or harm ecological and social systems.

  • Brundtland Report

    • 1987 UN report where the prime minister of Norway proposes the term sustainable development

  • Environmental sustainability

    • Managing natural resources to prevent degradation and depletion, ensuring that the natural environment can continue to support life and provide resources for the future.

  • Societal sustainability

    • Focuses on maintaining and improving social equity, quality of life, and justice. Aims to create inclusive, equitable and healthy communities — contributing to the overall human well-being

  • Economic sustainability

    • Ensure economic growth that does not degrade social and environmental health but supports long-term human wellbeing and ecological balance.

  • Sustainability models

    • Promotes decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.

    • Relies on three principles: 

    • Eliminating waste and pollution

    • Circulating products and materials

    • Regenerating nature.

  • Environmental justice

    • Right of all people to live in a pollution-free environment, and to have equitable access to natural resources, regardless of issues such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and nationality

  • Indicator

    • Measures specific characteristics of a substance, people or an ecosystem. 

  • Sustainability indicator

    • Quantitative measures of biodiversity, pollution, human population, climate change, material and carbon footprints, and others. These indicators can be applied on a range of scales, from local to global.

  • Composite indicator

    • A measure of multiple characteristics of a people or ecosystem; often, though not always, presented as an index number.

  • Human Development Index

    • A composite indicator that measures health, education, and standard of living of a population and is expressed as an index number; the higher the number, the higher the human development.

  • Ecological footprint

    • The area of land and water required to sustainably provide all resources at the rate at which they are being consumed and absorb all the waste from that population.

  • Biocapacity

    • The capacity of a given biologically productive area to generate an ongoing supply of renewable resources and to absorb its resulting wastes.

  • Earth Overshoot Day

    • Marks the point in each year when we exceed Earth's support capacity.

  • Carbon footprint

    • Measures the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide emitted from our economic activities and is measured in tonnes. 

  • Water footprint

    • A measure of the total amount of water used to produce the goods and services consumed by an individual, community, or country.

  • Citizen Science

    • Non-scientists helping researchers collect environmental data.

  • Sustainable Development Goals

    • 17 interconnected goals that provide a framework for sustainable development to address the global challenges faced by humanity, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice.

    • A set of objectives created by the United Nations in 2015 to address the global social, environmental, and economic challenges faced by humanity.

  • Planetary Boundaries

    • Identifies the limits of human disturbance to those systems.

    • Climate Change

    • Ocean Acidification

    • Stratospheric Ozone Depletion

    • Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycles

    • Freshwater Use

    • Land System Change

    • Biosphere

    • Atmospheric Aerosol Loading

    • Novel Entities (e.g. chemical pollution)

  • Planetary boundaries model

    • A model that attempts to quantify the limits of nine Earth systems, to determine the ‘safe operating space’ of human economic activity.

  • Gross Domestic Product

    • The change in the total market value of goods and services in a country over a period

  • Green GDP

    • An alternative measure that provides insights into the environmental and social aspects of economic sustainability by subtracting environmental costs from the traditional GDP calculations.

  • Doughnut economic model

    • This model defines an economy that is ecologically safe and socially just.

  • Regenerative 

    • Works with and within the cycles and limits of the living world.

  • Distributive

    • Shares value and opportunity far more equitably among all stakeholders.

    • Redistribute wealth to support the social foundation for low-income individuals to prosper within ecological boundaries.

    • Businesses should equitably distribute value among stakeholders.

  • Circular economy model

    • Model that promotes decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. It has three principles: eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and regenerating nature.