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.