Sustainability
Sustainability, in a general approach is the ability to maintain, to
sustain or be sustained, to endure. But this concept is usually related to Environmental Science and can be understood analyzing the expression
“sustainable development”. The main idea is to combine development
and production with ways of preserving the environment. Thus, biological systems
could be productive and with biodiversity along the time.
Sustainable development is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st
century. Since the Industrial Revolution, when the world started to use fossil
fuels as an energy resource, the environment is sending us messages that it is
not everlasting and how much damage the human beings have done to it, such as
the greenhouse effect, loss of biodiversity, climate changes, etc.
The term “sustainable development” was first used by
the Brundtland Commission, and it was
defined as: “sustainable development is
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainability is
only possible if we take into consideration three basic pillars: social, environmental
and economic. These three pillars build up the concept of sustainability and
they are interdependent. If one of them is weak, then the whole system is
unbearable.
Think and act sustainably can involve a bunch of changes: green
technologies, renewable energy resources, sustainable agriculture, ecovillages, recycling, etc.
Related Themes:
Ecosystem
Biodiversity
Biosphere
Food Chain
Read more:
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/
http://everything2.com/title/World+Summit+on+Sustainable+Development
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ThreePillarsOfSustainability.htm