Definitions of Sustainability

Here is how other people are talking about sustainability. Try to understand what they are saying and make your own meaning.

Presidio School of Management

Sustainability is a way of working and living that balances immediate needs for commerce, living, habitation, food, transportation, energy and entertainment with future needs for these resources and systems as well as the liveliness and support of nature, natural resources and future generations.

Sustainability addresses human and natural systems (such as social justice, meaningful experiences, social values, biodiversity, ecosystem services and lifecycle food chains) as well as economic systems (such as market viability, profit and returns) in order to meet needs and desires without endangering the viability of future generations or endeavors. It is similar to the "seventh generation" philosophy of the Native American Iroquis Confederacy, mandating that chiefs always consider the effects of their actions on their descendents seven generations in the future.

Paul Hawkin

Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

New Belgium Brewing Company

Sustainability is achieving a balanced union of ecological harmony, social respect and economic vitality.

The Cloud Institute

If you are driving toward the edge of a cliff, slowing down will not solve your problem (although it might buy you some time). You must turn and go in a different direction.

Sustainability demands turning and charting a new course that will improve the quality of our lives and the lives of our children while restoring the gift of natural systems upon which our lives depend.

Brundtland World Commission on the Environment and Development:

Sustainable Development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Jonathan Porritt, Forum for the Future:

Sustainable development is a process which enables all people to realize their potential and improve their quality of life in ways which protect and enhance the Earth's life-support systems.

California Student Sustainability Coalition: Sustainability is: "Continuous improvement of life quality that protects and balances the ecological, social and economic environments."

Randy Hayes (Executive Director of International Forum on Globalization):

1. Diverse and rewarding lifestyles that many would want to emulate, and if they all did, the planet's natural systems and wildlife populations would flourish, increasingly, each generation.
2. Satisfying lives for all people while living within the means of nature. This requires that people do not use more ecological services than nature can regenerate.

Presidio School of Management Student, Beatrice Barr (February, 2006) A socially and environmentally sustainable business produces a product or provides a service in a manner that nurtures contributors to the processes of production, human and otherwise, and nurtures the consumer, while earning a return on investment sufficient to support the financial viability of the enterprise. Socially, production processes do not degrade the value of the comfort and health of producers and collateral inhabitants, or under-compensate the time workers contribute with the intention of providing for themselves and families in a manner adequate for their environment. Environmentally, production processes do not harvest or purge in a manner diminishing Earth's reproductive integrity. Those businesses most systemically sustainable tend to have germinated organically from ideals, as opposed to subsequently infusing sustainable principles.