What is Sustainability?

Question

Sustainable development

Answer 1

sustainable development is something that gets made that can exist without needing constant maintainance. For example a community that has both jobs and homes could be sustainable since it doesn't need outside help

Answer 2

I think the term comes into the environmental arena from agriculture, where the concept of sustainable farming refers to organic methods that maintain the health of the environment. Sustainable, in the sense that you could keep doing this forever and the soil would not become depleted, fish continue to spawn, etc.

From there, it gets transmogrified into a buzzword with an aura of environmental virtue. There is no such thing as sustainable development: if you keep developing, sooner or later you run out of places to develop. At best, it means the developers have paid some attention to environmental issues.

Answer 3

Sustainability refers to something that is self-sufficient. For example, in an engineering context, a process or product that is sustainable must be able to create outputs that can be re-used as inputs (directly or indirectly) for another or the same process so that the net effect on the environment is at least zero. Indirectly would imply that another process is needed to convert the outputs into useable inputs.A non-sustainable process would generate waste that we throw away and do not re-use. This type of process constitutes the bulk of those carried out by humans. Unless we create sustainable products and processes, eventually the Earth will run out of resources to supply our demands. This is a realization that Engineers are quickly having to deal with.

Answer 4

An aid agency will say give a man the knowledge and tools to grow cocoa. But only if it can be sustained. So if the counrtyside is good for it to grow and if the economy will use it... Does that make sense?!

Answer 5

Sustainability is meeting the needs of today without compromising the needs of future generations

at least that's the answer i had to memorize for class

Answer 6

My favorite definition which shows there really is no single definition that can be formed in the reality of the human world:

Sustainability is a relationship, or balancing act, between factors which are constantly changing. Like "family values," everyone agrees that sustainability is a good thing, but no one agrees on what exactly it is, or even more significantly, how to achieve it and how to know when we have achieved it......................


Georgia Tech Research Institute

http://maven.gtri.gatech.edu/sfi/bes/faq.html

Answer 7

Capable of being sustained.
Capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment: sustainable agriculture.

Answer 8

means that the development can last, not just only for now or a period of time.