What is Sustainability?

"Sustainability . . . implies that the overall level of diversity and overall productivity of components and relations in systems are maintained or enhanced." - Richard Norgaard, 1988

"Sustainability requires at least a constant stock of natural capital, construed as the set of all environmental assets." - David Pearce, 1988

"Sustainability is the [emerging] doctrine that economic growth and development must take place, and be maintained over time, within the limits set by ecology in the broadest sense--by the interrelations of human beings and their works, and the biosphere... It follows that environmental protection and economic development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes." - William D. Ruckelshaus - Scientific American, September 1989

"Sustainability is the ability of a system to sustain the livelihood of the people who depend on that system for an indefinite period." - Otto Soemarwoto, 1991

"Sustainability is the fundamental root metaphor that can oppose the notion of continued exponential material growth." - Ernest Callenbach, 1992

"Sustainability equals conservation plus stewardship plus restoration." - Sim Van der Ryn, 1994

"Although the environment has been abstracted from by standard economics, the concept of sustainability has been recognized and incorporated into the very definition of income as 'the maximum amount that a community can consume over some time period and still be as well off at the end of the period as at the beginning' (Hicks 1946). Being as well off means having the same capacity to produce the same income in the next year--i.e., maintaining capital intact. The criterion of sustainability is thus explicit to this Hicksian definition of income." - Herman E. Daly - "Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development," 1996

"Sustainability is restoring to the human mind and spirit the LIVING connections between humans and the planet and everything in, on, and around it. This means to be sensitive to the living critters and the total life processes at work even on the micro scale of bacteria and being especially attentive to the the chemical processes at work in all of it. It also means getting a grip on what it means to be a human being within the community of homo sapiens which includes recognizing humans as social beings with a need to find communion with other humans (public spaces and activities); as aesthetic beings who appreciate things that look good while providing maximum functionality; as ethical beings who would rather not harm others and so provide them with adequate means to understand and participate in the non-harming of their environment (extensive recycling, waste reduction, things in walking distance); and as physical beings who I think would rather exercise (or just physically use their bodies) in a pleasing natural outdoor setting geared to help restore spiritual balance and peace of mind instead of a fitness parlor with all the peoples' neurotic mental states bouncing off the walls. Along with this last is the need for adequate space to have home gardens or a community garden so people can grow their own food and flowers. Work should be fulfilling and meaningful even if some of it is heavy labor. The farther removed from the land people are, the less meaningful and concrete their (our) work becomes." - Margie A. Hoyt, 2000

Sutainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. - World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987

What is your definition??