What is sustainability anyway? Part II.

By ChrisJun 11th, 2009

(Photo by WorldIslandInfo)

Last week I introduced a new series on sustainable living with my post “What is sustainability anyway? Part I”. This week I am going to attempt to answer that question before we start talking about how it applies to lifestyles and thus begin our journey to discover sustainable living in Japan.

Let’s start with the obligatory dictionary definition. Wiktionary, arguably the most authoritative source in the Universe (ok, well at least it is free) defines it as:

“1. The ability to sustain something”

Rather a bit obvious, that one. The entry, though, continues with a second definition:

“2. (ecology) a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in the very long term”

Much better! But isn’t it a bit of a leap to suddenly narrow it down to “human activity”? Not only that, but they throw in civilization, the hidden assumption being that civilization itself can be sustainable. Not so fast! And what about biodiversity?

Let’s consider the first bit, human activity. I think we can agree that “nature”, or everything that is not human activity or derived from it, is by definition sustained when humans don’t interfere, so the sustainability of it alone is not in question. So limiting our definition to “human activity” is in, for now.

What about civilization? Can civilization as we know it be sustained? In my experience, when most people who are the least bit concerned about the future talk about it, they either describe “our civilization” adopting (just in time!) sustainable energy, agriculture, and transportation, and otherwise continuing unchanged, or ending abruptly in a big crash. Aren’t there any other options? But then what exactly is civilization? Is it armies and operas and industrial parks? Or is it something more important? That is a topic for another day, but for now let us say that civilization is temporarily out of the definition due to these unanswered questions.

So how about biodiversity? Sigmund Freud said in 1929 in his book Civilization and its Discontents that we should be “…taking up the attack on nature, thus forcing it to obey human will…”. Attack on nature? Shocking, to be sure, but that is pretty much what we, that is to say “our civilization”, have been up to for the last several centuries. I certainly believe that biodiversity is necessary to sustain “human activity” and as this is one of the basic assumptions of the sustainability movement, I want to keep it in the definition.

But wait a minute, isn’t there something fishy about the way they use it in that definition: preserve biodiversity etc. while allowing society and its economies etc. to express its greatest potential? Economies…potential…that sounds a lot like the issue I had with civilization above. Notice they don’t say “societies” but “society”, one society, the global society, “our civilization”. Again from Wiktionary:

Economy:
4. The system of production and distribution and consumption.

Aha! I detect another hidden assumption, in this case the assumption that production, distribution, and consumption by our civilization are sustainable. I certainly wish they were because I like to shop as much as you do, but I do not think we can jump to conclusions just yet about how sustainable it is. I think it would therefore be better to say:

Sustainability:

A way of configuring human activity so that society and its members are able to meet their needs while preserving balance with biodiversity and natural ecosystems, now and for the future.

And with this definition, we will begin our journey. Next up I will narrow it down to sustainable living and start looking to Japanese history and tradition for some hints.