Sustainability

Building societies where people can live healthy, fair, meaningful lives now and in the future.

Meeting current needs without reducing future generations’ ability to meet their needs.

Organising the economy so people’s needs are met over time without the system breaking down.

Using natural resources and producing waste at rates that stay within ecosystem regeneration and absorption limits.

Meeting needs now without reducing future generations’ ability to meet theirs.

How raw materials and energy are turned into goods and services that people use.

Access to healthcare and education (also equality, safety, strong communities, culture).

Do not use resources faster than they are replaced (also reduce pollution, protect biodiversity, allow recovery).

Environmental, social, and economic sustainability (all interconnected).

Can the ecosystem recover within its natural limits after use/disturbance?

Prices can make essentials unaffordable for vulnerable groups, so support/regulation may be needed.

Strong: natural capital is irreplaceable; weak: technology can substitute for natural capital.

Biodiversity supports ecosystem functioning and resilience, helping systems recover from disturbance.

Trust, cooperation, and supportive connections between people that increase community resilience.

Trust and supportive connections that help communities function and cope with crises.

Overfishing can exceed reproduction rates and cause fishery collapse.

Unpaid care and domestic work supports health and social stability; stressed households weaken system sustainability.

Ask if ecosystems can recover naturally after resource use or disturbance. If not, it is unsustainable.

How raw materials and energy become goods and services people use.

Communities with high trust/support cope better and recover faster, improving resilience.

It can harm health, reduce livelihoods, increase inequality, and weaken community stability.

Healthy ecosystems are sustainable because resources are used within limits and materials can be recycled or absorbed naturally.

Not just growth; it is meeting basic needs reliably and fairly over time.

Environmental damage can reduce livelihoods and health, increasing inequality and harming economies.

Link environment → society → economy as a chain of dependence; damage in one spreads to others.

Fair access to a safe environment and resources, and fair distribution of environmental benefits and harms.

Right to a safe environment plus fair access to resources and fair distribution of harms/benefits.

High consumption in one region can cause extraction, pollution, and waste in another region.

Fairness: who benefits from resource use and who bears the costs/risks.

Who consumes, who profits, and who cleans up or suffers the damage?

Profits and power are often concentrated elsewhere, while local communities bear pollution and health costs.

Reinforcing loop: wealth → influence/opportunity → more wealth; harms concentrate in vulnerable groups.

Lower labour costs and weaker environmental regulation can reduce costs, but increase local environmental damage.

Reinforcing feedback: wealth → more influence/opportunity → more wealth; vulnerable groups face higher exposure.

High consumption creates textile waste; disposal/export can pollute land/water and burden low-income communities.

When powerful businesses/individuals influence regulators so rules serve them rather than the public/environment.

When regulators act in the interests of powerful groups rather than environmental protection/public good.

Define justice → explain unequal impacts/power → apply to a real context (trade/waste/pollution/climate).

From individual and community to national and global scales.

Fair decision-making, fair outcomes, and shared responsibility for costs and benefits.

It ignores inequality and environmental impacts, so it cannot show whether development is sustainable.

Improving lives today while ensuring future generations can also meet their needs, within environmental limits.

It does not show inequality, environmental damage, or well-being beyond income.

Measuring income inequality (lower value means more equal).

A measure of one specific aspect of development or sustainability (social, economic, or environmental).

No single indicator shows the full picture, so we combine social, economic, and environmental measures.

0 to 1, where higher values indicate higher human development.

Life expectancy, education (years of schooling), and income per person.

Lower is usually better (pollution, emissions, extinction rate).

It adjusts for planetary pressures using CO2 emissions and material footprint, showing environmental cost of development.

How much pressure human activities place on Earth’s systems.

Global hectares (gha).

The ability of ecosystems to regenerate resources and absorb wastes.

Land/sea area needed to provide resources used and absorb waste produced by a population (in global hectares).

Earth’s ability to regenerate resources and absorb waste.

Greenhouse gas emissions (often expressed as tonnes CO2 per person per year).

Embedded/virtual water used to produce goods and services you consume.

A biocapacity deficit: resource use is unsustainable (often relies on imports or overexploitation).

The date when humanity has used the resources Earth can regenerate in that year; after it we use future resources.

Collecting large-scale environmental data (biodiversity, climate, migration) with help from non-scientists.

17 UN goals adopted in 2015 to address global social and environmental challenges by 2030.

They provide a common global framework and shared language for goals, targets, and indicators.

17 goals aiming for progress by 2030 (adopted in 2015).

Goal = big aim, Target = specific objective, Indicator = data used to measure progress.

Nested dependencies: environment supports society; society supports the economy.

They provide measurable data to track progress and compare changes over time.

Goal → Target → Indicator (indicator = data used to measure progress).

They can be treated as silos rather than as connected systems.

Environment supports society; society supports the economy (planet first).

Countries differ in resources and global shocks (conflict, disasters, pandemics) can slow progress.

Use: shared global framework for action. Limitation: can oversimplify or be treated as silos with data gaps.

The same goals can reflect different local priorities and constraints across countries.

State one clear use + one clear limitation and link to systems thinking (goals are connected).

Data gaps make progress hard to measure, manage, and improve.

Lower-income countries may need funding/technology support, despite contributing least to some global problems.