57
Later, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development,
chaired by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, famously
define sustainable development in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, as
follows:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
While the Brundtland Report, as Our Common Future is now commonly referred to,
contains the most widely known definition of sustainable development, there are
many others.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that
Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and
well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pursue
sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can
exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.
Such general definitions of sustainability are, unsurprisingly, subject to debate,
and challenge. Regardless of the definition of sustainability, the core question of
sustainability is how to provide essential services to human societies without causing long-term (decades or centuries) degradation to natural ecosystems and the services that they provide to human communities.
As a scholarly field, sustainability science has come to broadly encompass the
study of interactions between the natural environment and human societies, classified as “human-environment systems” or “social-ecological systems,” and recognized as “coupled systems.”
One core scientific challenge is how to measure sustainability. This vital issue, in
the context of FEW systems, will be addressed in detail in Chap. 13 (Metrics).
One core practical challenge is how to address sustainability when human societies vary dramatically in their resources, population growth, social and economic
development, and values.
Studies of food, energy, and water systems have helped bring into focus the scientific and practical challenges of sustainability.
With growing demands for food, energy, and water-related to both population
growth and economic prosperity, political and policy conflicts between different
claims and demands on food, energy, and water resources have become ever more
frequent. As a result, for some policy-makers, the question of how to provide constituents with food, energy, and water in a manner that can be sustained for decades
to come is the practical definition of sustainability. While environmental conditions
are not explicit in such a question, large-scale ecological degradation makes an
answer to such a question impossible and places environmental considerations at
the core. Such questions can also be critical in bringing disparate parties together to
find solutions (see Chap. 20).
While sustainability is much broader than sustainable food, energy, and water
systems, the necessity of simultaneously providing all three critical consumables
has provided a human- and ecosystem-focused impulse for integrating FEW systems as an essential practical application of sustainability.
2 Systems Science
Later, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development,
chaired by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, famously
define sustainable development in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, as
follows:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
While the Brundtland Report, as Our Common Future is now commonly referred to,
contains the most widely known definition of sustainable development, there are
many others.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that
Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and
well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pursue
sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can
exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.
Such general definitions of sustainability are, unsurprisingly, subject to debate,
and challenge. Regardless of the definition of sustainability, the core question of
sustainability is how to provide essential services to human societies without causing long-term (decades or centuries) degradation to natural ecosystems and the services that they provide to human communities.
As a scholarly field, sustainability science has come to broadly encompass the
study of interactions between the natural environment and human societies, classified as “human-environment systems” or “social-ecological systems,” and recognized as “coupled systems.”
One core scientific challenge is how to measure sustainability. This vital issue, in
the context of FEW systems, will be addressed in detail in Chap. 13 (Metrics).
One core practical challenge is how to address sustainability when human societies vary dramatically in their resources, population growth, social and economic
development, and values.
Studies of food, energy, and water systems have helped bring into focus the scientific and practical challenges of sustainability.
With growing demands for food, energy, and water-related to both population
growth and economic prosperity, political and policy conflicts between different
claims and demands on food, energy, and water resources have become ever more
frequent. As a result, for some policy-makers, the question of how to provide constituents with food, energy, and water in a manner that can be sustained for decades
to come is the practical definition of sustainability. While environmental conditions
are not explicit in such a question, large-scale ecological degradation makes an
answer to such a question impossible and places environmental considerations at
the core. Such questions can also be critical in bringing disparate parties together to
find solutions (see Chap. 20).
While sustainability is much broader than sustainable food, energy, and water
systems, the necessity of simultaneously providing all three critical consumables
has provided a human- and ecosystem-focused impulse for integrating FEW systems as an essential practical application of sustainability.
2 Systems Science