22
around the issues and needs of humans to achieve a sustainable future. All though these attempts are
plausible and will have potentially positive outcomes, the question remains: How will we address the
desperate need of regeneration and adaptation in our current rapid changing climate, and move
beyond the status quo of sustainability?
2.5 Moving Beyond Sustainable Development
The mantra of sustainable design and development has been challenged by various scholars. One of
these scholars is Sim Van der Ryn, who challenges the Brundtland Commission’s definition and effectiveness of ‘Sustainable Development’ given its reliance on technological sustainability. The
Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development in the United Nations World Commission
on Environment and Development’s report titled Our Common Future (1987) as:
… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs (UN, 1987, p. 43).
The report recognises progressive changes in both societies and economies; it also recognises that
development:
… tends to simplify ecosystems and to reduce their diversity of species. And species, once extinct, are not renewable. The loss of plant and animal species can greatly limit the options of future generations; so sustainable
development requires the conservation of plant species (UN, 1987; in Pojman, Pojman, & McShane, 2008,
p. 420).
Since the Brundtland Commission’s inquiry in 1987, sustainability has become a trending terminology for the 1990s, offering one perspective for balance and stability in a fragmented world (Van
der Ryn & Cowan, 1996). This perspective was evident despite the continuing extraction of fossil
fuels to provide energy and to support the ever- expanding industrial sector of the new modernised and
mechanical world. The proponents of sustainability emphasised that minimising the impacts on the
environment and being more efficient would be enough to achieve sustainability. Reed challenges the
status quo of ‘sustainability’, and argues that the practice of sustainability is only just doing one ‘hundred percent less bad’ (Reed, 2007). Mang and Reed also contend that we need to move beyond sustainability to the application of regeneration systems (Mang & Reed, 2012). But what does it really
mean to ‘move beyond sustainability’? This is much more complex than we can comprehend, and
both Alexander (2004), and DeKay (2011) are proponents respectively of a ‘deep sustainability’, and
an ‘integral sustainability’ that is all- encompassing and part of the whole.
2.6 Integral Sustainable Design and Development
Moving beyond sustainable development needs a new worldview based on an ‘integral’ approach. The
integral approach to sustainability is found in the consideration of multilevel complexity, the intersecting of the domains of self, culture, and Nature. When we want to achieve sustainable development, we need to start at the drawing board, with the fundamentals of sustainable design. In Integral
Sustainable Design: Transformative Perspectives (DeKay, 2011), DeKay presents an integral theory
of sustainable design that moves from a standard approach to an Integral Model. The Integral Theory
as a meta- theory organises its fundamentals in two frameworks (DeKay, 2011, p. xxiii):
The four perspectives, which arise from fundamental distinctions of value found in language (I, We, It/Its) and
represent the methods of arts, humanities, basic sciences and the complex sciences… and
2 The Importance of a Sustainable Future
around the issues and needs of humans to achieve a sustainable future. All though these attempts are
plausible and will have potentially positive outcomes, the question remains: How will we address the
desperate need of regeneration and adaptation in our current rapid changing climate, and move
beyond the status quo of sustainability?
2.5 Moving Beyond Sustainable Development
The mantra of sustainable design and development has been challenged by various scholars. One of
these scholars is Sim Van der Ryn, who challenges the Brundtland Commission’s definition and effectiveness of ‘Sustainable Development’ given its reliance on technological sustainability. The
Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development in the United Nations World Commission
on Environment and Development’s report titled Our Common Future (1987) as:
… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs (UN, 1987, p. 43).
The report recognises progressive changes in both societies and economies; it also recognises that
development:
… tends to simplify ecosystems and to reduce their diversity of species. And species, once extinct, are not renewable. The loss of plant and animal species can greatly limit the options of future generations; so sustainable
development requires the conservation of plant species (UN, 1987; in Pojman, Pojman, & McShane, 2008,
p. 420).
Since the Brundtland Commission’s inquiry in 1987, sustainability has become a trending terminology for the 1990s, offering one perspective for balance and stability in a fragmented world (Van
der Ryn & Cowan, 1996). This perspective was evident despite the continuing extraction of fossil
fuels to provide energy and to support the ever- expanding industrial sector of the new modernised and
mechanical world. The proponents of sustainability emphasised that minimising the impacts on the
environment and being more efficient would be enough to achieve sustainability. Reed challenges the
status quo of ‘sustainability’, and argues that the practice of sustainability is only just doing one ‘hundred percent less bad’ (Reed, 2007). Mang and Reed also contend that we need to move beyond sustainability to the application of regeneration systems (Mang & Reed, 2012). But what does it really
mean to ‘move beyond sustainability’? This is much more complex than we can comprehend, and
both Alexander (2004), and DeKay (2011) are proponents respectively of a ‘deep sustainability’, and
an ‘integral sustainability’ that is all- encompassing and part of the whole.
2.6 Integral Sustainable Design and Development
Moving beyond sustainable development needs a new worldview based on an ‘integral’ approach. The
integral approach to sustainability is found in the consideration of multilevel complexity, the intersecting of the domains of self, culture, and Nature. When we want to achieve sustainable development, we need to start at the drawing board, with the fundamentals of sustainable design. In Integral
Sustainable Design: Transformative Perspectives (DeKay, 2011), DeKay presents an integral theory
of sustainable design that moves from a standard approach to an Integral Model. The Integral Theory
as a meta- theory organises its fundamentals in two frameworks (DeKay, 2011, p. xxiii):
The four perspectives, which arise from fundamental distinctions of value found in language (I, We, It/Its) and
represent the methods of arts, humanities, basic sciences and the complex sciences… and
2 The Importance of a Sustainable Future