Four Types of Sustainability

There are many forms sustainability can take, so we wanted to focus on four here to give you some idea of what is out there:

We have been on this planet for a while now, but it has only been relatively recently that we have managed to make impossible machines do incredible things for us. The industrialisation has brought us the modern world, and much of it was created with heavy machinery and lots of pollution. But that’s not the only way of doing things.

 

One way of thinking about human sustainability is making nature do most of the work. Instead of pushing against nature to create our own space, we can think about using nature to live in its space.

 

For example, instead of burning coal to create electricity for accommodation, we can let wind pass through propellers to spin wind turbines and make electricity that way. Wind will blow whether we make it or not, but burning coal takes a lot of effort, logistics, and pollution. This one of many ways we can make people more sustainable.

 

The social aspect of sustainability doesn’t necessarily have to be for ecological purposes only but can be understood in a broader sense. To live in a sustainable society, we need to ask questions such as “How to make a system that cares about people’s well-being?” or “How to make a society stable and celebratory of its diversity at the same time?”

 

These are tough questions, and many people have different answers. The core of social sustainability is that both individuals and groups can live well while keeping the system stable enough for future generations.

Economic sustainability is all about changing how we think about business. Right now, many companies think only in terms of profits and growth. Economic sustainability suggests that instead of chasing constant fast growth, we should think about finding stability in business and the economy.

 

However, it is difficult to do because of how we currently structure the economy, but not impossible to change.

You probably heard of this one the most. It is the kind of sustainability where we make sure that specific natural processes are left undisturbed so that nature can go on renewing itself. Nature has a fantastic ability to take dead things and turn them into life, and environmental sustainability is all about supporting and developing that process.

 

There are, of course, many human-made problems that threaten this cycle, such as climate change which may fundamentally make life on this planet impossible for humans and many other animals as well.