Sustainability News and Resources

Types of sustainability

The FAO has identified considerations for technical cooperation that affect three types of sustainability:

* Institutional sustainability: Can the strengthened institutional structure continue to deliver the results of the technical cooperation to the ultimate end-users? The results may not be sustainable if, for example, the planning unit strengthened by the technical cooperation ceases to have access to top-management or is not provided with adequate resources for the effective performance after the technical cooperation terminated. Note that institutional sustainability can also be linked to the concept of social sustainability, how the interventions can be sustained by social structures and institutions;

* Economical and financial sustainability: Can the results of the technical cooperation continue to yield an economic benefit after the technical cooperation is withdrawn? For example, the benefits from the introduction of new crops may not be sustained, if the constraints to marketing the crops are not resolved. Similarly, economic (distinct from financial) sustainability may be at risk, if the end-users continue to depend on heavily-subsidized activities and inputs.

* Ecological sustainability: Are the benefits to be generated by the technical cooperation likely to lead to a deterioration in the physical environment (thus indirectly contributing to a fall in production) or well-being of the groups targeted and their society?

javascript:if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf(’Safari’) >= 0){Q=getSelection();}else{Q=document.selection?document.selection.createRange().text:document.getSelection();}void(window.open(’http://sustainability.blogsome.com/wp-admin/bookmarklet.php?text=’+encodeURIComponent(Q)+’&popupurl=’+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+’&popuptitle=’+encodeURIComponent(document.title),’WordPress bookmarklet’,’scrollbars=yes,width=600,height=460,left=100,top=150,status=yes’));
Press It - Sustainability News and Resources

There are two related categories of thought on environmental sustainability. In 1968 the Club of Rome, a group of European economists and scientists, was formed. In 1972 they published Limits to Growth. Criticized by economists of the time, the report predicted dire consequences because humans were using up the Earth’s resources and it advocated as one solution the abandonment of economic development. There followed the formation of groups sympathetic to the general premise that human society was growing too quickly and/or using up its resources, including the founding of the Worldwatch Institute in 1975.

In a different category, other groups formed to focus less on population—growth control and slowing economic development and more on establishing environmental standards and enforcement. In retrospect, while some of the predictions made in Limits to Growth have proved to have been unfounded or premature, the warning it sounded is regarded as valid by many today.[1]

The modern concept of environmental sustainability goes back to the post-World War II period, when a utopian view of technology-driven economic growth gave way to a perception that the quality of the environment was linked closely to economic development. Interest grew sharply during the environmental movements of the 1960s, when popular books such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) and The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (1968) raised public awareness.