| Along this river in Jakarta, Indonesia, people use the river for cleaning kitchenware, bathing, washing clothes, and a toilet. The government announced initiatives to improve living conditions but the people rejected any change. |
Sustainability. This word had been used for some time in international environmental circles but seems to have gotten its jump start in about 1986 when the book Our Common Future was published. Known as the Brundtland report, named after its primary writer, then Norwegian environmental minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the report used the word with a somewhat different meaning from what has become popular in the United States.
When the word sustainability was originally used, it was in the expressions "sustainable development" and "sustainable resources." It referred to the desirability of managing environmental resources and activities in developing countries in such a way that the resources would not be diminished or depleted and thereby retard or prevent economic and social development - which would eliminate poverty. Part of the reasoning was that because poverty is one of the major causes of overuse of environmental resources, eliminating poverty is the only way to prevent such overuse. If, for example, a country rampantly depleted its natural resources, such as woodlands, farmlands, grazing lands, wildlife and fisheries, there would be no economic foundation upon which to become a developed country - and eliminate poverty. In short, sustainability referred to managing resources such that the supply of those resources would be replenishable.
Some years later, in the early or perhaps mid 1990s, people in the United States started using the word sustainability but it took on new meaning. Well, not exactly a whole new meaning. It took on meaning in terms of what U.S. citizens are familiar with - survival of business and industry - rather than conservation of natural resources. Thus you'll read about an industry that is working to remain sustainable, which often means it is simply trying to manage its business so as to survive. It has nothing or little to do with environment.
It is changes in meaning like this that contribute to problems in international environmental affairs. For one thing, if South and Southeast Asian governments (for example) are talking about sustainability in terms of natural resources but people in the United States are talking about sustainability in terms of business survival, it is hard for each to understand the other. Does the American use of the word sustainability demean its use in Asia? Do the different meanings keep American policy makers in Washington from making effective decisions about international environmental issues?
Another problem with the business-survival definition used in the United States is that it allows people to avoid facing the true issue of sustainable
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