UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABILITY

 Meaning of Sustainability

Sustainability is a buzzword commonly used by business leaders, politicians, activists and academicians just to mention a few. It is a word used to mean different things to different people (Shearman, 1990). Shearman (1990) argued that sustainability as a word carry no meaning other than a modifier to the context in which it is used. Additionally, it is a discriminating term that distinguishes sustainable and unsustainable instances. Moreover it differs from the context in which it is used. Sustainability can be used as a dictionary meaning (lexical meaning) and implicative definition which explain the significance of something with the focus on long term orientation.

There are three pillars of sustainability which are environment, society (social) and economy sustainability (Hacking & Guthrie, 2008) but I concur with Shearman (1990) who added ethics and good governance as another pillar of sustainability to make four pillars of sustainability. Social definition of sustainability is continued satisfaction of human needs such as food, security freedom, education, employment and recreation whereas the ecological definition of sustainability refers to continued productivity and functioning of ecosystems whereas sustainable economic development refers to continued process that sets its goal towards the improvement of social well being through the production and acquisition of economic goods or services (Shearman, 1990). Packalen (2010) defined sustainability as a discourse about ways of thinking, values, culture and lifestyle that aim at shaping human kind for a desirable future. Implying that if one wants to make sustainability agenda sustainable, one has to start by changing people’s way of thinking into right and positive thinking then other variables in the sustainability equation such as economy, environment and biodervisty will be sustainable as well.

The term sustainability, however, has been politicised deliberately to justify the significance of environmental sensitive programs and usage of funds (O’ Riordan, 1988).This implies that people who consider sustainability as a word that refers to external physical environment only are wrong since they forget very important element in the sustainability equation called human element. Human element comprises of individuals, societies, business leaders, military and political leaders. That is why Packalen (2010) commented that in order to have sustainable world for human kind in the future, all stakeholders must be involved. Additionally, Karp (2003) argued that management of many corporations fail because they think very narrowly based on language of economics and profit gains only without thinking about vast needs of other stakeholders such as employees, local and  central governments, biodiversity and societies/communities where the businesses operate just to mention a few.

Similarly, World commission on environment and development (1987) pointed out critical issues that need to be considered in the pursuit of sustainability or sustainable development such as political systems that secure effective citizen participation in decision making, economic system that is able to generate surpluses, technological knowledge on self reliant and sustainable basis, social system that provides for solution for the tension arising from disharmonious development, production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development, technological system that search for new solutions and international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance plus administrative system which is flexible and has capacity for self correction.

This essay takes its definition on sustainability from Shearman (1990) and Packalen (2010).