The Brundtland Commission, working under the auspices of the United Nations, came up with the most famous definition in its 1987 publication:

The ability of humanity to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

If this seems sort of vague and hard to put into practice, well, it is. But it also seems pretty common sensical. The concept is also multi-dimensional. Some of the more important dimensions include ecological, economic and cultural sustainability. Missing any one of those, it isn’t likely that one has a sustainable system or development movement. Ecological sustainability implies that resources are being used at a rate that does not exceed their production–i.e., if economies are growing faster than nature is (and growth can’t happen without energy and resources), then the economic growth is unsustainable. Someone, somewhere, is paying a price for that growth, either in the present or the future. This means that minerals (petroleum, metals), the product of long stretches of time, heat, and compression, are either endlessly abundant, or should be treated as precious and scarce resources and managed carefully. They’re not renewable. As economist E.F. Schumacher pointed out four decades ago, they are not income, they are capital:

“Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably leads to violence between men.”

Economic sustainability is important, because without it, no matter how wonderful an idea ecological sustainability might be, the latter isn’t likely to be very popular. People need some form of gainful livelihood. Thus economic sustainability implies that the economy can still support its members, without a drastically reduced standard of living required. The occupant of the White House at any given time, as well as Congressional politicians seeking re-election, are pressured to opt for economic sustainability over ecological sustainability, contending that although the environment is important, that there are trade-offs between jobs and the environment. It’s short-term thinking, but if you’re skipping dinner–and not by choice– you may not care much about the future of the planet. You may even go out and cut down some trees to sell for fuel in people’s stoves if it puts food on the table without a thought to deforestation.

A third type of sustainability might be considered cultural sustainability. Think of culture as a system of shared beliefs, values, symbols, and artifacts (in other words, it’s both shared ideas and concepts, and shared material stuff–the tools we use, the kinds of houses we live in, our transportation systems, etc.). A notion of sustainability that doesn’t fit or isn’t consistent with the shared ideas of culture–at least of a prevailing culture that dominates the political landscape–isn’t likely to be sustained. How many car owners would be willing to trade their vehicles in for a bicycle? Or pay luxury tax on second or third vehicles? Most Americans live in a car culture. Would the average middle-class suburban homeowner give up the green, chemical-intensive lawn in the name of ecological sustainability? In our particular case, think of the importance of consumer culture in this country. What would happen if politicians tried to seriously challenge it, either economically or culturally, to promote a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and ethic? What would happen if tomorrow the government banned large diesel-powered, extended cab, 10-ton pick-up trucks (with ‘Support our Troops’ ribbon magnets all over the tailgate)? It’s pretty hard just to convince many people that a ban on plastic bags at stores isn’t some sort of insidious attack on our freedoms (paid for by the American Chemistry Council!).

Why is sustainable development important? Because without it, human societies are using up their resources faster than they’re being produced, and essentially that means we’re borrowing resources that future generations would have needed to maintain the living standards many of us currently enjoy. What happens if your income derives from and depends on depleting wealth (in this case, natural capital)? It also means that to maintain those standards requires that only a small minority of the world’s population can enjoy them. Thus when we take this outside the U.S. and away from the more affluent societies, the idea of sustaining a lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to takes on a darker meaning. Much of the world gets by on an average income somewhere between $1 and $2.

More useful concepts

Keep the idea of sustainable development (SD) in mind, but let’s digress and go over some basic concepts that underlie any notion of SD:

Laws of thermodynamics

1. First law: Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. We’ve discussed these ad nauseum in class, but they are fundamental to the whole point of teaching environment and society. We can’t pull energy out of an empty hat, and we can’t make it go away once we’ve used it. Like matter, we can merely transform it. Pollens fertilize. Flowers are produced, then fruits, then seeds. Seeds disperse. Some germinate, become seedlings, then saplings, then mature trees, they senesce, die, fall, and are decomposed by organisms, with much of their biomass being returned to the soil. But they don’t go away, nor do they come from nothing. And they wouldn’t grow without all the other resources necessary to permit it–soil with nutrients, rainfall, sunlight, etc. So . . . energy is similar. A river valley is dammed. Gravity is used to force water through turbines, which turn and generate electricity. A form of potential energy is converted into something more useful for humans. The electricity is sent along wires and used by consumers, both in residential and commercial settings. We have appliances, light bulbs, heating and cooling, etc. And we transform energy. But it doesn’t go away. We get lots of heat. When we burn fossil fuels we get carbon dioxide, with coal add sulfur dioxide. They create problems for the environment, the atmosphere, the organisms that depend on it. They may favor some organisms or species over other species. For instance the ginkgo tree is an ancient species, in a family all its own. It has been around since the days of volcanism on the earth, and is well-suited to high pollution. Consequently it does well as a landscape tree in urban settings (although the female has a pungent smell when it’s producing its cones).
2. The second law helps explain what happens to the energy. As it is transformed, a loss of organization occurs. This is called entropy. The loss of organization or disorder created is greater than the organization created. The human body is an incredible achievement in organization, but it takes quite a bit of disorder elsewhere to keep in healthy and thriving–more in industrialized than agrarian societies. If you look at the food chain, or a food pyramid, you’ll notice that there is always more biomass below–there is a significant loss of usable energy in its transformation. That’s why it’s more energy efficient to eat plants than meat. The meat concentrates protein, yes. But those animals require large amounts of energy to sustain themselves, whether elk or feedlot cattle. There are whole fuel-intensive industries around the latter.

Ecosystem

This is another concept we’ll use extensively in this course. Here are some definitions:

1. A discrete ecological unit consisting of all of its constituent organisms and its total environment.
2. An ecosystem consists of a dynamic set of living organisms (plants, animals and microorganisms) all interacting among themselves and with the environment in which they live (soil, climate, water and light).
   An ecosystem does not have precise boundaries – it can be as small as a pond or a dead tree, or as large as the Earth itself. An ecosystem can also be defined in terms of its vegetation, animal species or type of relief, for example.
   The major ecosystems are generally described as:
   • aquatic ecosystems – saltwater, freshwater or estuarine (where salt and freshwater meet) ecosystems;
   • terrestrial ecosystems – forests, prairies, deserts, tundra, alpine, etc.
   • Forest ecosystems are characterized by a predominance of trees, and by the fauna, flora and ‘biogeochemical’ cycles (energy, water, carbon and nutrients) with which they are closely associated.
3. An ecosystem is the dynamic and interrelating complex of plant and animal communities and their associated non-living environment. It includes the physical and climactic features and all the living and dead organisms in an area that are interrelated in the transfer of energy and material. It is an interacting complex of a community and its environment functioning as an ecological unit in nature. Differs from “system” in being a more rigorous definition that encompasses and requires assumptions of energetics, ecological interactions, species adaptations and so forth.

There are a few common themes running through these definitions: interaction, dynamics, plants and animals and the non-living environment, system or complex. When ecosystems undergo change, especially as a result of human intervention or activity, their complexity makes it very difficult to predict what will happen, which organisms and species might be favored in the post-disturbance landscape. For instance, clearcutting (a logging practice that involves cutting down all the trees on a site) radically changes sunlight and moisture conditions, favors different plants, maybe helps certain fungi get a foothold, creates food sources for different animals, etc. Clearcutting is often done to encourage regeneration of tree species that do well in exposed conditions with full sun. Ecosystems are one level of organization. Above them are biomes. There are really five types of biomes we discuss: forest, desert, aquatic (including fresh and salt water), grassland, and tundra. Obviously there are many types of forest ecosystems that are under the forest biome classification: boreal forests, temperate and tropical rain forest, dry forests, mountain forests, etc.

These classifications aren’t just so professors can find things to put on exams. They are meaningful classifications that help us understand the landscape, the biota (the living organisms), the effects of climate, the potential to yield resources for humans, etc. A desert, for instance, is going to have a lower carrying capacity for humans than, say, a temperate forest or grassland.

Implicit as well is the idea that there exists in most ecosystems a diverse range of plant and animal species and communities. The idea of biodiversity is thought to be an adaptive trait at the ecosystem level, because when change occurs, there is likely to be enough biological diversity among populations of species that some organisms will have adaptive traits and be able to take advantage of disruptions, and those species better suited to adapt to the new conditions.

A note about evolution

The idea that ecosystems are dynamic is an important one. While we won’t specifically talk about evolution often in here, it is implicit in the notion of the ecosystem. Organisms compete for resources. They are part of a complicated food chain or web, and there are many predator-prey relationships and transfers of energy that take place. Within a species, the environment may favor certain traits over other traits, for instance, an aardvark with a longer snout may have more success in finding certain sources of food (especially sources that animals with shorter snouts can’t access–in other words, it has a competitive niche for instance for ants or termites), is likely to live to live long enough to mate and reproduce young who also have a better chance of having long snouts (and among the ones that do, a better chance of surviving to reproductive age, etc.). On the other hand, ant colonies that are more efficiently organized to defend their colony, or maybe just colonies less easily sighted by an aardvark or located deeper underground, might have an adaptive advantage.

Evolution implies differential reproduction. Individuals with adaptive traits are more likely to live long enough to reproduce, and to produce offspring with a better chance of having those adaptive traits. You’ve probably seen squirrels in the city, crossing the streets on power or phone lines. Not all squirrels do this, but the ones that do, providing they have good balance, may be less likely to end up flattened in the middle of the road. They’re more likely to live long enough to reproduce, and produce offspring whose brains may be wired in such a way that they’re more likely to cross the street on lines. The mechanism, whether it’s something in their neural architecture or not, may be difficult to pinpoint, but if it has a genetic component, it can be transmitted from one generation to the next. Differential reproduction.

Keep in mind that no one species evolves in isolation–most deal with issues related to predation, food supply, etc., that make the situation much more complex and lead to discussion of ‘co-evolution.’ In other words, in the real world, species evolve in a dynamic and non-linear fashion.

As for our squirrels, the human ecosystem, at least in Suburbia, selects for that behavior among squirrels–those that exhibit it have a selective advantage over those that run back, and then out, then back then out, then turn in circles, then OH MY WHAT’S THAT GIANT THING WITH THE HUGE EYES AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! But in a human ecosystem, maybe the town complains about above-ground power or phone lines–they require those beautiful trees planted in the wrong spots to get topped, and there is a movement to bury the cables underground. All the sudden the conditions change, and some squirrels may be better suited to adapting than others–maybe, say, squirrels that tend to nest far from busy streets? And it may just be geographic luck (think about it–many Americans prosper as a result of ‘geographic luck,’ don’t they?). This becomes more relevant as scientists predict fairly rapid change as a result of global warming. It may be ‘easier’ for insects to adapt–they reproduce pretty often, and whatever traits are favored may be passed down genetically in compressed generations, producing prolific offspring with adaptive traits. But with humans, or elephants, or polar bears, with the species that give birth to few young, who take many years to raise, it’s less clear that they would have the same kinds of chances to adapt.

Humans can ‘cheat’–they can use technology. Many of us–author included–would be dead without it–one of many examples: appendicitis would have killed me in 1988. But can animal species be supported technologically? For instance, if the polar bears depend on summer sea ice, and summer sea ice melts, could we provide a robotic ferrying service for polar bears? If that sounds ridiculous, think about what’s been done to try to save salmon–barging smolts spawned in fish hatcheries so they don’t get ground up in dam turbines on their way to the sea??

So ecosystems are in constant flux, even though it doesn’t always seem like it. Human ecosystems probably more so (that is, ecosystems that have a dominant human presence). If your religious beliefs lead you to doubt evolution, that’s fine–but that’s faith, not science, and the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the theory. So even if you disagree with it, you need to understand it to understand human-environment interaction. Humans have a huge effect on other species within their ecosystems. The whole idea of the endangered species act, passed in 1973, was to protect species from human encroachment development, and habitat displacement. Most people can accept the notion of the evolution of non-human species, but the idea that humans evolved from the apes is a bit of a stretch for some. However, the fossil record is quite clear, the genetic material shared between humans and apes nearly identical. So, no one is asking anyone to change his/her beliefs. But beliefs involve faith–believing things unseen. Science involves evidence, logic, theory. Which all fall on the side of evolution in terms of the most compelling information for how life has evolved on this planet. We won’t debate apples and oranges in this class. But you do need to understand the concept and theory of evolution and why it’s important, and also be aware that there is no scientific evidence that humans are somehow exempt from natural laws. You may not believe it, but you must demonstrate an understanding.

Now . . . enter humans. They are a part of most of the ecosystems on the earth, yet often we exclude them when we study ecosystems. What kinds of disruptions do humans cause? Go back to the three basic functions of the environment:

• Living space: Species displacement. For example, cougar habitat is being decreased in communities near the mountains, such as Halfway. We find deer in La Grande because the valley was likely part of their natural habitat. But to survive, they become somewhat domesticated (that is, some animals depend on humans for food and protection).
• Waste: Pollution (sewage, detergents, etc.). We alter the environment and change the requirements of organisms for survival, the opportunities and niches available. For example, sewage and agricultural runoff contribute nitrates to the water, which may be fed on by bacteria, which use up more oxygen in the water, changing the conditions of life for fish and plants. We call this process eutrophication.
• Resource bank: extraction, for example, a clear cut, an open pit mine, commercial fishing, groundwater irrigation. These actions all have consequences for the environment, and some organisms will benefit, others may have to find new places to live, find niches where they can adapt, or risk disappearing. Humans have gone through the same processes through history as well. Were we pushed into agriculture, or did we embrace it? Was Europe nearing its carrying capacity when it ‘discovered’ the ‘new world?’

Some changes are dramatic and permanent, others may be more absorbable within local ecosystem. You should try to come up with examples here. One major impact we have had, and that most of the scientific community agrees on, is depletion of the ozone layer around the earth that protects the planet from ultraviolent rays. We know that rates of cancer go up, plants and animals die or mutate, when they are exposed to excessive UV. We can’t, as former Secretary of the Interior under George Bush Sr., Donald Hodel said, wear hats, sunglasses and sunscreen to protect ourselves from ozone depletion. Why not?

Organization and entropy: Grasping the concepts

Here’s an exercise for you. In this class, we may be seeming to go over and over topics ad nauseum. Think of it as an opportunity to learn how to think in a new way, about the environmental and ecological consequences of human activity. It will serve you well on the midterm and finals in here. Go through these examples, pretty extreme examples of human/environmental organization, and see how well you understand the idea of ecological disorganization, of entropy, of additions and withdrawals.

• A major city (pretty organized, isn’t it?)
• A university (physical, bureaucratic organization)
• Columbian/Snake river system
• A bookshelf (pretty organized, no?)
• Ecosystem (organisms finding niches, responding to environment, EVOLUTION)
• A giraffe
• A skyscraper

Barry Commoner once said that ‘everything is related to everything else’. The authors discuss the example of high sulfur coal. Scientists discovered the role of high sulfur coal in producing sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. Again, order in one place–electricity and all it can do–and disorder elsewhere–acid rain and its effects on water and organisms, the effects of coal mining, etc. Coal-fired power plants created severe pollution and health problems for cities located near them, especially in the Midwest. What to do? Well, Americans are always up for a technological fix. Why not install scrubbers and clean up the smoke stacks and remove the pollutants? This can be done, and has been. What are the ecological consequences? One could increase the height of the smokestacks. This would transport the pollutants into the upper atmosphere, creating less additions locally. This was also done, but it created additions elsewhere, in the form of acid rain in the Northeast and Canada. Or, we could search for sources of coal that had lower sulfur content. Such coal can be found in Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. What are the ecological consequences of transporting low-sulfur coal to coal-fired plants in the Midwest? What are some of the economic consequences, both in Colorado and the Midwest, and as far East as Pennsylvania? If we don’t want a reduction in electricity consumption, should we go nuclear??

Energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So when humans do something somewhere in an ecosystem, there are effects from that felt in the form of waste, of resource depletion, landscape changes, pollution in air, surface and ground water, soil, etc. Additions and withdrawals. What do we use? What do we preserve? These aren’t just academic questions. We all do things every day that contribute to how societies are responding to this question, even if we’re not aware of it.

Sources:

• World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press (from the Brundtland Report)
• Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Gould. 1994. Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict. NY: St. Martin’s.
• E.F. Schumacher. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. NY: Harper & Row.