Abstract
The ability of individuals and institutions to take actions that would achieve sustainability is often lost in rhetoric about what it is or isn’t and how to measure progress. Typically, sustainability is viewed as an objective and in this capacity efforts are made to identify indicators and to manage the environment to save it from civilization or to minimize human impact upon it. However, our intention to measure sustainability as an objective sets us in the wrong direction. Indicators of this objective measure deviations of the human or environmental condition from sustainability, but to sustain requires that no appreciable deviation has occurred. Viewed from this perspective, sustainability must be redefined and a new set of metrics must be identified to guide actions that avoid losses. These metrics must define the boundaries of human activities relative to environmental capabilities and to provide early warning signs of conditions that would be unfavorable to human life and signal a need to change. Once established, these metrics can be used as planning criteria so that they inform and become a measure of human actions. This enables progress toward civilization within the context of an environment that is able to sustain human life and is itself able to be sustained.
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Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a green building program by the US Green Building Council. http://www.usgbc.org/.
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Green Globes is a green building program by the Canadian equivalent of the LEED program (see above). http://www.greenglobes.com/design/homeca.asp.
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Sustainable Sites Initiative is a program by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the US Botanic Garden to measure how a site can protect, restore, and regenerate ecosystem services. http://www.sustainablesites.org/report/.
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The Congress of New Urbanism is establishing new standards for green design at the neighborhood. http://www.cnu.org/.
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The Smart Growth Network uses a partnership between the US EPA and several non-profit and government organizations to encourage development that serves the economy, community, and the environment. http://www.smartgrowth.org/about/default.asp.
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Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus.
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This conditional relationship is well established in much of the literature:
…development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED 1987).
…development that improves the quality of human life while living within the capacity of supporting ecosystems (IUCN 1997; Bell and Morse 1998).
…development that delivers basic environmental, social, and economic services to all without threatening the viability of the natural, built, and social systems upon which these services depend (Brugmann 1996).
…economic development to be compatible with constraints set by the natural environment… (Leisinger 1995).
…global development that can be maintained across generations in an environmentally and socially acceptable way (Umweldbundesamt 1997).
…maximizing the net benefits of economic development, subject to maintaining the services and quality of natural resources over time (Bell and Morse 1998).
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These conditions and preconditions individually constitute measures of sustainable environments and function as sheet music does for a musician, i.e., they inform how to perform, and collectively they measure the quality of the performance.
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Hansen, V. (2013). Measuring Sustainability: Deriving Metrics from a Secure Human–Environment Relationship. In: Jawahir, I., Sikdar, S., Huang, Y. (eds) Treatise on Sustainability Science and Engineering. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6229-9_7
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