Let's talk about "Sustainability"

What is sustainability?

As an English word, Sustainability is the ability to be maintained at a certain level or rate. As a concept, it means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

As of recent, there has been a loud uproar on the impact of human rapid consumerism on the environment in all aspects. Humans are consuming resources at a very fast rate to meet their day to day needs, these needs require limited resources to produce them and require more resources to maintain the production of these ‘needs’.

This behavioural pattern has let to misuse of environmental natural resources, where the ecosystem is stunted at several levels of functioning as humans grow in population, and discover more ways to exhaust these resources.

There are three pillars on which sustainability stands and these are;

Environmental, Social and Economic

The concept is developed from the idea that human being have the ultimate capability of fulfilling each and everyone’s needs fairly without exposing any of these resources (human and environmental) to depletion. The concept suggests that these three principles should be able to operate simultaneously to sustain this and the next generations to come without reducing the quality of life, and the amount of resources the world has.

Social Sustainability

It is geared towards redirecting social behaviour to a minimalist lifestyle that does not expose humans to the dangers of greed, lust and a social class system that serves to unevenly distribute resources. This required channeling individual consumer patterns to a minimalist lifestyle that is meaningful, healthy and sustainable. Meaning that if there are two people working in the same company, one is the CEO and the other is the janitor. Both humans have the responsibility of providing a symbiosis that will benefit the other equally with out elevating one over the other. The janitor should be able to have a decent meal, shelter and clothing, this means that the CEO has a great responsibility to ensure a minimalist lifestyle that will be driven by providing the best work benefits for his employees without creating an immense gap in the social standards of living. Social sustainability has a lot to do with the individual, which then translates to a community. If a community has the same bad consumerism behaviour, the impact of this will be felt collectively. Therefore it is a principle that should be instilled into humans through awareness and promotion of a minimalist life that is not hazardous to its existence. The use of statements such as ”charity begins at home’, ‘ be the change you want to see’, ‘small changes big impact’ should be used more often to change what has not been apparent to humans to a more elevated level of thinking and behaving. This is known as staying “woke” nowadays.

Economic Sustainability

The economic principle of sustainability suggests that actions undertaken by humans to capitalise environmental resources should consider the viability of the ventures. The economic ventures should be able to secure a reasonable amount of financial and environmental resources without depletion, exposure to depletion and should not be wasteful towards these resources. It should also serve to ensure equitability on all the levels. It should not be that the less work you do the more you are paid, these ventures should serve social/public needs for all. An example of an economic venture that is not viable is the use of under age children for labour, poor working conditions, late payments and out right lack of value for human rights, whether as an investor, share holder, consumer and worker. The economic venture should also have an objective to preserve or conserve environmental resources and give back to the environment.

Environmental sustainability

This is the golden principle of them all, that governs our existence as humans as we experience this beautiful life. This is the umbrella to the previous concepts as it puts the environment in a divine light, a beautiful place that is supposed to nurture and sustain ecosystems that precede all existence. Since humans have developed the highest level of civilisation, this has required earthly resources to achieve technologies needed to fulfil the levels of civilisation. With this, humanity had been faced with a challenge in the past few decades where the systems created to distribute resources only serve a few people while leaving the many with little or nothing.

The good news is that in the recent decade, humans have realised the impact of this rapid development and its impact on environmental resources. There has been a wide spread awareness of the carbon footprint left behind by this generation and how it will affect the livelihoods of future generations.

This concept requires that every action we take weather social or economic should be geared toward replacing used resources. Many companies have now taken on Social Corporate responsibilities that follow rules and regulations in line with environmental laws. Corporate Social responsibility to the companies is a way of giving back to the environment through many ways such building schools for poor communities, providing running water for people living in drought, and planting trees to reduce the carbon emission by a percent. Companies have been closed due to poor working conditions that do not serve sustainability at a social level. Factories have been given rules and percentages of carbon emissions and waste. All these efforts are to reverse the danger we exposed ourselves to in the past century.

It starts with you

Small steps equal big changes, this means that if each and every individual is educated on the impact of their lifestyle, collectively, we could change the course of scary events bound to happen if we do not change our way of life. This means minimalism in all aspects, respect for ecosystems, consuming not what is desired but what is needed, producing what is needed not what can be bought. This collective cautiousness and being “woke” not only benefits our lives, by protecting us from vulturous intentions of the selfish few but also enables us live a sustainable life. By awareness of actions like “reuse, recycle, plant a tree”, these small individual changes are in turn going to create a meaningful life that does not take away from anyone, and does not deplete resources for the sustenance of future generations.

Conclusion

As a human, that is part of this generation, I happen to aware of these principles and it is my obligation to disseminate this knowledge to the people that I am able to reach, to ensure small individual changes that will make a huge impact. It is your duty now that you are woke, to educate those that are not and keep the ball rolling to save our home and all that exists in it.