I'm uncomfortable isolating one part of a continuum from the whole spectrum. I will provide an answer by providing my current understanding of that spectrum:

Sustainability = the ability of a community to meet all the needs of all its citizens, using the skills of the population and the ecological services from the biomes it manages, in perpetuity.

Economic Sustainability = the ability of a community to meet its needs through internal trade arrangements and co-management relationships with other communities, so that no skills, resources, or ecological services are required to be purchased from outside of the community and its partners, to meet needs, in perpetuity.

Social Sustainability = the ability of a community to ensure that all of the needs of all of its citizens can be met in less than 24 hours per day per capita.

Ecological Sustainability = the ability of a community to maintain the ecological services being provided by the landmass being managed by the community, including a non-declining portion of each biome that acts as neither a sink for wastes nor a source of resources.

Environmental sustainability is the ability to maintain rates of renewable resource harvest, pollution creation, and non - renewable resource depletion that can be continued indefinitely. Economic sustainability is the ability to support a defined level of economic production indefinitely. Mountains are rich in unique, often defined, production niches. Another aspect of marginality is the harsh environment for biological life in mountains. For more details consult www.academia.edu - Mountain_Ecosystem

Thanks prof Sylvester but I would like to know only environment sustainability practices factors can measure sustainability?

Dear Halima

You can try with:

* Educating people on good environmental practices

* Recycling for many different products, from cars to water

* Stringent laws against contamination

* Incorporating externalities in the economic balance of a country (GDP)

* Aquifers, establishing appropriate rates for water extraction to make sure that they do not larger that the natural replenishment rates

* Non-renewable resources. Recycling and reducing their mining

* Renewable resources, making sure that usage is less than generation

* Growth rates in forests

* Erosion control after logging for instance

* In manufacturing, reducing air, soil and water contamination

* In fishing, by establishing fishing quotas according to reproduction

* Good practices in designing landfills for domestic garbage

* By synergy, using the waste of one industry as input for another

* Determining differential benefits of wind and photovoltaic electric generation, considering contamination produced by manufacturing wind turbines and PV cells and their disposal

Thanks dear Prof Nolberto

Halima,

Try to link environment sustainability with:

• Water security
• climate change
• biodiversity
• food security
• energy security
• ecosystems service

By so doing this you can stream line environment sustainability@ Halima Begum

Economic performance is crucial for firms to comply with environmental and social performance. Firms that are not economically stable cannot perform well in the environmental and social activities due to the higher cost associated with that. Avoiding economic performance may not explain the sustainability as a whole.

Dear Mohammad Hasan Shakil I agreed with you. But i want to do identify on factors of Environment sustainability alone to define sustainability. As, envsp has large effect on sustainability.

Thanks for your answer.

Sounds interesting. Looking forward to see your research on that particular area.

Thanks Hassan.

You are welcome.

You are most welcome Halima

I'm uncomfortable isolating one part of a continuum from the whole spectrum. I will provide an answer by providing my current understanding of that spectrum:

Sustainability = the ability of a community to meet all the needs of all its citizens, using the skills of the population and the ecological services from the biomes it manages, in perpetuity.

Economic Sustainability = the ability of a community to meet its needs through internal trade arrangements and co-management relationships with other communities, so that no skills, resources, or ecological services are required to be purchased from outside of the community and its partners, to meet needs, in perpetuity.

Social Sustainability = the ability of a community to ensure that all of the needs of all of its citizens can be met in less than 24 hours per day per capita.

Ecological Sustainability = the ability of a community to maintain the ecological services being provided by the landmass being managed by the community, including a non-declining portion of each biome that acts as neither a sink for wastes nor a source of resources.

Dear Douglas

Impossible not to agree with your well explained definitions

However, I don't exactly understand the meaning of 'including a non-declining portion of each biome that acts as neither a sink for wastes nor a source of resources'

Could you pls. explain it?

Exactly prof Nolberto..I also could not understand. I am following..

There has to be some land set asside from each biome as wilderness, to act as a seed stock when our understanding of the natural world falls short. I’ll use the cod fishery off the Grand Banks in Canada as an example.

Fisheries have a high rate of reproduction, with ecological interest rates in the order of 10 percent annually. That also means that a slight over -harvest will have significant impacts. Canada over-harvested for a few years, and decimated the stocks. If only we had left a population untouched... we would have recovered by now.

Interesting. I am also in a question: how to assess sustainability in relationship with liveability and water security in the urban environment. My understanding so far: Sustainability refers to a desired state of condition that exists over a prolonged period of time. In my case, it refers to the long-term liveability and water security that is ensured via planning and management interventions. I found that the issues and challenges related to the sustainability of environment are multiple and complex in nature. To understand sustainability, we need a systems thinking approach to understand the complexity of interaction and connections between different factors of sustainability.

I followed this discussion and I highlighted the definition from Douglas that sustainability refers to the ability of a community to meet, ensure, and maintain all the needs of society related to economy, social, and the environment. Thanks

Dear Titih

I agree with you on several counts, especially when you say about planning and management interventions. It is essential since because the increasing population and demands, Nature can't manage by itself, it has a limit. Humankind needs to develop mechanisms such as recycling to help mother nature, and that means control, for instance regulating water extraction from water wells, to keep in harmony with its natural replenishment

Recycling is basic, most especially in non-renewable resources.

We need to educate people to consume with responsibility, not only in quantity, but also exerting pressure to avoid, for instance, the absurd demonstration of waste in packaging products, when they can be sold in bulk. This is related with the contamination of the oceans where there are very large 'islands' of garbage, mainly plastics, which in turn affects aquatic live, and in turn, our lives

Because of that, the other portion of your message with which I fully share, is the necessity to consider the very complex interactions as you mention

Nolberta - perhaps I don't understand your meaning fully, but Nature can certainly manage by itself. Even if fully managed and supported by people, there will still be a limit.

Titih - Livability: I would approach from the whole, and pare it down to any given sub-set. How much time do people spend at activities related to 'livability' needs? What are the symptoms of those needs not being met (in individuals, families, or in the community as a whole)? For those people with those symptoms, how much time do they use at activities that should meet their needs? How much time would they need if they were able to meet those needs? What obstructions are there in the self, family, or community that prevent those needs from being met effectively? What Human Development will increase that effectiveness of how these needs are met? What Technological Development will increase the efficiency of how time is used to convert resources into the means to meet needs? Can that development be done such that there is no greater burden than benefit in terms of time, for any identifiable subset of the community?

Water security is a big deal for at least half of the world's population. Intense water reuse and significant improvements in water efficiency can only go so far. You probably don't want to take lessons from only me (a water resources engineer in a water-rich country), but a 4 water system can make good sense in the right settings.

• In early agrarian settings, communities were limited in size by the water supply. Rich people lived upstream, poor people downstream, and if you lived downstream of everyone, you got sick and died - automatic population controls.
• The Romans brought in aqueducts and sewers, and created a 2-water system. Still rich people upstream, and poor people downstream, but the poor people didn't have to drink the waste of the rich, and community scale could grow dramatically.
• In the last 100 years, we have instituted sanitary sewage treatment, necessitating a 3rd water stream - black water, separate from stormwater - grey water. Megapolis is now possible.
• I would think there are cases where a 4th water system - white water (filtered grey water) can be distributed to each home, and reduce both the amount and type of infrastructure required, and reduce the impact of drought. It would be used to flush toilets, irrigate lawns and crops, fight fires, and can used even for heating and cooling if there is enough. It can be drawn from stormwater ponds and filtered, with the backwash going to the black-water system. The treated white water (blue water) would be a tiny pipe (10mm diameter, for example) coming to each home - it could be plowed into place with really simple tools. If there is a drought or the like, the white water can be shut off, while the blue water is still maintained. White water would be generated, collected, and distributed locally.

There will be other solutions that may work better in your setting.

Halima Begum Nolberto Munier Douglas Nuttall Titih Titisari Danielaini

The ability to maintain equilibrium with our environmental resources is called environmental sustainability. In other words, the rate of regeneration should be equal to the rate of depletion.

Certain anthropogenic impacts are not irreversible such as a nuclear disaster, oil spill etc. During such type of events the environment needs a larger period of time to recover and that's the reason these events are termed man made catastrophes. Also, the recovery process needs a lot of of human support such as ocean cleansing.

There is economic sustainability. If something doesn´t support itself economically ($$$), it´s long term continuation is compromised.

There is social sustainability. If the people´s (citizens, workforce, etc.) well being, psychologically as well as physiologically speaking, are not healthy enough, their long term prospects will suffer.

And then, there is also environmental sustainability. If the environment we live and work in is not sustainable, be it at a local, regional or global level, (think water that we drink, land and materials that we use and discard, species that we help strive or bring to extinction, etc.), it can have negative consequences in the short, medium and/or long term. (Think also climate change and the natural disasters it can help create or reinforce, etc.).

Often all 3 are interrelated to a greater or lesser degree.

The 3 pillars of sustainability in picture atached:

Dear Douglas

Thank you for answering my question about setting aside each kind of biome. Your answer is of course irrefutable, and as a matter of fact I believe that something is being done such as the preservation of some wilderness in many countries, the reserves, especially in Africa for wild life, the many places under the protection of the United Nations by declaring them World's Heritage, to protect our cultural roots, etc.

Regarding what I said that sometimes Nature can't manage by itself, I refer to that anthropogenic 'excesses', when surpassing the limits of Nature resilience. As a clear example probably you have read about the consequences of the in discriminated fishing in the Pacific coast of Peru, I think it was in the 70s, when the anchovies were almost wiped out of the sea. It was necessary to halt fishing operations for a couple of years to allow the replenishment of the stock, and from then on putting in effect fishing quotas. This is an example of what I mean that Nature not always can manage a situation.