Often the three pillars of sustainability are presented equally using a Venn diagram, but sometimes they are shown in hierarchical order as environmental, social, and economic. What's the reasoning behind it? Is it because, for instance, no economy exists without a society, and now society exists without an environment surrounding it?
Dear S M Anas,
In my opinion, there is a hierarchy between the three pillars of sustainable development (environmental, social and economic) presented in the form of a Venn diagram. In a situation where this hierarchy is presented in the following way: the environmental, social and economic sphere, it is consistent with the conditions of the historiosophical development of certain areas of knowledge, science, but also their appearance in reality, and taking into account the ontological, epistemological and axiological description of individual components individual interrelated three spheres of sustainable development. First, as a result of billions of years of evolution, certain natural environments were created, including biodiverse natural ecosystems functioning in specific geological, geographical environments, climatic zones, etc. Therefore, the environmental sphere is primary. In this primary environmental sphere, one can also find primary examples of sustainability that developed in natural ecosystems functioning under certain conditions of the natural environment and climate. Then, in this natural environment, a man was created who is a social being. Therefore, on the basis of the environmental sphere, a social sphere was created, within which man created and develops civilization. At a specific stage of the development of civilization, technical inventions arise, thanks to which manufactories turn into factories for mass, serial, mass production of goods, i.e. products and later also services. During the first industrial revolution, new types of enterprises, new management systems, supply logistics, production and distribution of manufactured goods develop. Thanks to the invention of the steam engine, the development of industry significantly accelerated in the 19th century. Light industry (e.g. textile) and heavy industry (e.g. mining and metallurgy) are developing rapidly, rail transport is developing, and at the end of the 19th century also other types of transport. At the end of the nineteenth century, the electrification of industry and the needs of communal and individual households developed rapidly. Under the conditions of the first industrial revolution, a new reality is emerging in which the description of economic processes begins to play an important role. Within the framework of various trends of economic schools, economics is emerging as a separate field of knowledge and science. At the same time, a man-made civilization begins to emit more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The process that was later called the global warming process began as one of the most important elements of the progressive climate change of planet Earth. Therefore, within the social sphere, i.e. civilization developed by man, the economic sphere is created. This is my interpretation of this hierarchy of the three main spheres of sustainable development.
Best regards,
Happy New Year 2021
Dariusz Prokopowicz
well done Darius, your answer to the question is very well put, agree with you
The problem might have started as hierarchial historically but is now simultaneously determined with different paths and might evolve to have a life of its own.
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