Sustainability is the ability of a community to be able to meet all the needs of all of it's citizens using the resources/ecological services of the land it manages and is obligated to, and the skills of the population, in perpetuity.

Sustainable Development is an increase in the quality of life within the community through Human or Technological Development, in a manner that focusses on human needs and resources/ecological services that will not become exhausted during the lifespan of the community.

I would measure Sustainability as the time that would be available within the community for activities other than those required to meet needs, while considering the future time cost associated with using resources in a manner that can't be maintained past the planning horizon, as if all needs were being met. Sustainable Development would require a positive change in that time.

The tools, methods, and methodologies - this is a very long answer, and I'm going to keep this short. Mostly, we use indicators, because the system manager requires a wide range of indicators to understand how the system is reacting to changes and to make sure it's heading in the preferred direction. Of course, system designers can't use indicators, but rather must understand the relationships of how the various competing influences interact, and use units of measure, and seek to optimize - in this case, optimize long-term well-being against negative ecological impacts.

Project sustainability can as well be looked at as the contnuity of project interventions even with out the support of the development proponent.Many times ,projects collapse emmediately when the proponent is no longer in the project area.

some of the heavy projects by Government and other development agencies become white elephants due to inadequacies in sustainability planning.

One of the main sustainability strategies of development projects is the concept of ownership.Ownership means that project beneficiaries wear the entire project and are able to sacrifice their resources to run the project even beyond the project schedule,scope and cost.

For ownership to happen,intended project beneficiaries and other key stakeholders should be engaged in all stages of the project cycle using a range of Participatory Rural Appraisal tools e.g community mapping,transect walks,seasonal calendars,stakeholder analysis andranking,pairwise ranking, etc.These tools are used to understand the community:-the problems,resources,culture and finally be able to identify the most pressing need and the most suitable solutions...Targeted groups need to be part of this.

Sustainable development also requires integration of various community capitals e.g financial,physical,cultural,human,social,natural and other capitals in a rather more synergising manner.

Tools like risk assessment, life-cycle assessment, benefit-cost analysis, sustainable impact assessment, stake holder analysis and categorisation can give an idea on the extent of sustainability.

Grace Andrea Montoya Rojas, Thank you for your response. The soil topic is important. But sustainability develops a balance between economic, social and environmental. What are the tools to make the economy more efficient?

Douglas Nuttall , thank you for your answer. Global sustainability is a problem for local authorities. There are a number of actions to reduce the consumption of natural resources (for example https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/en/, the 20/20/20 goals, et al.). But, what are the tools for organizations? Why do companies report their sustainability? There are a number of tools for process efficiency (RECP, Lean, Kanban, lifecycle assessment, etc.). why organizations should develop sustainable? Is it a condition or a buzzword?

Posiano Musiime, thank you for you answer. Sustainability is a complex concept. Risk assessment is a component part of sustainable development. Life cycle assessment is a good method. Often the reduction of production waste involves high costs. Is it a good activity? How to balance the application of these methods?

Larisa Ivascu , those are good questions.

An individual, like a corporation, is too ephemeral to be sustainable in and of themselves. But both can act to make it easier for the communities they are part of to be sustainable. It requires that the community is clear about how they are accomplishing their goals - this is generally insufficient for a variety of reasons, including over simplification of indicators, wrong scale of planning (spatial and temporal), insufficient authority, political expediency, and so on.

For a corporation to be 'Sustainable', they would have to ensure that they are acting to increase well being within the community (and the community is the same size as the scale of their market) with respect to ecological impact. If they are doing that, profit will follow, as will community sustainability.

The process would be:

i) Answer the unanswered questions. Use community data. If there is community data that is unavailable, then the CSR activities must help the community collect this data, so that it can be used by all businesses seeking CSR.

ii) Know what you’re doing. Determine the business use of critical resources and natural services. Calculate the ecological footprint of the products and services being sold by the company. Compare this to the ecological footprint and biocapacity of the community. Show that the non-renewable critical resources being extracted from the landmass managed by the community is being done in a manner that considers the declining reserve of the resources and the expected end of production. Critical resources being consumed by the business or are being exported are surplus to the community’s needs. Determine the life-cycle time used to create products and services. Determine the reduction in time used within the community served because of the products and services being sold, including all of the end-of-life costs. This is the direct time benefit. Calculate the Net Time Benefit of the goods and services by subtracting the sum of the life cycle used to create the products and services and the ecological footprint of the goods and services multiplied by the slope of the community Resource/Time curve.

iii) Know your impact. Calculate the change in how effectively people meet their needs because of the goods and services provided. Determine the Actualized Quality of Life of the community with the planned business activities, and without them, for the current business planning cycle. Calculate the change in how effectively people meet their needs after the non-renewable resources become exhausted. Determine the Actualized Quality of life of the community post-cessation of business activities.

iv) Serve your customer well. Show the AQoL of the community with the planned business activities is higher than the AQoL of the community without them. If it does not, then the CSR activities must find a way of improving the AQoL of the community presently. Identify which unmet needs in the community can be addressed better by improvements to your goods and services.

v) Leave a good legacy. Show that the future Community does not have a lower AQoL than the present condition without the goods and services provided. If it does, then the CSR activities must find a way of improving the future Community AQoL, in addition to all other activities.

vi) Build resilient communities. CSR activities can increase community resilience specifically. This can be done by ensuring:

(1) a non-declining portion of the biomes that the community manages is retained as ‘wilderness’ that is neither a source for resources nor a sink for wastes;

(2) a financial reserve in the individuals, families, business, and government to be able to address financial shocks. Restocking the reserve must be quick, but not to create a hardship;

(3) that all of the people can meet all of their needs in something less than 24 hours per day per capita. Not all of the people must have all their needs met all the time, only that it must not be impossible for them to meet them all.

Companies report their CSR initiatives for 2 reasons. First they have spent a fair bit of effort getting things 'right', and they are proud of what they have done and want to tell the world. The second is that it's good marketing. Eventually, it will become mandatory to demonstrate they are good global citizens, but we're not there yet.

'Why' is a great question. Most companies don't want to cease to exist before their shareholders do. So that means they want to make sure the source of the resources they use will continue to provide, the skills of the work force can still convert those resources, and the market for the products will continue to maintain demand, and products at the end of life will continue to be disposed of. If any one of those steps fails, the company (or at least that production line) fails. CSR can be used to identify where those conditions are at risk, and act to mitigate and/or adapt to that risk. This in turn can be used to entice investment, by reducing the downside substantially.

There is obviously an economic reason, too. The corporation must maximize profits for the shareholders, but there is nothing saying that it must be over a specific time period. If one were to choose to maximize over a period of decades to centuries, then following 'Sustainable' business approaches is the only viable business plan.

And lastly (not because there aren't other reasons, but rather it's late and I want to go to bed), there is a moral reason. Business is generally amoral by statute and inclination - maybe even sociopathic. But the people working for the corporation will have grand children at some point, and we may want to make sure their grandchildren have as much hope available to them as we did.

@ Grace Andrea Montoya Rojas, thank you for your answer. Have a nice day,

Larisa

Dear Douglas Nuttall,

Very interesting your points. I invite you to write an article together. My faculty, the Faculty of Management in Production and Transport, has an interesting journal. This journal e is BDI indexed.

You can find the details here: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Scientific-Bulletin-of-Politehnica-University-of-Timisoara-Transaction-on-Engineering-and-Management

Regards,

Larisa

Hello Larisa,

I am a believer that Sustainability can be measured. For me it is the ability to improve or create X without adding Y. In other words, it is possible to improve or solve a problem but by doing so you create another problem? The answer is yes and that is a problem :-)

The measurement of its overall value, positive or negative, is sometimes is not known for years, the current PFSA problems in drinking water as an example, and that is another problem.

The best case scenario, is when your actions, products, or services can improve the overall Sustainability of others, personal or corporate as in SDG#6. For us that is what we strive for with our Inventions, and what we have accomplished.

Cheers

The term sustainability have no common definition that suits all areas and address the measurement challenges. In organisational perspective, large and small firms have different parameters to measure organisational sustainability.

Sustainability orientation starts with behavioural factors and may end with structural one. Considering, economic, environmental and social dimension each dimension is focusing on overall objective with structural changes such as technologies, policies, regulation but most important human capital is missing.

Thank you, Aaron Morrison and Manvendra pratap Singh. Do you know a tool for sustainability assessment? We can use GRI's sustainability reporting framework.

Thank you,

Larisa

Larisa Ivascu Yes, GRI is one among the standard framework that can be used fo r SR. IR is in nascent stage.

Agreed. There is some interesting and very active discussions around SDAG in relation to the UN SDG Goals. Other focus on this subject can be found at Ethical Corporation. Cheers

Following interesting question.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is an educational approach that promotes the development of the knowledge, skills, understanding, values and actions required to create a sustainable world, which ensures environmental protection and conservation, promotes social equity and encourages economic sustainability.

UNESCO aims to improve access to quality education on sustainable development at all levels and in all social contexts, to transform society by reorienting education and help people develop knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors in their personal lives, within their community and also at a global scale for sustainable development.

Very important for every organisation.

Sustainability could be measured through the 17 SDGs (....), 169 targets (....), 3 dimensions (Economic, Environmental, Social), and 5Ps (People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership).

Jide Eroh, but how we can measure this indicators? for example: social dimension....?