Interesting.

Ok. Lets start with Brundtland (...needs... compromise future...)

How do you want to identify Needs? Does the consumption meet a Need? How efficiently and effectively are the Needs met?

How do you want to measure how the future is compromised? At what scale?

If it were me, I'd use Max Neef's concept of Needs, except that I would add a little bit. I would also say that needs are met through activities, and data for these activities are available through time-use studies. People who have unmet needs would have symptoms that there was degradation of the self, the family, or the community. I would use a threshold of detectable levels of stress hormones as the indicator of unmet needs, but a deeper study would be required to determine what the unmet needs are. I suspect you'd have to work with the community scale you want to use, to find what the symptoms of unmet needs within that community would be. Maybe they would tell you that Fitness is a Need, and Obesity is a symptom of that Need not being met. Maybe Sleep is a Need, and insomnia and addiction to caffeine are symptom of unmet Sleep. Maybe Love is a Need, and Child Abuse is a symptom it isn't being met. Etc.

I would use either Planetary Boundaries or Ecological Footprint to determine if over-consumption is occurring at the community scale you're working with. I would suggest the future is not compromised if there is no over-consumption, even if human activities are degrading the ecosystems (eg, species loss).

You'd have to split out renewable vs non-renewable ecological services, and renewable and non-renewable resources. Using non-renewable resources and/or ecological services would incur a cost or penalty (more on that later).

And I would use Daly's Rules as a guideline, to make sure I've got everything in my math.

I'm going to use Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity for the rest of this conversation, but Planetary Boundaries would work equally well - the details of the math changes, but the outcome should be effectively the same.

There will be a relationship for each community between the EF and the time used to meet needs. The slope of that curve at the Community Managed Biocapacity is the relationship for the community, were it consuming sustainability, to exchange consumption for time. In Canada in 2005, for example, it was -9.5 min/day/GHa. If you have that, then you can determine if any given consumption provides a net benefit to the community - find the amount of over-consumption, multiply it by the slope, and find the future time cost associated with that over-consumption.

So, if I have a new widget, and it requires consumption of 0.1 Gha/ca greater than the Community Managed Biocapacity to produce, but it reduces the time required for meeting needs within the community by 2 min/d/ca, then at (2 - 9.5*0.1=)+1.05 min/d/ca, it makes the community better off in the long term, even when the impacts of over-consumption are considered.

Non-renewable resources would have to be considered for management by the community, and they would therefore have a plan for how to address them. If your widget doesn't follow the community plan, then there would come a time when the NRR used won't be available, and this would incur a time penalty. Maybe the community has a 50 year supply of landfill space, and expects to be pared down to clean fill only by the end of the current landfill lifespan. Lets say your widget is readily recycled, so you offer to take back all packaging and product at no cost to the buyer - you are following the community plan.

The product would then have a (time use now - time use in future due to using product - future time cost associated with over consumption of ecological services - time penalty associated with depletion of non-renewable resources =) overall time benefit. All positive time benefits could be sustainable.

In addition to measuring how efficiently people are able to use resources to meet their needs, one would have to measure how effectively people are able to meet their needs. So, if the community sleeps an average of 7 hours per night, but 50% of the population doesn't get enough sleep, you'd need to determine what fraction of the time spent at sleeping isn't effective, and from that determine how much time would be required if the people were able to meet all of their needs.

I've got a few papers on this site that discuss this.

Presumably you are familiar with the Marrakech process? (https://esa.un.org/marrakechprocess/index.shtml) Now defunct, I think, but its papers could give you inspiration.

See also:

+ Hargroves, Karlson ‘Charlie’, and Michael H. Smith (editors), The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities and Governance in the 21st Century, Earthscan, London, UK, 2005, 460 pp. A good discussion on pp. 407-429.

+ Lots of papers in the UNEP library (http://wedocs.unep.org/). An early one: http://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/7627. A recent one, from the World Bank: http://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/21434.

As the lower social economic society starts to pull themselves up and out of poverty they want what we all have " stuff" The question is; How are we going to tell these people they can't have the nice things I have. How are we going to address the need to have every gadget that on the market. How are we going to address a society who wants to "keep up with the Jones" The main determinant is education , education, education!

For example to encourage farmers to forward their crop residues to paper and board industries, instead of just burning them, which damage both the economic value of residues and the environment. The below mentioned article discusses many related aspects. Happy new year.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315427845_Agricultural_Residues_Wastes_for_Manufacture_of_Paper_Board_and_Miscellaneous_Products_Background_Overview_and_Future_Prospects?_sg=GY_MT-L2PQW5q5k6gUHyXMrv-Es6gjM_ijuplIGh9S8x0Pj7AJTw_f2kHkXfpkCePxUi5_DFQcIDVksr70arsLmqif8yOfEXmoXbwtel.ydLEia72EOPmTjdDbCaMedI1Pk22OX2vVFcJNN661V5ADWGHw_-ygT9ood-Rgekn0TV6q54_KnFIrfA1a6m9XQ

Sustainable consumption is correlated, it is part of a broader issue defined as a sustainable proecological economic development carried out according to the concept of a new, green economy.

Currently, ecological innovations are being developed in many countries, and renewable energy sources are being developed. For max. decades of traditional energy sources based on minerals will be exhausted. Agricultural arable areas are also likely to shrink. Economics will force an increase in the use of secondary raw materials and reductions in more and more expensive emissions of harmful waste. So in the new pro-ecological economy synergies of pro-ecological different activities will be realized. This synergy may perhaps generate the necessary added value. this added value may, at least partly, help to realize the beautiful ideas of sustainable socio-economic development. Will this happen now? But everything should be done to make it possible, if it ever was possible.

Even if it were to prove in the future that Sustainable socio-economic development is not possible, in the 21st century, try to do everything to make it possible to get as close as possible to it. However, everything possible should be done to achieve sustainable socio-economic development. In the context of this issue, the following question arises: Whether as part of taking up actions that could develop new sustainable development, or whether bottom-up social movements will inspire politicians to undertake pro-ecological initiatives in the future. At the moment, international conferences are held, during which debates on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating the processes of generating eco-innovations and implementing renewable energy sources on a larger scale. Perhaps there should be even more of this type of discussion, perhaps the pressure from scientists should be greater than that of politicians, while it is not too late yet? Unless it is too late? But it probably does not make sense to accept, to think that it is too late, but you have to do what you can in the future, in part, be able to implement sustainable socio-economic development. Will humanity survive until the XXII century in comparable living conditions to those present? It is not known, but everything possible must be done to ensure that these conditions are not significantly worsened in terms of the protection of the natural environment and the progressing greenhouse effect on Earth.

In view of the above, I would like to ask you: Is sustainable socio-economic development possible?

Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.

The above question inspired me to the following considerations:

Is sustainable ecological pro-ecological development based on the concept of a new, green economy necessary to avoid a global climate disaster?

Sustainable proecological economic development based on the concept of a new, green economy regarding entire national economies and future global economies is a necessary future that must be realized in the 21st century if humanity wants to avoid a global climate disaster. Sustainable ecological economic development is based primarily on the creation, development and implementation of large-scale ecological innovations, renewable energy technologies, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, automation and robotization of the process of sorting waste, recovery of recyclable materials, reclamation of a devastated natural environment, afforestation of post-industrial areas, development of electromobility etc. Apparently humanity has only been a decade of time to implement this plan in order to avoid a global climate disaster resulting from the increasingly faster global warming. According to World Wide Fund for Nature (https://cop.wwf.pl/en) humanity is already an endangered species in the 21st century!

In view of the above, the current question is: Is sustainable ecological pro-ecological development based on the concept of a new, green economy necessary to avoid a global climate disaster?

Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.

Is this the last moment to attempt to implement environmentally sustainable development in order to limit the climate warming process?

It should not be assumed that the global warming process has become irreversible. It does not have to be too late to develop ecological innovations, renewable energy sources, increase the efficiency of recyclables, reduce plastic production, etc. to implement the concept of pro-ecological sustainable zero development and the implementation of green economy. Perhaps it is not too late to attempt to implement environmentally sustainable development, we owe it to future generations, we owe it to our children and grandchildren. Such statements have repeatedly appeared during lectures and discussions during the UN Climate Summit, the so-called COP (Conference of the Parties), which was held in Katowice in December 2018.

Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.

Currently (December 2018), the UN climate summit in Katowice is taking place in Katowice. COP (Conference of the Parties) on climate policy on Earth. UN climate summits, i.e. COP (Conference of the Parties) are global conferences during which climate policy actions are negotiated. Poland twice hosted them - in 2008 in Poznań and in 2013 in Warsaw. In December 2018, the climate summit is held for the first time now in Katowice in Poland.

During this summit, conferences are held, discussions are held on the need to develop a sustainable development policy and the need for development of ecological, renewable energy sources in order to generate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the future and ultimately reduce the average annual temperature rise on the Earth's surface. From the discussions it follows that it is necessary to develop eco-innovations, new pro-ecological energy sources, development of electromobility of transport means. It is necessary to develop and implement on a large scale renewable energy sources. In addition, it is important to increase the scale of afforestation, as forests and the flora contained in them absorb a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of this year's UN Climate Summit, the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24), 14th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 14) and the Conference of the Paris Agreement signatories (CMA 1) are held. About 20,000 people from 190 countries participate in the event, including politicians, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and scientific and business spheres.

Perhaps during this UN climate summit important and specific agreements, declarations and signed agreements on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will be taken. The present lectures show that in recent years the warming process of the Earth's climate has accelerated significantly and therefore, in the black scenario of future climate changes, the temperature on the Earth's surface can rise by 4 ° C to the end of the 21st century. If this happened, then the scale of climate-related cataclysms that are dangerous to humans, including droughts, floods, fires and weather anomalies in many places around the world, will increase many times. The problem is very serious globally and therefore a lot depends on whether international cooperation will develop in order to limit these problems and their negative effects.

I invite you to the discussion

Data source: http://cop24.katowice.eu