Dear Saria Tasnim,

Thank you very much for making very important inquiries on the Research Gate portal and inspiring important discussions on particularly important issues.

In my opinion, it is good that there was a discussion in the question of this query.

This is a very interesting and scientifically important topic.

Because the topic is very important so I still read the answers, I follow the interesting discussion.

Question:

Why sustainability is a complex to communicate to children?

this is a very important issue that requires scientific research.

I believe that the age of children is important to adapt a specific message of information as part of the education process to a specific age of students.

Following answer

A solution may be by convincing children of the economic benefits of environment-friendly technologies, in addition to their environmental benefits. 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

@ Dariusz Prokopowicz

Apart from the age factor, why 'sustainability' itself a complex issue to communicate? As such, is it because the sustainability concept itself varies in different definition ? or what are the factors that is making 'sustainability' a complex issue to communicate ?

appreciate answers and feedback

@ Tamer YA Fahmy

Thank you !

benefit is the next approach once you can communicate first. my question was what makes the 'communication' a complex when it comes on 'sustainability' ?

If you can't communicate a concept to a 6 year old in 5 minutes, either it's wrong or you don't understand it yourself (or both). And that includes basic quantum mechanics and general relativity. Sustainability has nothing to do with economics which is incomprehensible to anyone, even (especially) to professors of economics.

It is simply the ability to continue doing something without wrecking the environment. In a more thorough definition - now for 8 year olds - it is a measure of whether how much of the waste produced by some process can be converted back into something useful using available solar energy.

Have a look at my paper on the subject.

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your paper.

if sustainability is all about 'doing something without wrecking the environment' then what would be your view about 'social sustainability' in terms of culture and heritage, moral and values ? How do you explain the concept of social , economic and environmental sustainability to a 6 yo within 5 min where 'sustainability' itself has numerous definitions and perspective varies geographically ?

I am a new research student, that will certainly help me to understand first, before I approach to children. Thanks again.

Hi Saria, Let's quickly look at the concepts of social , economic and environmental sustainability. In my view sustainability applies only to processes - some activity that can be continued indefinitely. So we must define what is meant by these terms first. Social sustainability if it means anything surely has to measure the longevity of a society, with a metric in years. Few societies score high on this one; but the concept is easy to explain to children. How well they understand long timescales is harder to evaluate!

Economic sustainability in my view is rather meaningless until a rigorous definition can be agreed on. It usually seems to mean how long an economy can last - but this ties in closely with societal sustainability above. It also needs a metric and a method of evaluating it according to that metric - and these don't exist. As a complex term with uncertain definition it could not be explained to children (or to most adults).

Environmental sustainability will suffer the same fate as economic sustainability though the concept of the environment is easier to put over to children. But I don't think it's very meaningful. The environment isn't that stable, it changes over both short, medium and long terms, by quite a lot, so on what basis do you define some property of it to be sustainable? What is the metric (years?) and how is it evaluated without actually waiting to see what happens?

In my view a lot of current writing on these subjects does not withstand critical scrutiny. It may be a great subject for engaging in long debates on, but - see what is currently going on in the Polish conference on climate change - it generates very few useful recommendations beyond those that are plain common sense. Those recommendations that it does generate, if they conflict with conventional capitalist theory, will invariably be ignored as 'damaging to the economy'.

Best wishes with your research!

Why is Sustainability a complex concept to communicate? Because every science touches on it (perhaps not Cosmology, and I might be wrong about that), and all science has it's own short-hand (jargon) that is intended to be exclusive. When I, as an engineer, speak of Stress, and Strain, and Creep, and Loading - all of these have very specific meanings to me. When I bring in sociologists, medical professionals, psychologists, and truckers, they will each see my words and think about them differently from me (although, I assure the psychologists that I mean Creep in a very technical way...). We don't speak the same dialects, even if we speak the same language.

Another part of the problem is that it is assumed that Sustainability is a Wicked Problem. There's a truism in Engineering that begins with 'no problem can be solved until after it has been adequately defined', which means that Sustainability problems have not (and perhaps cannot) been adequately defined.

My research has focussed on finding definitions that can be used to solve Sustainability Engineering problems, and by extension, may provide insight into other disciplines. This is what I use currently (prone to change, and happy to discuss):

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 land and water it manages, in perpetuity.

Development = the increase in quality of life within a community between two points of time

Sustainable Development = an increase in quality of life within a community between two points in time, using the skills of the population and the ecological services from the landmass it manages in a manner that can be maintained in perpetuity.

Economy = the use of trade to access critical resources unavailable to the individual, industry, and government; to disburse wealth throughout the community; and to facilitate the creation and use of infrastructure of all kinds.

Critical Resource = any of a renewable or non-renewable resource or an ecological service that is used to meet needs.

Infrastructure = an investment of time and resources with an expectation of a return on that investment in the form of time and/or resources into the future.

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.

Sustainable Economic Development = an increase in the quality of life between two points in time by increasing specialization and productivity of the population, while reducing the internal barriers to trade of critical resources and the external barriers to co-management of critical resources, and retaining a sufficient financial reserve to address economic disruptions.

Society = the use of community by its citizens to encourage the conditions that allow people to have more of their needs met than is possible as a family.

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.

Sustainable Social Development = an increase in the quality of life of a community between two points in time by increasing how effectively people are able to use their time to meet their needs, while ensuring no subset of the community receives a greater burden than benefit from any development initiative.

Ecology = the ecological capital and services of the landmass being either used or managed by the community.

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.

Sustainable Ecological Development = an increase in the quality of life of a community between two points of time by restoring or enhancing the ecosystem services that provide resources and absorb waste from the biomes being managed, while ensuring that a non-declining portion of each biome is maintained as a ‘wilderness’ that is neither a sink for wastes nor a source for resources.

Quality of life is dependent on how needs are met. There is no concensus on a specific exclusive definition of Quality of Life. I will introduce two concepts that are expected to cover the range of the term.

• Potential Quality of Life = the time available within a community for activities other than those that are expected to meet needs, while considering the impact of the eventual loss of overconsumed resources
• Actualized Quality of Life = the time available within a community for activities other than those that are expected to meet needs, while considering the impact of the eventual loss of overconsumed resources, as if all needs were met.

Technological Development = the creation or enhancement of systems of infrastructure with an expectation of an improvement in the potential quality of life of a community.

Sustainable Technological Development = the creation or enhancement of systems of infrastructure with an expectation of an improvement in the actualized quality of life of a community, focusing on the needs of the community and the resources available in perpetuity.

Human Development = the identification and removal of the obstructions that prevent people from being able to meet their needs, such that freedoms, choices, and capabilities are enhanced.

Sustainable Human Development = the identification and removal of the obstructions that prevent people from being able to meet their needs, such that freedoms, choices, and capabilities are enhanced, in a manner that can be maintained in perpetuity.

Community Development = the reduction of disparity and the increase in social integration.

Sustainable Community Development = the reduction of disparity focused around the resources that are available in perpetuity, and the increase in social integration at ever greater scales.

I don't know if there is a simple way to distill this down for children. My kids hear it enough that they roll their eyes and ignore most of it. It could be as simple as live within one's ecological means, and find ways to ensure that all people in your community are able to meet all their needs. It might mean you have to explain how economics isn't supposed to be a zero-sum game, but a world that is being over-exploited, it is

I commend Douglas for his thorough treatment of the issue of specifications of terms used in discussions on sustainability. However, to be really rigorous and make the field more 'scientific' one needs definitions strongly founded on independent and fundamental aspects of the discipline. The risk as I see it in specifying many aspects of a topic is many definitions tend to be circular. The more complex a definition, too, the harder it becomes to define a generally agreed metric for it. It is hard enough to generate a metric for individual processes like I have proposed. But at least with a self consistent set of definitions as you propose, you will be able to produce useful and hopefully highly practical suggestions and recommendations for authorities to follow. Whether they will take any notice of course is an entirely different matter!

Best wishes with your researches!

Thank you, Tony. I hope someone notices.

When monitoring complex systems, one requires indicators (think of the dashboard of a 747 Jumbo Jet, with 140 indicators or more, required by the pilot to operate the machine safely). When designing any system, regardless of complexity, one requires measurements - when the designer was drawing up the 747, she didn't use any of those 140 indicators. Instead, she knew what the relationship was between lift, thrust, drag, weight, and acceleration, and how every design decision would affect that relationship. The units of measurement for an airplane is 'force'. No metrics are required if the underlying relationships are sufficiently understood.

In my case, I tried to find the fundamental relationships from the 'First Principles' of Sustainability (Daly, Max Neef, Brundtland, etc), and from them, determine the units of measurement of Sustainability Engineering. It turned out to be human time. Specifically, the time required to meet needs, and the time available for activities that dont meet needs. Everything else just falls into place after that.

I make no claim that Time will be the only self-consistent unit of measurement, but it's the one I found.

Thank you so much Tony and Douglas !

Sorry for my late response as I was away. Your insights will help me move on to my writing.