Social Sustainability

Social sustainability is one aspect of sustainability or sustainable development. Social sustainability encompasses human rights, labor rights, and corporate governance. In common with environmental sustainability, social sustainability is the idea that future generations should have the same or greater access to social resources as the current generation ("inter-generational equity"), while there should also be equal access to social resources within the current generation ("intra-generational equity"). Social resources include ideas as broad as other cultures and basic human rights. Also we can speak of Sustainable Human Development that can be seen as development that promotes the capabilities of present people without compromising capabilities of future generations. In the human development paradigm, environment and natural resources should constitute a means of achieving better standards of living just as income represents a means of increasing social expenditure and, in the end, well-being.

The different aspects of social sustainability are often considered in socially responsible investing (SRI). Social sustainability criteria that are commonly used by SRI funds and indexes to rate publicly traded companies include: community, diversity, employee relations, human rights, product safety, reporting, and governance structure.

From the philosophical aspect of Social sustainability, it focuses on individuals' behaviours, attitude and actions. The way of living towards a socially sustainable way may not necessarily providing a promotion of luxury and wealth, but rather, the development of reverse-consumerism. The ideal sustainable life style is not to end consumption but understanding the minimalistic requirement of it. Going back to the traditional source of behavioural teachings, parenting, the value of indirect education from quotidian conversations in a cross-generation setting allows individuals to develop social awareness at an younger age. With the exposure to natural cycle of life at an early age, it allows youth to foresee the inevitable destination of biological life. It also enhance the subtlety in an individual's perspective on understanding between "wants" and "needs" in life. While leadership and motivational topics focus on prosperity in wealth and different social status, social sustaining role models take on the role of taking the risk upon changing what is necessary instead of what is wanted. From this point of view, in order to achieve a social sustainable system, there will be a possibility of challenging current infrastructure and common expectations. Some radical examples are: starvation by choice to understand the actual need of a starving individual, or the vow of poverty to understand a certain level of built-in social expectations, in which proved unnecessary when it comes to solving community issues as listed.