Towards Sustainability
Sustainability essentially means preserving life on Earth, including human civilization; meeting human needs is thus vital in creating a sustainable society. It follows that one of The Natural Step's principles of sustainability is to avoid subjecting people to conditions which undermine their capacity to meet their own needs.
The other three principles focus on interactions between humans and the planet. They are based in science and supported by the analysis that ecosystem functions and processes are altered in the following ways:
- Society mines and disperses materials faster than they are returned to the Earth's crust (examples include oil, coal and metals such as mercury and lead).
- Society produces substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes — if they can be broken down at all (examples of such substances include dioxins, DDT and PCBs).
- Society depletes or degrades resources faster than they are regenerated (for example, over-harvesting of trees or fish), or by other forms of ecosystem manipulation (for example, paving over fertile land or causing soil erosion).
Read more about this topic: The Natural Step