All life on this planet is nurtured and sustained by nested biological and physical relationships and feedback loops. Thinking about ecosystems must be the context for any vision of sustainable life on Earth. Poverty and injustice are sustainable, yet these are not ideals to aspire to. The combination of health with sustainability brings together the notion of a currently desirable state with that of longevity. In this, the less focused notions of what has been called sustainable development are made clear.
People are an integral component of the global ecosystem.
Sustainability of humans is an ecosystem problem, and sustainability of ecosystems is a human problem. The ecosystem approach must, therefore, bring together the most current scientific understanding of ecosystems with community participatory approaches, to help people resolve situations in which problems and solutions interact in complex and often surprising ways. Our aim is to help communities to anticipate and adapt, rather than to predict and control. Fundamentally, this is what sustainable development is all about.