The start of human sustainability is fostered by promoting maternal health and nutrition, safe birthing and infant and early childhood care. Human sustainability needs 2-3 decades of investment in education and apprenticeship to realize some of the potential that each individual contains. Adult education and skills acquisition, preventive and curative health care may equal or exceed formal education costs. Social Sustainability Social sustainability means maintaining social capital. It lowers the cost of working together and facilitates cooperation.
Trust lowers transaction costs, for example.
This can be achieved only by systematic community participation and strong civil society, including government. Cohesion of community, connectedness between groups of people, reciprocity, tolerance, compassion, patience, forbearance, fellowship, love, commonly accepted standards of honesty and ethics. Commonly shared rules, laws, discipline, etc., constitute the part of social capital least subject to rigorous measurement, but essential for social sustainability. Without such care it depreciates as surely as does physical capital. The creation and maintenance of social capital, as needed for social sustainability, is not yet adequately recognized Violence is a massive social cost incurred in some societies because of inadequate investment in social capital.