The Requirements of a Sustainable Planetary System (2007)

Abstract Living biological and social systems are sustainable as long as they are able to manage and adapt to change. Sustainability is a function of a system's ability to meet its needs and maintain health, wholeness and resilience. Because the global system is now environmentally and socially unsustainable, it will collapse in the coming decades. It is unsustainable because it is based on destructive views and values that promote competition, exploitation, inequality, fear, violence and waste. For a global system to be sustainable, it must be based on constructive values that enable environmental, social and individual needs to be fully met. Since societies are organised by culture, a sustainable system will require a paradigm shift to an integral (holistic) worldview capable of organising a functional system with congruent values, social structures and economic processes. Global events are being shaped by two trends: the dominant trend towards collapse and the emerging trend towards societal transformation. While the key elements of a sustainable system have begun to emerge, they are still very fragmented. We need to support their development through presenting a clear and unifying vision of a sustainable alternative. The Earth Charter is the cornerstone of this vision. A Functional Definition of Sustainability In the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 1) sustainability was defined as the ability to meet the present needs of humanity without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development has also been defined as improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems (World Conservation Union et al. 1991, 10). In this article, we explore and develop the relationship between sustainability and needs. Our basic premise is that the sustainability of every living system (plants, animals and societies) is based on its ability to meet its needs. This functional perspective provides us with a clear understanding of societal and environmental interrelationships and dynamics. A thing is sustainable if it can persist over time. Sustainability does not mean fixed or static, since open systems are constantly changing in response to their environments. The sustainability of a living biological and social system is determined by its ability to have its essential needs met on an ongoing basis. These enable it to maintain itself over a relative time period with sufficient resilience to withstand normal environmental perturbations and stresses and to reorganize in healthy ways in response to changing conditions. A common mistake is to describe essential needs as only minimal physical inputs, since all living systems are members of wider communities and ecosystems. For example, human needs are more than simply material needs for food, shelter and safety: they are also emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs-for meaning and belonging, for relationship to both community and nature. Since living systems can only survive if they are simultaneously individually healthy and members of healthy communities and ecosystems (i.e. healthy parts of healthy wholes), it is more accurate to say that the essential needs of all biological and social systems are for health and wholeness. Health and wholeness can also be described as functional integrity (Pimentel, Westra & Noss 2000). Because all systems have internal structures and external boundaries, failure occurs when the parameters of the system are exceeded. Open living systems are sustainable as long as they are sufficiently healthy to manage and adapt to change, either by adjusting in order to continue functioning within existing parameters, or by evolving in order to function within new parameters. They become unsustainable at the point when further changes will cause system failure. Ultimately sustainability is not (per se) a moral question, but a question of functionality within parameters. …