What is sustainability?

Sustainability involves maintaining the long-term health of biodiversity, climate, food, and the liberal arts/humanities, and where these four systems interact. Sustainability is both local and global. It requires of us that we make decisions today that consider both the past and the future. The concept comes from a set of post-WWII literature developed by the international policy, academic and scientific communities, including the:

Why is sustainability so important today?Questions about what constitutes “the good life” are not new - nor is the concept of sustainability. Societies around the world have been asking what constitutes “quality of life” - and how to best organize themselves to pursue it - since antiquity, and our answers have always depended on how we view ourselves as citizens, communities, and, ultimately, as human beings.Today, however, with over 6 billion people on Earth, humanity is a geologic force. We have transformed our atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and cultures on a global scale. Our collective decisions on everything from energy production to healthcare to education reverberate around our networked globe.As a result, the need for all societies to embrace sustainability has never been more urgent - for the future of humanity and for many of the fellow species and systems that share the planet with us and support our survival. Is sustainability the same as being "green?"Sustainability itself has become a fragmented idea. Many equate sustainability with sustainable development, defined by the United Nations Brundtland Commission’s “Our Common Future” (1987) as “the ability to provide for the needs of the world's current population without damaging the ability of future generations to provide for themselves." Others equate sustainability with narrowly construed notions of the “environment” or “greening.” But while protecting the environment is crucial to sustainability, on its own it does not constitute sustainability.Sustainability is not just green any more then a rainbow is just the color green.  Why sustainability in higher education?Large educational and research communities, colleges and universities exert significant ecological, economic, and cultural force in their immediate region and extended surroundings. What’s more, through what it teaches, what it researches, and how it engages with its neighbors, higher education can help transform the unprecedented challenges we face today into opportunities.

  • Colleges and universities are communities, and the community teaches. Everything is curriculum, and everyone is an educator. Education results from the community experience of learners. Discussions happen in classrooms, laboratories, residence halls and apartments, cafeterias, on buses, and on playing fields. Work study jobs, internships, and volunteer work. Extracurricular activities. Films, performances, and guest speakers. Even just walking across a campus itself and noticing the diversity of people and the elements of the campus landscape can inform and influence students, faculty, and staff in subtle yet profound ways. Imagine the impact, then, when a college or university integrates sustainability throughout its core mission and identity. 
  • Colleges and universities can serve as sustainable community models. Institutions of higher education are mini towns and cities, often complete with their own power plants, dining areas, transportation and water systems, and healthcare services. From this perspective, core university functions that traditionally are viewed as providing logistical support for the academic mission become an active and intentional part of the curriculum. 
  • Colleges and universities can serve society with scholarship. As the UNH Democracy Imperative states, “As a community of practice, we work together to deepen our own knowledge and skills. As a national network, we serve as advocates and resources for colleges and universities interested in developing educational research and programs in understanding, practicing, and modeling deliberative democracy” (4).
  • Colleges and universities can foster engaged citizenship. Colleges and universities can be places of “inclusive dialogue, public deliberation, and broad citizen participation” - “all essential to the continuing development of a healthy democratic society” and to sustainability more broadly (UNH Democracy Imperative). By fostering opportunities for reflection, deliberation, dialogue, study, growth, and change, colleges and universities can help transform us from consumers driven solely by convenience and price back into engaged citizens with the capacity to foster sustainability.

Education in our time can, should, and must promote sustainability. More Information