What is Sustainability? | UCLA Sustainability (2024)

FAQs

What is Sustainability? | UCLA Sustainability? ›

Sustainable practices support ecological, human, and economic health and vitality. Sustainability presumes that resources are finite, and should be used conservatively and wisely with a view to long-term priorities and consequences of the ways in which resources are used.

“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainability is ability to maintain or support a process over time. Sustainability is often broken into three core concepts: economic, environmental, and social.

“Sustainability means consuming what we need today without compromising the needs of future generations. Using products that are renewable and recyclable go a long way toward this end.

Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): environmental, economic, and social. Many definitions emphasize the environmental dimension.

noun. the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. Environmental Science. the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance: The committee is developing sustainability standards for products that use energy.

Sustainability is the idea that humans must interact with the environment in a way that ensures there will be enough resources left for future generations. There are now more than seven billion people on Earth. These billions of people use the planet's resources every day.

Sustainability means using natural resources in a way that we could keep doing for a long time. We can be more sustainable by reducing our use of natural resources. This is like taking less candy out of the jar. For example, you could ride a bike instead of driving, which uses less oil.

Climate action: Acting now to stop global warming. Life below water: Avoiding the use of plastic bags to keep the oceans clean. Life on land: Planting trees to help protect the environment. Responsible consumption and production: Recycling items such as paper, plastic, glass and aluminum.

Sustainability is our society's ability to exist and develop without depleting all of the natural resources needed to live in the future. Sustainable development supports this long-term goal with the implementation of systems, frameworks, and support from global, national, and local entities.

What is sustainability in life? ›

Sustainable Lifestyles are considered as ways of living, social behaviors and choices, that minimize environmental degradation (use of natural resources, CO2 emissions, waste and pollution) while supporting equitable socio-economic development and better quality of life for all.

Sustainability's three main pillars represent environmental concerns, socially responsible practices, and economic cooperation. These three pillars are also informally referred to as people, planet, purpose, and profits. It's useful to understand the terms sometimes used in place of the three pillars.

Sustainability refers to the ability to meet the current needs of society without compromising the future. In 1987, the United Nations' Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as, “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainability is a way of using resources that could continue forever. A sustain-able activity is able to be sustained without running out of resources or causing harm. If something is unsustainable, it means it's using up resources faster than they're being replaced.

This may seem like a simple question, but to answer it would require an agreement of what sustainability means to your organization. To set a sustainability program in place, define what components it is comprised of and be ready to defend how it supports your organization's overall mission.

The most often quoted definition comes from the UN World Commission on Environment and Development: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Nowadays, sustainability is usually defined as the processes and actions through which humankind avoids the depletion of natural resources, in order to keep an ecological balance that doesn't allow the quality of life of modern societies to decrease.