Sustainability

Sustainability is how biological systems endure and remain diverse and productive. Sustainability refers to the endurance of systems and processes. The organizing principle for sustainability, is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics and culture. 


Sustainability science is the study of the concepts of sustainable development and environmental science.


Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival of humans and other organisms. Ways of reducing human impact are environmentally-friendly chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection.


Moving towards sustainability is also a social challenge that entails international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles and ethical consumerism. Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms from re-organizing living conditions.


Despite the increased popularity of the use of the term "sustainability", the possibility that human societies will achieve environmental sustainability has been, and continues to be, questioned—in light of environmental degradation, climate change, overconsumption, and societies' pursuit of indefinite economic growth in a closed system.


Sustain can mean “maintain", "support", or "endure”.  Since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability as a part of the concept sustainable development, that of the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations on March 20, 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”