Sustainability Thinking for the Climate Change Generation

• Author: Jessica Owley
• Pages: 5-21

5

Chapter 2:

Sustainability Thinking for the

Climate Change Generation

Jessica Owley

This book contemplates whether we need to rethink susta inability in

an age of climate change. Climate change does not change our view

of sustainability; it heightens the importance of sustainability t hink-

ing. We see that in various ways people conceptualize sustainability, climate

change complicates goal full lment. is chapter considers three approaches

to sustainability: (1) sustainable development; (2) sustainable management;

and (3) popular sustainability. Climate change fundamentally alters how we

approach sustainable development and sustainable mana gement. Trying to

help developing countries improve living conditions is even harder when we

also have to deal with both climate change adaptation and mitigation. Assess-

ing and planning for sustainable management of resources is so aected by

climate change that integration of adaptive management principles and resil-

ience thinking become imperative. With our popular concept of sustain-

ability, climate change implications demonstrate that merely minimizing

environmental harm is inadequate. Instead, we need to work actively toward

environmental improvement. Instead of slowing degradation, we need to

reverse the process. e conclusion that climate change should aect sustain-

ability eorts is inescapable. Whether it actually does so is questionable.

Many of the chapters in th is book question the denition of sustainabil-

ity, and it is easy to see why. To assess sustainability and whether we need

to rethink sustainability in an age of climate cha nge, we need to understand

what we mea n by sustainability. In truth, “sustainability” is such a vague

term that people use it in dierent ways. Is sustainability purchasing recycled

paper and compact uorescent light bulbs? Is it going o the grid or buying

local? Is becoming ca rbon neutral enough?

I would like to thank the entire Environmental Law Collaborative for their enthusiasm

for this project and the fruitful discussions that gave birth to this book chapter. David

Takacs was a thoughtful and helpful reader who helped improve this chapter greatly.

6 Rethinking Sustainability

In considering t he f uture of sust ainability, I didn’t want to get bogged

down in the denition of sustainability. Like others, I believe that spending

time debating denitions detracts from eorts at real progress. Yet, at some

level, there seemed a need to articulate what type of sustainability we were

discussing. For me, susta inability conjures up three dierent paths and the

policy responses d ier depending on the context. e bulk of the authors

in this book (and in other environmental law and policy literature) use t he

term sustainability in the context of sustainable development. ey point to

the 1987 Brundtland Report1 and the 1992 Earth Summit2 as the founding

moments in the sustainable development movement. Yet, sustainability is,

of course, a much older concept tied to the idea of simply (or perhaps not

so simply) creating a sel f-perpetuating system. Perhaps betraying my educa-

tional back ground in forest science, sustainability then seems to me a con-

cept that gained popularity in the United States in the Progressive Era when

scientic management of ecosystems was seen as a su re re way to improve

yields while protecting amenities (marked most notably the rise of the scien-

tically trained forester).3 us, we c an already see two sustainability paths

marked out for us: Sustainable Development and Susta inable Yield or Sus-

tainable Management.

e thi rd sust aina bility path is both the most popular a nd perhaps the

least helpf ul. If you ask the person on the street (or t he st udent walk ing

across ca mpus) what sustainabil ity mean s, you are likely to get a variet y

of answers along the lines of “envir onmenta lly friendly ” or “doing less

harm to the env ironment .”4 is t hird path is the most tr aveled by indus-

try a nd commerce.  is is where we most see the term sust ainability used

and the boa st that somethi ng is susta inable. Yet, t his is the c ategory of

susta inability w here it is the hardest to pin down a denition or make

plans for improvement.

is chapter wanders briey down each of these paths considering the

nature of each type of sustainability and then contemplating how climate

change does or should alter the journey. As I explain below, climate change

fundamentally shif ts how we approach sustainable development and sustain-

able management. e story changes for path number t hree though, where

1. U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, U.N. Doc

A/42/427, Annex (1987), available at http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf [here-

inafter Our Common Future] (often referred to as the “Brundtland Report”).

2. U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 3-14, 1992 (often

referred to as the “Earth Summit”). See http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html.

3. S P. H, C  T G  E (1959).

4. In a very unscientic survey of 60 rst-year law students (my property law class), the word “green”

popped up a lot along with “protecting the environment.” No one mentioned development or forestry.