International Sustainability Council's
Guiding Principles of Sustainability
Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human communities in general and the various systems on which they depend.
In recent years an academic and public discourse has led to this use of the word sustainability in reference to how long human ecological systems can be expected to be usefully productive. Observers point out that in the past, complex human societies have died out, sometimes as a result of their own growth and associated impacts on ecological support systems. The implication is that modern industrial society, which continues to grow in scale and complexity, might also collapse.
The implied preference would be
for systems to be productive indefinitely, or be
sustainable.
|
|
Click Here to download a printable version of the Principles for Sustainability |
The following list of principles
is an attempt to provide a set of principles for
sustainability applicable at all scales; global,
national, regional, local and by the individual.