View Research Topics | View Complete Article List | Visit the Library
Worldwide Trends in Sustainable Development
2007-11-04
What does sustainability mean to the Plains farmers? What does it mean to our communities? And we spent a little time on the shift from the accent on agriculture per se to the shift on our communities. And then how do we learn to think in terms of modern sustainability, and what is modern sustainability?
Well, I recorded my own learning curve on that game, and it was extraordinary because I really didn't have one. It all happened sort of by osmosis. Here we are trying to redesign a future society in a sustainable language, and yet there isn't a degree that I know of in sustainability as such. A lot of campuses are teaching sustainability principles, but nowhere do you go and get a degree in sustainability as you might in business administration or management. Not yet anyway. And yet it forces us to move in tune with the information age, the knowledge economy, whatever you like, into the language of collaborative thinking and networking thinking. We're learning that we're not very good at it.
We like the old pyramids and we like the old established patterns. I'm going to review some of those main factors that are at work on us, and
I just ask you to remember that the sustainability development that I'll be talking about will be one that works in three main areas. It works in economics, it works in social or community issues, and it works in environmental issues. So those three issues are the areas that we'll be talking about.
You must have read or seen I suppose a dozen different definitions of sustainable development, and that always happens. People love these definitions, going back to word roots and so on. They scare me a little. I always sort of hate talking in an auditorium, from the Latin audire, “to hear” and Toro, “the bull.” But I've often felt that we should stay with good, understandable old Saxon names rather than Latin ones. Churchill had a phrase. He said, “Always use a Saxon name rather than a Latin if you could”.
The Bruntlan Commission gave us the best definition of sustainable development. It is described as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And I think if we wear that hat as we go down this little chat, we'll be well off. It has sometimes been referred to as trying to leave the world a little better than when you found it. So it's not a new idea. It means a lot of things to different people.
