What is Sustainability?

The accepted definition of sustainability comes from the World Commission on Environment and Development, which suggests that sustainability be defined as;

"forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

What does this mean in everyday terms? Imagine this. One day, every person in the world is given a piece of land to live on. This piece of land has to provide you with everything you need to live sustainably: Food, shelter, clothes, transport. You name it, it must come from this land.

How big would this piece of land be? Today, each person in the world would get 1.8 hectares of land [1] (that's about 1.8 soccer pitches, or just under one footy oval). However, if everyone in the world keeps living the way they are, everyone would need 2.2 hectares of land! But wait, that's not good enough for everyone in Australia, because we'd need 6.6 hectares of land to keep up our current lifestyle! That's three times the average, and over three and a half times what's sustainable.

[1] Source: EPA Victoria Ecological Footprint; http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/ausFootprint/default.asp

This may sound bad, but simple changes to our day-to-day living can not only stop the problems we face today from getting worse but start to reverse them. The changes don't have to be radical either, we just need to be a little smarter in the way we live.

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." - Albert Einstein.

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