What Is Sustainability?
Sustainability, which the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined in 1987 , is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Almost 40 years later, this is still the most frequently cited definition of the term, and the world is still working to meet those needs. Charisma Acey, Ph.D., associate professor of city and regional planning and Arcus chair in social justice and the built environment at the University of California, Berkeley, says that “meeting the needs of the present” is the part of the U.N. definition that she emphasizes in her classes. “What are we sustaining if we’re not taking care of present generations as well? “To me, it’s really about recognizing that our human health , environmental health, the health of our systems that sustain us socially, economically—they’re all intertwined,” she adds. “It’s about recognizing our connection to these larger systems that support us.” Caring for future gen...