Thus, the popularity of the term “sustainability” in the policy climate was caused by academic productions of contesting schools of thought and the unified leadership given by the developed world.

2.3 CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABILITY

A comprehensive idea of sustainability has been introduced by the WCED in 1987 as the considerations of actions in managing resources and environment so that they meet the needs of present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It embraces two key notions:

1.The concept of needs to which overriding priority should be given.

2.The idea of limits to the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.

Since the inception of Brandtland concept of sustainability, at least 40 working definitions of sustainable development have been identified by Hajer (1995), but no definite framework was defined to say something is sustainable and something is not. As a result, sustainability targets the policies facilitated by debate and ambiguity. One part of the debates is on discourses of societies which can successfully manage their environmental resources over a long period of time. The pursuit of sustainability remains in balancing acts involving implementation of policies, strategies, programs, and projects that treat resource and environment as a single issue. It also demands changes in the mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors of stakeholders. Thereby, sustainability has been expressed on the basis of relative exhaustion of the factors that determine the abundance of resources and their footprint on nature. However, certain useful concepts have been outlined in Geyer-Allély and Eppel (1997) for expressing the performances of environmental sustainability. They are presented in the following sections.

2.3.1 Steady-State Economy

The concept of steady-state economy assumes that economy is an open subsystem of earth’s ecosystem, which is finite, nongrowing, and materially closed. The steady-state economy is thus a nongrowth economy in biophysical equilibrium where:

1.Stocks are maintained at a sufficient level for abundant life of the present generation and are ecologically sustainable for a long time.

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2.Service is maximized given the constant stock.

3.Throughput is minimized.

This is a version of “real economy” in which the economy is guided by the stock of diverse resources and symbolizes a sustainable situation. Real economy rejects the commoditization of nature other than to meet the subsistence needs. Thereby, steady-state economy demands that the existing corporate economy needs to be dismantled and a new one, founded on environmental rationality, needs to be erected in its place to achieve sustainability.

The assertion of steady-state economy stems from the realization that the root cause of sustainability crisis in resource and environment is to be found in an economic process that operates as an entropic force and is driving the planet rapidly to its death. Moreover, with the current economic structure in place, it is not possible to slow down the growth as this structure stimulates economic expansion, increases the consumption of nature, and causes destruction of bases of sustainability of both the economy and life. If these assertions are correct, then they put into question the possibility of reconstructing the economy by incorporating environmental policy, technological innovations, and distributive balances. In other words, steady-state economy assumes that it is possible to rebalance the economy within the theoretical and instrumental rationality of policy.

A steady-state economy is opposite to boom and burst economy and designates a sustainable situation of economy. If resource flow is not continuous, it is unlikely that an economy will remain in steady state. If policies are perfect, it is likely that resource flow will remain continuous from a renewable system. From a nonrenewable resource system, good policies maintain flows of resources for a long time, for example, through 5Rs—reuse, recycled use, reduced use, regenerative use, and rational use. Thus, the implication of a steady-state economy is to indicate the policy circumstances of sustainability on resources and environment.

2.3.2 Carrying Capacity

Carrying capacity is a quantitative concept that assumes the limit, though difficult to estimate, of the ability of natural ecosystem to support continued growth of population within the limit of abundance of resource and within the tolerance of environmental

degradation. The size of population that the carrying capacity of a resource system can support mainly depends on the size of the needs of that population. The size of the need cannot exceed the limit of carrying capacity to maintain sustainability. Although the definition of carrying capacity has been forwarded from natural science, its orientation to the needs of population converts it to very much related to management and policy issues. Key factors for manipulating needs are population number and density, affluence and technology, depletion rate of renewable and nonrenewable resources, and the build up of hazardous wastes in the environment. Therefore, understanding the carrying capacity concept is important for formulating sustainable policy.

While carrying capacity is relevant to natural condition of resource, environment, and communities present in the system, human beings’ can influence the carrying capacity of a system significantly through harvesting resources of their interest and through maintaining the relationship among the communities present in the system. How the system will continue largely depends on how the human being treats the system for the derivatives of his/her own well-being. The comparative assessment of carrying capacity over a spatial and temporal scale determines human beings approaches to the system. Because policies regulate the attitude of human beings to a particular system, thereby comparative assessment of carrying capacity is likely to provide information on the nature of influences of policies on resource sustainability.

2.3.3 Ecospace

Ecospace is a concept based on quantitative limits of carrying capacity and critical load set on the basis of scientific analysis and political evaluation of the risks associated with policy not to exceeding the sustainability limits. This is also associated with resource distribution limit that suggests an allocated ecospace at a national, regional, or per capita level (on the basis of global fair shares). This concept is important for understanding resource sustainability.

Using the ecospace concept, Wackernagel and Rees (1996) have developed an index calculated on the basis of distribution of resources in different nations. They have considered “ecological footprint” and available “ecological capacity” to calculate ecological

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deficit (the difference between the two). The findings can be considered as the ecospace situation of different countries. Ecospace is different from carrying capacity in a sense that, in addition to quantity of resources, it signifies the distribution of resources. For example, if a species can thrive across a country or a region, availability of such species in a particular location would be a risk to sustainability. The ecospace of that species is likely to become limiting for its continuity. Because policies may likely to have impacts on the distribution or recovery of resources, therefore, ecospace situation of a particular resource is likely to indicate the policy consequences of that society.

2.3.4 Ecological Footprints

According to Wackernagel and Rees (1996), ecological footprint measures the consumption that requires estimation of natural capital requirements based on the interpretation of carrying capacity. It takes into account the impacts of technological development and trade. As wealth and consumption levels increase, so do the area of productive land, ecological footprints (EF) and throughput of material (ecological rucksacks, ER) required for supporting every individual. A key assumption of EF is that technology and trades do not expand the earth carrying capacity in the long run but only displace geographically the effects of increased consumption levels.

The concept of EF is not on the basis of mere ecological productivity but an attitudinal sanctity that preserves nature and that links resources as the source of life and production to ethics and esthetics of nature. It entails moving from a mystification and adoration of nature to an awareness of our human culture and an ethics of responsibility toward living creatures. The sustainability in EF can thus be treated as a reconstruction of economy into a process of resignificance of life and human existence. Building sustainability through manipulation of EF is not, then, simply a way of ecologically managing nature’s productive potential. It entails a reappropriation of nature in its own relational splendor with other components of nature, not just at its productive valor. Thus, in association with technological ability, the importance of cultural creativity of human beings cannot be seduced to achieving efficiency and sustainability. Cultural creativity has to do with the meaning and the values ascribed to nature as a territory of life and as a space for recreating culture.