Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
implicit assumption that present economic development can continue
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs—that is, whether sustainability as defined by the Brundtland Com-
mission is even possible. Equally important, it is not clear what sustainable
development might mean operationally. From a systems perspective, for
example, it is meaningless to analyze small subsystems in terms of sustain-
ability when “sustainable” can be defined only in terms of the global sys-
tem. Thus, for example, a firm that chooses to call itself sustainable may
mean that it has adopted sustainability as its vision, but it cannot be sus-
tainable in actuality so long as it is integrated into an unsustainable global
economy. It would be equally implausible to call a product, a process, or a
community sustainable at this point in the evolution of the Industrial Rev-
olution. One cannot make such assertions of sustainability without under-
standing the global human and natural systems as an integrated whole and
without being able to project their stability through time, which is clearly
not the case now and will not be for the foreseeable future.
This does not mean, however, that sustainable development cannot pro-
vide the general goal toward which environmentally preferable activities
can be directed.Thus, for example, the Netherlands has adopted the goal of
becoming sustainable within one generation. This is not because the peo-
ple of the Netherlands (a small, heavily exporting nation that is only a part
of regional European watersheds and airsheds) believe that their country
can be sustainable in a global sense. Rather, defining their goal in such a
manner has allowed them to do path-breaking research into what sustain-
ability might mean for a modern, developed country, and what metrics
might be appropriate for determining progress toward those goals.
5
Simi-
larly, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world's largest
technical professional society, considers sustainable development a worthy
vision, even while noting in its 1995 White Paper on Sustainable Develop-
ment and Industrial Ecology that “standing alone, [sustainable develop-
ment] cannot guide either technology development or policy formulation.”
The second level, industrial ecology, is the multi-disciplinary study of
industrial systems and economic activities and of their linkages with fun-
damental natural systems. It provides a theoretical basis and an objective
understanding upon which reasoned improvement of current practices can
be based. Important disciplines contributing to industrial ecology include
the physical and biological sciences, engineering, economics, law, anthro-
pology, policy studies, and business studies.
6
Even with this broad scope,
