Connecting social with the environmental justice - Understanding Sustainable Development - page 117

Box 4.3 Environmental justice and environmental space

In Sustainable Europe and Environmental Space - Achieving Sustainability through
the Concept of 'Environmental Space': A Trans-European Project , McLaren (2001)
explains the concept and the targets required for Europe to enjoy its fair share:

Environmental space can be defined as the total amount of resources we can
use (in a given time period), without compromising future generations' access
to the same amount. Alternatively, it can be interpreted as the ability and
adaptability of the environment to provide the physical and non-physical resources
humans need. These resources include the provision of energy and raw materials,
the absorption of wastes, genetic diversity, and fundamental life-support services
such as climatic regulation. The current rate of consumption of many of these
resources can be measured and compared with the sustainable rate.

We start from the premise that natural and human systems can only sustain a
finite level of impact . Impacts must be limited (both globally and more locally) to
defined levels. These levels can be termed 'sustainability constraints'. Over the
longer term a range of measures, such as soil restoration and the planting of new
woodlands, can effectively increase total capacity. The environmental space concept
allows for this. However, our ability to enhance the capacity of natural systems to
sustain greater impacts (absorb more pollution, provide a greater sustainable harvest
and so on), although developing, is currently limited, and for practical purposes
environmental capacity is considered as fixed in the short term.
However, the environmental space methodology recognizes that improving
technology may not be adequate to reduce or keep impact below the critical levels.
It implies that the level of consumption may also need to be varied. The concept of
'sufficiency' is used where reductions in consumption provide an increase in
sustainable well-being as a result of bringing us within environmental space limits,
even if in the short term conventional monetary measures of income fall as a result.

Table 4.1 Comparison of sustainable consumption for the UK and Europe: cuts necessary
by 2050

UK cut (%) European cut (%)

Carbon dioxide 83 77

Timber 64 55

Cement 69 85

Pig-iron 83 87

Aluminum 84 90

Chlorine 100 100

Source: Friends of the Earth