Identification of the Lagoon Ecosystems - Coastal Lagoons: Ecosystem Processes and Modeling for Sustainable Use and Development - page 8

2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF SUSTAINABLE

USE AND DEVELOPMENT

Since the Brundtland Report (1987 WCED) considerable effort has been directed
toward the development of a general definition of sustainability in order to implement
the vision of sustainability in practical policy decisions. There has been worldwide
recognition of the global “ecological crisis” faced by human civilization especially
after the UNCED Conference/Rio 1992. This has prompted those responsible for
formulating and implementing strategies and policies for economic development to
balance the spatio-temporal structure and metabolism of SES with the spatio-tem-
poral organization of the “environment” or with biophysical structures, the NC, and
their production and carrying capacity.
In this respect, this is an attempt to assess and integrate a wide range of
operational definitions that have been developed and checked in recent years.

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The following were identified as the basic requirements that must be met in order
to put into practice the concept of sustainability.

1. Assessment of the conceptual and methodological development of sustain-
ability that ensures establishment of state-of-the-art definition and identifi-
cation of main gaps and shortcomings and, therefore, the need for further
development and improvement.
2. Formulation of the basic elements of a dynamic model for co-development
of SES and NC or for sustainable use and development to serve as the
basis for promoting local, regional, and global transition.
3. Identification of the advantages and opportunities that each country and
region may have as well as the limits or constraints with which they may
be faced in the designing and implementing of long-term “co-develop-
ment” strategies and action plans.
4. Identification of existing shortages and gaps in the policy and decision-
making process dealing with sustainability and formulation of a compre-
hensive and dynamic model for the “decision support systems (DDSs).”
This will serve as the interface, or the operational infrastructure, and thus
enable us to balance the spatio-temporal relationships and the mass and
energy exchanges between the NC structure, serving as the footprint, and
the SES.

What follows is a brief description of the basic conceptual and methodological
elements to be relied upon in the co-development of SES NC vision of sustainability

as well as the structure of the dynamic DSS that can put sustainability into practice.
The concepts and methods dealing with the “environment” have changed and
improved as ecological theory usually described as “biological ecology” has developed
from its early stage. The current ecological theory is more often and more appropriately
defined as “systems ecology” ( Figure 2.1 ). The identification and description of the
natural, seminatural, human-dominated, and human-created environment has changed
as well. This change was from a former conceptual model that defined the environment
as an assemblage of factors—air, water, soil, biota, and human settlements—to the

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