Sustainability reloaded: a controversy launched by S|W|M

In the past few years a series of incidents happened that demonstrated unambiguously the vulnerability of our society with regard to its economic, social and environmental stability and prosperity: the dot com boom and bust right at the beginning of this century followed by the bank and, nowadays, the state debt crisis; ever shorter life cycles of products and services; a huge tsunami hit the shores of Indonesia and many other pacific countries (2004), severe earth quakes shook Italy (2009) and Japan (2011) - the latter one leading to another gigantic and destructive tsunami resulting in a nuclear disaster classified to be comparable with the Chernobyl accident in 1986; finally, we are facing a proven severe climate change (incl. desertification), we are confronted with decreasing amounts of natural resources (precious metals, rare earths, energy carriers, etc. to mention a few prominent ones) and we realise a challenging water supply issue (exploration, supply, treatment, etc.). In addition, various conflicts are going on, regional wars occur and a number of political turmoils occur in several regions world-wide (Afghanistan, North Africa, Arab Peninsula, etc.).

All of the few above addressed issues characterise unstable and unpredictable conditions and merciless demonstrate the weakness of our systems, our society. Looking back at the early steps of sustainability actions (Club of Rome, Brundtland-Report, etc.) we may have to consider conditions that have (dramatically) changed compared to that time. Perhaps we have to re-think and re-interpret sustainability in a new, eventually, different way than so far?

The addressed issues/conditions suggest that sustainability basically requires a clear and well-balanced mindset, the search for facile, nevertheless stable solutions - be it for products, services or any other issue -, and ultimately sustainability requires a prudent utilisation of the natural resources in general and a certain constancy. In addition to this, the topic of safety/security (e.g. of natural resources) may be considered as well.

In the light of the above outlined recent situation/conditions a controversy has been launched via the platform Sustainable | Water | Management (http:/swm-group.blogspot.com) to discuss the todays meaning of Sustainability:

Sustainability. What is it? View comments, views, opinions here.

Already in the first few days (the debate has been launched 2011-08-17) a significant number of prominent stakeholders active in the field of sustainability (industry and government representatives) took the chance to state their view and participate in the debate. If you consider the issue of sustainability as relevant, please feel invited to participate in this discussion as well either via

Further readings: [1], [2]

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