The Meaning of “Sustainability”

The Meaning of “Sustainability” Name Institutional Affiliation The Meaning of “Sustainability” Sustainability can be defined as the ability to meet our own need without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs using the same resources. In addition to environmental resources, we can sustain economic and social resources. In preparation for future generations, there is need for us to conserve all resources to prevent their extinction. For the longest time, most people and companies have been talking about the need to conserve our resources so that generations after us can also benefit from them. Sustainability implies that the government and other businesses should consider the long term consequences of the decisions they make rather than making the short term consequences (Maczulak, 2010). It encourages businesses to make evaluation of their decisions in terms of years instead of months. Without sustainability, the future generations would not have much to work with as we would have depleted all the currently available resources. Although there has been a lot of campaign on sustainability, there is very little that people are actually doing about it. For example, when it comes to environmental sustainability, people are encouraged to keep the environment clean by using bio-friendly products, and to plant more and more trees (Portney, 2015). However, this has not been happening. People have been cutting down trees without planting any, and there has been a lot of use of hazardous products that do a lot of harm to the environment. When ecological integrity is maintained, human beings would use the natural resources in a pace...