What is SUSTAINABILITY? by Nancy Kujak

Six questions are vital to define sustainability and measure success and progress.

•  What is being sustained?
• For whom is it being sustained?
• For how long is it being sustained?
• What quality of life do we seek?
• What current and future needs are we working to meet?
• What level of inequality do we permit?

Actually, defining sustainability is difficult. There are as many meanings as there are numbers of experts or individual opinions.

How about:

Sustainability = Development that meets the needs of the present generation

without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs?

That’s how sustainability was described in the 1987 “Our Common Future” report,  by the by the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission) .

However sustainability is understood, most agree that humans fall short, in terms of compromising the ability of future generations. To show proof of this, look no further than the examples we see in nature. For instance, the world has seen rapidly declining levels of water in the bodies of water around the world. These dramatic changes can be seen firsthand if you Google current aerial photos of the Aral Sea compared to ones in the 1960s; the devastation is clear—this formerly robust river is almost dried up! [see photos below, click on this link to see more photos and information: https://www.wired.com/2009/07/aralsea/

or see a time lapse video at this link: https://www.space.com/aral-sea-dries-up-time-lapse.html)

How do you define sustainability? How can humans do better?

We must be aware and get involved. For instance, if a company is trying to dump waste next to a disadvantaged poor neighborhood, we must voice our concern. If we look further, how can we eliminate that waste in the first place?

We must live in harmony with the earth and treat all living things with respect and care. To do this, we can stop the practice of having big lawns that take huge amounts of water and use pesticides and chemicals that harm our water supply and the living things including humans.

We must realize that we do not own or rule over nature and the earth. If we keep living how the Western world lives, we will need 9 planet earths to support the population. The biosphere and the whole of nature is an intricate web; humans must work to support and work with it instead of destroying it.  We must evaluate our lifestyles and do what we can to change and minimize our footprint.

There is time and hope, if we take action now.

          Aerial photo of Aral Sea (shown in black); 1973 (wire.com)                 Aerial photo of Aral Sea (in green); 2009 (wire.com)

The Three E’s of Sustainability by Nancy Kujak

One way to evaluate sustainability is by utilizing the three E’s of sustainability: Economy, Equity, and Environment. These three factors can help not only define sustainability, but they can be used to measure its success.

In many ways the three E’s are the cornerstone of sustainability because you cannot achieve sustainability without utilizing all three elements. In other words, if you only concentrate on one element and the other elements fail, sustainability is not achieved. For example, if the economy is favored over the other elements and the environment and equity are not given equal emphasis, sustainability will fail.

Unfortunately, this is all too often what has happened. As nations place the needs of the economy ahead of — and at the expense of — maintaining equality for all people and for all living and nonliving things in the environment—our earth is not being sustained. All too often, greed (economic decisions) trumps the environment and equity. One has to look no further than the latest news. It could be with how a developer ruined another forest for a business venture. How a pipeline leaked large amounts of oil, trashing the environment. Or how fracking used up great amounts of water resources while simultaneously polluting local water supplies. These examples are commonplace and hurt the environment. They often result as well in inequality felt by those in the lowest income brackets.

Conversely, sustainable living stays within the means of ecosystems to provide life-supporting goods and services, but also embraces the quality of life in a community, including economic, social, and political equity. Thus, setting goals for sustainability involves both ethical and scientific questions regarding human values and the natural environment.

Thinking about the three E’s is often troublesome, but there is hope. It comes from moving away from measuring a country’s success through Gross National Product (GDP). One suggestion is to use carbon taxes, where companies pay for the amount of carbon they add in the global environment regardless of where products are produced. Thus, if a car maker has its parts made in China and Japan then that company still pays for the carbon input into the global environment. Another idea is to measure sustainability efforts as a way to determine a country’s value. In other words, countries are successful and have more worth when their carbon footprint is low or they are carbon-free, their waste is low or near zero, and pollution is low or nonexistent with large supplies of freshwater and organic farming practices are utilized to protect the earth for infinite generations to come.

Economy. Equity. Environment. If we start paying attention to these important sustainability values, we will all know that our children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren will have a world as lush and bountiful as the one we love and enjoy.

Sustainability Is a Global Issue by Nancy Kujak

When we think of sustainability, it is important to incorporate broader definitions and think globally.

First, it is vital to realize and live deeply connected to nature. Spend quality time with nature daily. As we do, we start to become one with the intricate web of life, become a minute part of it. We start to realize that everything in nature has value.  We start to move away from the anthropocentric worldview, source of the destruction that occurs from many humans feeling they must rule over the earth.

Additionally, as we spend time with nature, we start to think beyond what is good for just our own family. We start to think of how our actions and lifestyles affect people in developing countries (the poor nations of the world). Be ready to examine how you live and make changes to help everyone on the planet.

We need to have agreed-upon global solutions. To help the earth, we need to be ready to scale down the size of our homes, the cushiness of our lifestyles, our consumeristic behaviors and compulsions. This includes our carbon footprint, which includes everything from transportation; to energy, water usage, and waste produced used in homes; to chemicals, pollution, and waste produced in every industry in every country.

Everyone should keep in mind that it is important to do what we can individually (such as recycling and composting), but even more important to get involved in local, state, national, and international efforts. For example, get involved to push for improvements with public transportation options especially with electric options or add biking tracks or protected lanes and incentives. These two initiatives will decrease carbon emissions.

You can do this by sponsoring local initiatives. Stand up for what you believe, support companies that truly practice sustainability. In order to save the planet, we need united global efforts. United Nations efforts help us do this, despite the current political administration working against it. Regardless, most countries and many states and localities are moving forward in their efforts.

Think for a few moments about sustainability. Then step up and do more. Get involved and make changes. We can do it. All earth citizens need to buy into living life differently.

The Importance of an Ecocentrism Worldview by Nancy Kujak 

So why is ecocentrism important anyway?

Primarily, it means that humans look beyond our species and hold all living things in the biosphere and ecosystems as important. This viewpoint is earth centric and contends that humans should live in harmony and care for and respect all life. Many of the ecocentric worldviews follow indigenous beliefs where the world is held sacred.

As far as sustainability is concerned, we need to embrace and live through ecocentric behaviors because every day, the earth is losing its diversity, losing great numbers of species, and humans are continuously causing more damage to the earth. In the past fifty years alone, humans have caused more harm than the previous thousand years—that is unacceptable and alarming.

Ecocentrism is vital as it offers hope, can lead to shared global solutions, and it is a way for us to flourish. Many researchers believe that humans must transform to an ecocentric worldview and way of life, if we want to survive and thrive.

To help you better understand ecocentrism, let’s compare and contrast it with opposing viewpoints as conservative libertarians, ecocentrism, or anthropocentrism.

• Ecocentrism expresses the need to be deeply connected to the earth, and feel humans are “of” the earth. Conversely, libertarians hold egocentric and anthropocentric worldviews, and they feel they are “on” the earth, as they attempt to rule “over” the earth with little connection to nature.

• Ecocentrism feels the need to live in harmony with and care for nature first and foremost. Whereas, anthropocentrism follow a strict rule where individual liberties, mistrust of the governments, and support for the free market is more important than the environment considerations.

• Ecocentrism supports sustainability so does not take action to hurt the earth as it balances economy, equality, and environmental equally while conservative libertarian’s ideologies, efforts to outlaw sustainability hinge on being criminal. They advocate economic growth without equally looking at the tremendous environmental harm it does or the inequality is causes.

• Ecocentrism believes science and takes every opportunity to slow the global temperature from rising including switching to renewable energy sources quickly. They do this because most experts agree we are at or near a turning point--that what humans do or do not do now (2019 and beyond) will either cause our world and species to cease to exist or allow it to survive. Anthropocentrism do not believe in climate change so their efforts are speeding us toward our world perishing.

• Ecocentrism puts the environment first, but remain flexible enough to realize that certain personal freedoms must be lost so that we can continue protect the earth. On the contrary, the anthropocentrism is rigid and refuses to compromise, as they are opposed to losing any freedoms regardless of the consequences. In fact, libertarians use false logic when they claim that the government is going to take all of their freedoms away. This is simply not the case. For instance, just because a city creates biking lanes, it does not mean the government is going to take people’s cars away.

Ecocentric vs. Anthropocentric Worldviews by Nancy Kujak

Two items make up a person’s environmental worldview:

1) How you feel the world functions environmentally and your role in it

2) Your environmental ethics, which is the extent that your morals are

inclusive of nature and all living things, and your beliefs about what is

right and wrong with environmental issues.

Ecocentrism and anthropocentrism worldviews exist at opposite ends of a spectrum. Ecocentrism is earth-centered living and beliefs and anthropocentrism is human-centered. People with these beliefs differ greatly in how they act, think, behave, and live.

Ecocentrism is the view where the needs of the earth and ecosystems are put first and primary ahead of human wants. It recognizes the intrinsic value of nature; that humans are not separate from nature, but just one part of it. Most scholars believe the world must adapt to an ecocentric worldview in order to have a sustainable world. If you believe ecocentrically, you support issues such as:

• Being one with and connected to nature and all living things
• Reducing waste
• Following permaculture practices
• Organic farming, farm-to-table practices, and local farmer’s markets
• A smaller human population
• Reduced fossil fuel use and carbon emissions
• Swiftly moving from industrial agriculture to more sustainable and humane food systems
• Conserving and harvesting water
• Finding ways to reduce pollution and limit climate change
• Supporting sustainable businesses and practices
• Getting away from consumerism
• Shrinking the world's economies
• Helping developing countries grow in sustainable ways
• Increased use of renewable energy and decreasing or eliminating fossil fuel use
• Increasing forest cover (the amount of land covered by forests)

Conversely, anthropocentrism places human needs first and above all else. People with this conviction feel human beings are more important than all other living organisms on earth. Mostly, they feel as if they somehow rule over nature and are somehow separate from it. Experts believe that human anthropocentric behavior has caused most of the environmental crises we now face. Anthropocentric behaviors support processes that benefit humans regardless of immediate effects on nature or possible negative environmental impacts, if it is needed to enable human life or support our lifestyle:

• Fracking to provide oil and gas to support human lifestyle
• Production
• Continued fossil fuel use
• Contamination of groundwater in order to develop and produce goods for humans
• Tearing down forests to product palm oil and put in developments
• Methane pollution and its impact on climate change
• Damage to grass, woodland areas, and animals to benefit humans
• Western culture practices such
• Air pollution impacts
• Exposure to toxic chemicals
• Blowouts due to gas explosion
• Waste disposal
• Use and contaminate large volumes water in fracking to get oil and gas for humans
• Continued fracking regardless of it causing fracking-induced earthquakes

Is it widely believed that the dominance of the anthropocentric views are disturbing, contradictory, huge failures, and must end, as these behaviors are what caused and continue to proliferate environmental harms and keep us from finding solutions to save our planet. Humans are facing our biggest challenge with looming climate change, and we must create globally agreed-upon plans to ensure the sustainability of earth and biosphere against human-caused damages. The problem is huge, but it is possible and there is hope. The current environmental issue is not two separate crises (ecological and social), but one multifaceted crisis involving both ecological and social issues we must solve together.

A big argument is that anthropocentric people focus on themselves at the risk of harming the planet. What do you believe?

Ecocentrism by Nancy Kujak

As my Mother lay in her deathbed she uttered some words that I wrote down; I still carry those words in my purse with me wherever I go, “You must always grow things for it is the simple bounty.” The irony is clear as my mom did not have a green thumb, but her wisdom came to me through them.

Her words were not merely about growing food; they speak on a much deeper level. When I reflect on the importance of her words, they remind me how humans must value and be one with nature. In order to “always” grow things requires a deep connection with and oneness with nature. Additionally, it compels me to feel the need for growth in my life in a multitude of ways. Of knowing the earth, of knowing oneself, the process of gardening, personal growth, living in harmony with the earth, valuing the whole of nature, and finds the Earth is the life and creativity center, and that humans have duties to live in harmony and care for all of nature, earth and ecosystems are sacred and dependent upon one another for survival.

My mother’s words are the reason why I spent all of my free time outside in nature for the first year after my mom died. And it is still why when I am outside, I feel at peace, creative, at home, and happy. When I am dirty from head to toe from digging in the dirt, moving the dirt, planting, beautifying, landscaping, I feel awesome. It is because it is a part of me, an important part, and an extension of myself.

The words “simple bounty” to me speak of how easy it is to find the answers to fulfillment, life, and growth by just being. Realizing we are nature and need to spend time in it. Many people look for happiness through material possessions or reaching certain goals, but true happiness comes from the inside and through a connection with nature. The simple bounty can
be about actual products or food produced or about what you gain through growth and the process of true connection. It is about stillness, awareness, creativity, and connection with nature. And for more than one year after my mom died all I did in my nonworking hours was spend time outside being one with nature. I shut out humans and just connected. I created and
planted a gardens, cared for nature, and became one with it. I let the earth side of my family develop deeper. I believed that the Universe, through my mom’s words, led me to this time and place. It taught me to be complete, to be whole, to experience growth and fulfillment requires nature.

My journey allowed me to realize that I am a lifetime learner and how a deep connection is the only way to live and to help save and heal and love our earth. I have always said that I need to live in harmony with the earth in the past. But my mother’s words helped me awaken, live more consciously, and live in the moment in gratitude. It helped guide me, experience exponential growth and connection, and open me up to the simple bounty.

Geophilosophy Values by Nancy Kujak

Geophilosophy is how humans are on the same plane with all of living beings and letting the earth nurture humans and humans nurture the earth. Much of the Western culture has and continues to feel that humans must rule the earth, and this is where geophilosophy takes the opposite approach. Geophilosophy describes how humans and nature are closely intertwined in an interdependent web of life. Humans can focus on solutions utilizing ecocentric and geophilosophy values. Here are seven solutions:  

1. take human pressures off Earth Systems by improving technology, using resources wisely, controlling populations, and restoring natural environments;
2. live by the five mutually beneficial human-earth relationships;
3. stop allowing giant businesses to dominant their anthropocentric worldviews and choose cooperation over competition, conservation over irresponsible expansion, partnership over domination, and quality over quantity;
4. practice imaginative thinking and apply holistic views;
5. take actions to help our all of our systems (social, political, cultural, and ecological) work together;
6. modify your habits and lifestyle (cut back on materialism and consumerism); and
7. get involved and make a difference.

I feel living with an ecocentric worldview with geophilosophy values will provide the way to save our earth and species. Although these terms may not be familiar to many people, it you are living in harmony and caring for the earth and all living things, you are probably already practicing some of these my essential steps.

There are some items that are vital to mention. The first is the need to recognize the problem: humans are facing our biggest challenge and we must admit that the damage that has been done to the earth is human-induced. Humans caused it and humans must develop universally accepted strategies to ensure sustainability of earth system against further damage. The problem is huge, but there is hope. Another item is that our environmental crisis is not two separate crises (ecological and social), but a multifaceted crisis involving both ecological and social issues we must solve together. The dominance of the anthropocentric views are disturbing, contradictory, huge failures, and must end, as these behaviors are what caused and continue to proliferate our crisis and keep us from finding solutions to save our planet. Lastly, embracing the culture, views, and values of Indigenous people and their ecocentric ways may be invaluable to saving the planet. It is about time and just in time to help find solutions! We can all learn so much from them if we open ourselves up, listen, and embrace.

In order to save our planet and survive, humans must transform to ecocentrism and geophilosophy worldviews and values now. We must do this because it offers hope, can lead to shared global solutions, and it is a way for us to flourish. Humans need a massive paradigm shift to help us realize the importance of our environmental crisis and to act with urgency to fix it before it is too late. There is a great need to think outside the box and use our imagination, creativity, intuition, and love to save our planet and species—this is essential since Mother Earth and humans are interdependent, infinitely intertwined, and all evolved from the web of life.

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