Sustainability: The Economy-Society-Environment Link

When people talk about acting in a sustainable way, it often means that they are considering many different aspects before making a decision. In fact, sustainability emphasizes relationships rather than pieces in isolation. It considers the whole instead of the specifics.

The three main aspects of sustainability are the economy, society and the natural environment. The figure below is frequently used to show these connections.

Economic sustainability includes things like reasonable financial profit, fair wages and community services. Social sustainability includes things like participation in public policymaking, fair labour standards and equal treatment of women and minorities. Environmental sustainability includes things like impacts on the air, water, land, plants, animals and human health.

So, for example, if you were thinking of your local community and its sustainability you would need to consider:

Questions related to economic sustainability, such as:

Are there fewer or more good-paying jobs in the country — are people working more and earning less or are most people living well?
Is there more or less poverty and homelessness?
Is it easier or harder for people to find appropriate homes that they can afford?

Questions related to environmental sustainability, such as:

Has air quality in my town gotten better or worse?
Are there more or fewer warnings about eating fish caught in local waters?
Are there more houses using solar water heating or other eco-friendly house design features?

Questions related to social sustainability, such as:

Are events promoting local traditions organized regularly?
Are people less or more willing to volunteer?
Are fewer or more people running for public office or working on Community Boards?

But how does this apply to what we do in our everyday lives and in our homes? Let’s say you were thinking about installing solar heating in your home as an energy-saving strategy (environmental aspect), you might also want to consider whether to buy a locally produced or imported model (the economic aspect), and how it will affect your family personal bathing routines (social aspect).

Or, let’s say you are thinking of buying only organic fruits and vegetables to protect nature and your family’s health (environmental and social aspect), you might also want to consider how far you or the produce has to travel (environmental and economic aspect) and whether there is an option to obtain them directly from the source, a local farmer (economic and social aspect). It’s all related.

Some people think that sustainability is about ‘going back to nature’ and reverting to using only traditional methods. This is a limited view. Sustainability is not about living in primitive conditions without modern amenities. It is about understanding our situation, designing and using technology appropriately, and developing as communities in ways that are equitable, and make sense economically and ecologically.

In other words, sustainability is a process of making decisions which balance economic, social and environmental factors for the benefit of all involved.

A sustainable economy is characterized by ideas and activities which do not exhaust the Earth’s resources and which respect the cultural experiences of societies.

A sustainable society is a society that lives in harmony with nature and within itself. A sustainable environment is one in which the Earth’s resources are able to renew themselves and sustain life, health and acceptable progress.