Sustainability

Some learners may need to re-language the term sustainability when it is self-contradictory.
Consuming means using up, yet the UN still uses the oxymoron sustainable consumption (Wang, et al, 2019)
Entrepreneurs commonly use the term 'sustainable business' to mean business as usual
The term 'sustainability' can be traced back to the politics of the late 1980's (c.f. Meadows, et al. 2004)
Historically, it is difficult to separate it from the rise of globalisation.
The (1987) Brundtland Report popularised the notion of 'Sustainable Development'.
Economic development for the poorer nations needed to be squared with Capitalism's vision of endless growth.
(...oh yes, and with a concern for the environment.)
After a while we began to use the term sustainable in its own right...as though it was clear and simple.

Arguably, most things are interdependent and non-linear.
It may therefore be dangerous to think of 'sustainability' as a simple idea.
When we try to explain something using a basic logic of cause and effect, we may soon find it limited.
We may realise that it is better to analyse many different things in relation to one another.
Wood (2002) proposed the term co-sustainment and Wahl (2016) advocated regenerative cultures.
We are inclined to forget that there are temporal and non-temporal meanings for the verb 'to sustain'.
Arguably, we usually assume that sustainability refers to the making permanent of our existing lifestyle and status quo (see Fry, 2008)
Yet even this instrumentalist, or technological mode of thinking is insufficient to explain how things work.
Often the direction of causation is unclear. What we assume to be cause and effect are usually co-creative.
Whereas the syntax of sustainability is linear and causal, ecology itself is emergent and manifold.
The verb to 'sustain' is transitive, and implies that there is clear distinction between subject and predicate.
What difference is there between 'something that sustains', and 'something that is sustained'?

We need to consider what sustains what, and for how long.
Do we sustain technology or does technology sustain us?
Where is the source of economic exchange?
Isn’t money a self-organising system?
At a deeper level, aren't we implying that 'green' industries can sustain Nature…?
(Surely, Nature sustains us?).

Not everything can be sustained.
Nor would we expect to sustain time, for example.
Birth and death are intrinsically part of a process of flow.
We may want to sustain our supply of fresh food, but the freshness itself cannot be sustained.

Brundtland, G.H., 1987. Our common future—Call for action. Environmental conservation, 14(4), pp.291-294.
Fry, T., (2008), Design Futuring, Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, Berg Publishers: Oxford
Jackson, Tim 2009. Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. Sustainable Development Commission.
Lovelock, J. 1979, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Margulis, L. 1998, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, Basic Books, New York.
Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Meadows, D., 2004. Limits to growth: The 30-year update. Chelsea Green Publishing
Wahl, D. C., 2016, Designing Regenerative Cultures Axminster, UK: Triarchy Press, 2016
Wang, C., Ghadimi, P., Lim, M.K. and Tseng, M.L., 2019. A literature review of sustainable consumption and production: A comparative analysis in developed and developing economies. Journal of cleaner production, 206, pp.741-754.
Wood, J. 2007, Design for Micro-utopias; thinking beyond the possible, Ashgate: UK.
Wood, J., 2002, "Un-Managing the Butterfly; Co-Sustainment and the Grammar of Self", paper published in the International Review of Sociology - Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2002, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, ISSN 0390-6701 pp. 295 – 307
Wood, J. (editor), 2022, Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene, Routledge