A crash course in the science of sustainability

Abstract

WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY? Sustainability means enduring into the long-term future; it refers to systems and processes that are able to operate and persist on their own over long periods of time. The adjective sustainable means ‘able to continue without interruption’ or ‘able to endure without failing.’ The word sustainability comes from the Latin verb sustinēre, ‘to maintain, sustain, support, endure,’ made from the roots sub, ‘up from below,’ and tenēre, ‘to hold.’ The German equivalent, Nachhaltigkeit, first appeared in the 1713 forestry book Sylvicultura Oeconomica written by Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a mining administrator in a region whose mining and metallurgy industry depended on timber and who realized that deforestation could cause the local economy to collapse. Carlowitz described how, through sustainable management of this renewable resource, forests could supply timber indefinitely.