Goodland, Robert J. A. and Herman E. Daly, Salah El Serafy. 1993. "The Urgent Need for Rapid Transition to Global Environmental Sustainability." Environmental Conservation 20 (4): 297-309.

Summary:

The authors maintain that the 1987 Brundtland Report led to two conflicting definitions of sustainability: 1) "growth as usual," but at a slower rate and 2) "development without growth in throughput beyond environmental capacity." The authors argue that environmental sustainability (ES) means "keeping both the throughput of raw materials and energy within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of environmental sources and sinks" (p. 297). Further, environmental degradation and human poverty have made the transition to environmental sustainability especially urgent.

In discussion of the source and sink functions the biosphere plays in the economic subsystem, the authors argue that throughput growth is not sustainable. Growth describes quantitative increases whereas development is measured as qualitative changes. Further they introduce the equation: I = P x A x T (I = environmental impact; P - population; A = affluence; T = technology) to calculate the boundaries of environmental sustainability. The authors contend that sustainability requires that throughput (Tp), a function of population and per capita consumption, remain less than carrying capacity (CC). The authors discuss the specific contributions population, affluence and technology make in environmental impact assessment.

Definition of Environmental Sustainability:

1. Output Rule: Waste emissions from a project should be within the assimilative capacity of the local environment to absorb without unacceptable degradation of its future waste-absorptive capacity or other important services.

2. Input Rule:

a) Renewables: harvest rates of renewable resources' inputs would be within the regenerative capacity of the natural system that generates them.

b) Non-renewables: depletion rates of non-renewable resource inputs should be equal to the rate at which sustained income or renewable substitutes are developed by human invention and investment. Part of the proceeds from liquidating non-renewables should be allocated to research in pursuit of sustainable substitutes.

Four dimensions of environmental sustainability are: sound economics, environmental accounting, environmental assessment, and effective use of operational guidelines.

The authors' final sections address factors involved in institutional strengthening of ES including two tables (see p. 306) entitled "Criteria and Indicators of ES" and "Institutional Priorities for ES. Finally, in enforcing ES, officials should require the damagers to fully compensate and restore the environment they degrade.

Keywords: environmental sustainability, sound economics, environmental accounting, environmental assessment