Slocombe, D. Scott and Caroline Van Bers. 1991. "Seeking Substance in Sustainable Development." Journal of Environmental Education 23 (Fall): 11-18.

Thesis:

"...how to approach sustainable development in an educational setting and illustrate some detailed recommendations for change derived from the goal of sustainability" (p. 12).

Summary:

The authors outline four approaches to teaching about sustainable development (see p. 12):

1) Using a specific geographic focus, a site specific example;

2) Including the history of environmental problems and efforts to solve them: "It helps to understand the origins and dimensions of unsustainability in terms of the environmental problems of a particular place."

3) Taking a human-ecological approach to the interaction of human societies and the natural environment: "Human-ecological approaches are typified by a holistic or systemic, process-view of society-environment interactions and the relationships of economic, ecological, and social factors to patterns of resource and land use." 4) Simulating the decisions and choices entailed by managing the environment and the economy sustainably. "The key is to involve students in determining what is unsustainable and then to encourage them to decide what policies and activities would be sustainable." In encouraging students to identify the changes involved in "sustainability," the authors focus on "sustainable societies" rather than sustainable development per se.

Environmental sustainability requires "redesigning society so that human activities do not have long-term negative impacts on either the environment or on society" (p. 13). The University of Waterloo's Sustainable Society Project is used as a model for developing a society that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. The authors identify four dimensions of such a society: values, socieopolitical activities, environmental-ecological activities and human activities (p. 13). Design criteria, "objectives that highlight ways to improve the sustainability of the interaction between the economy and the environment" (p. 13), are combined to provide an outline of a sustainable society (see Table 1, p. 14, 15).

In visualizing a sustainable society, the authors discuss eleven human activity sectors and supporting design criteria. Their basic assumption is that "the health and productivity of species and ecosystems must be maintained" (p. 15). The eleven areas are: urbanization, recreation, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, industries, energy, transportation and communication, mining, commercial and domestic activities, and technology. The design criteria for each emphasizes improved efficiency in resource use, including the reducing wastes, extracting natural resources at a renewable rate - allowing for natural regeneration, and developing technologies which utilize renewable, rather than nonrenewable, resources.

Keywords: ecological sustainability (ecosystem biodiversity), economic sustainability (ecological economics), social sustainability, intergenerational and intranational equity, participatory democracy (micro-level).