Blog Post 1: A Lack of Clarification

A Lack of Clarification

In a TED TALK entitled ‘The route to a sustainable future’, Alex Steffen refers to his audience as a “crowd that…know what sustainability (it) is…” (Steffen, 2005). Steffen, founder of Worldchanging.com, continues for seventeen minutes to discuss this “sustainable future” without clearly defining ‘sustainability’. So what is sustainability? In this post, we will begin to consider how organizations and individuals can manipulate a loose definition of the term through its inherent positivity (Weisser, 2017:1078). We will continue the discussion in Blog Post 2, The Consequences of Rigidity, with the counterargument of how a rigid definition may be limiting. Through this discourse, we aim to achieve an understanding of how one can use the term ‘sustainability’ clearly and concisely without a singular definition.

Many Organizations and individuals claim to be “sustainable”, but what are they referring to? Articles in the Guardian for 2018 have referred to “sustainability” on a host of themes, including sustainable designers at fashion week (3^rd of June), profit margins made by the UKs small abattoirs (26^th of Feb) and most recently, a “huge rise in US plastic waste shipments…”(5^th of October). These headlines link economic, social and environmental issues to the sustainability discourse. This interlink is referred to as the “three pillars of sustainability” (Weisser, 2017:1081). And thus highlights sustainability as a “multifaceted concept” (Levintova & Mueller, 2015:14).

However, it is within these multidimensional layers that we find confusion on what sustainability really is. According to research carried out by Levintova and Mueller, “without proper explanation”, students jump to assume “environmental themes, with social aspects of sustainability making some inroads…” (Levintova & Mueller, 2015:14). Thus while projects such as the AASHE’s “STARS” (Weisser, 2017) award markers of sustainability to Universities and Colleges, students have little idea of what is being ‘sustained’, other then a vague assumption of “environmental themes…” (Levintova & Mueller, 2015:14). With such a “malleable and inherently positive” term (Weisser, 2017:1078), and a lack of a universal definition, an organization promising to ‘act sustainably’, is promising a great deal, covering a broad scope, of a highly ambitious nature, without much clarity. Is it fair that students and individuals alike are being promised sustainable institutions without an understanding of sustainability itself?

As well as these loose definitions, we equally and often see the term ‘sustainable development’ used interchangeably with ‘sustainability’. Is this to assume that sustainability itself requires a level of development to be achieved? With this hypothesis, a box left in a room indefinitely must somehow ‘develop’, in order to be sustained. And this inherently seems flawed.

Furthermore, we must ask ourselves the question, who has the authority to define sustainability? According to Weisser, it is a “power-laiden” term (Weisser, 2017:1078), defined by those within the position of authority to define it. Whether it is a lecturer teaching a module on “Sustainability”, a business venture looking to ‘act sustainably’ or a society promising to make campus ‘sustainable’, the authoritative figure of each defines the term depending on specific interests (Weisser, 2017:1078)

But, isn’t this confusing? Do we need one, clearly defined meaning of ‘sustainability’? How are we to progress towards a ‘sustainable future’ as expressed by Steffen when we have not defined the term itself? We will begin to question the necessity for a singular definition in our second blog post, The Consequences of Rigidity.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levintova, E. M. & Mueller, D. W. (2015) Sustainability: Teaching an Interdisciplinary Threshold Concept through Traditional Lecture and Active Learning. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6 (1): 14.

Steffen, A. (2005) The route to a sustainable future. [online] Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_steffen_sees_a_sustainable_future/transcript?language=en (Accessed 16 October 2018).

The Guardian Articles. (2018) Sustainable development. [online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/sustainable-development (Accessed 16 October 2018).

Weisser, C. R. (2017) Defining sustainability in higher education: a rhetorical analysis. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18 (7): 1078-1081.