Earth Forum Posts

• Sustainability news from ScienceDaily
• Environmental News Network
• Environment & Energy news (subscription required)
• Environment news from National Geographic
• Sustainability news from the US National Park Service
• News for the United Nations Environment Programme
• Environment and Energy news from the United Nations Development Programme

• DiscussionCentral: Climate Decisionmaking, Locally
• Earth Day: April 22
• World Water Day: March 22
• DiscussionCentral: Supporting Climate Change Decisionmakers

• Celebrate Sustainability and the Environment - with the Year of Science 2009
• Millennium Development Goals - from the United Nations
• Millennium Development Goal #7 - Environmental sustainability
• The Earth Institute (PDF, 5.92 MB) - at Columbia University
• Sustainability Coverage - from American Public Media
• Facing the Future - Education on Sustainability and Global Issues

Sustainability

Despite its popularity, the term sustainability is used in a wide variety of ways with a plethora of meanings. At the 1992 United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, sustainable development was discussed in the context of a 1987 report entitled Our Common Future, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
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Making Development More Sustainable

This book recognizes that sustainable development is a primary challenge of the 21st century (with poverty alleviation as the main goal), and sets out a framework called “Sustainomics” developed over the past 15 years to meet that challenge. Sustainable development is broadly defined here as “a process for improving the range of opportunities that will enable individual human beings and communities to achieve their aspirations and full potential over a sustained period of time, while maintaining the resilience of economic, social and environmental systems”.
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Indicators of sustainable development

Indicators attempt to convey a broader image than the underlying statistics would suggest. For instance, the average life expectancy of an infant is usually taken to indicate the public health of a population. The purpose of selecting one or more indicators for describing a broader subject is to reduce information overload for data users.
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World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Johannesburg, South Africa

The World Summit on Sustainable Development was organized by the United Nations (UN) and took place from 26 August to 4 September 2002, at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Osamu Saito
Research Institute for Sustainability Science
Osaka University
Japan
Encyclopedia of Earth Author

Munasinghe Institute for Sustainable Development
Sri Lanka
Encyclopedia of Earth Content Partner

Michelle Miller
University of Wisconsin - Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
Encyclopedia of Earth Topic Editor

International Institute for Sustainable Development
Canadian-based not-for-profit organization
Encyclopedia of Earth Content Partner

Mathis Wackernagel
Executive Director
Global Footprint Network
California, USA
Encyclopedia of Earth Author

Visit the Year of Science homepage for more individuals, organizations and resources related to this month’s theme, sustainability and the environment.