Many people are talking about sustainability. But trust me, if you ask them, what sustainability is, most of them will trap into definition, but they couldn’t really explain it in practical ways. For me, it is simple; sustainability is simply an ability to sustain. Ability means you can do things. The word sustain itself, could lead you to somewhere you couldn’t really comprehend because of its widht, height, and depth. To sustain will highly depending on what is the condition of your environment at the the time. So, sustainability basically means, to be able to manage yourself in such a way no matter what happens with your environment.
I went for several discussions during my exchange program that i’m working on right now. I found out that there are several issues of sustainability that left unclear. Everybody has their own opinions about sustainability, there’s no common ground definition on sustainability that makes everything easier to be understood. Moreover, sometimes what we thought as sustainability, is not sustainability for others.
One conversation i had on sustainability was the idea to generate local economy in order to enhance the ability of local people in sustaining. The idea was generated, since we thought (i thought) that by having local economy increasing, the local community will have enough ‘self-funding’ in adapting themselves to overcome whatever environmental situation they will have in the future. That’s what i thought. For instance, if you know that climate change will distract your source of income, from fishing for example, by having other alternatives of income, you don’t have to be worry about money you’ll be needing in meeting your daily needs.
That’s pretty obvious for me. But see it in national wide, having all fishermen shifting their jobs, will decrease the national ability in meeting their nutrition (especially protein) needs.
So here, you will see, that local sustainability does not mean national sustainability. Basically it is the fact that sometimes, we solve things un-holistically. Which leads our solutions to failure.
Another thing that for me is very interesting, is the fact that the local economty growth will lead the locals to wanting things that modern world has. As an example: if isolated people are electrified, they’ll be willing to have refrigerator, TV sets, computers, and others. This would lead to electronic waste, that the locals (isolated people) do not have the ability to process it. It is something that will happen in the next 10 years afterwards, for instance. But it is still something that we need to think of, if we really wanted things to run sustainably.
One of the persons i’ve talked to regarding to sustainability said to me, sustainability is the ability to see connections between elements. Once you know the connections, then finally you could run something sustainably in its own ways.
This leads myself to an attitude that yes, we do have the right to grow. But in growing, we should have the ability to be responsible on our growth. If you want your economy to grow, you should be aware that you will produce the product, and also the waste. All you need to do, is to think on what to do on your waste.
So, let’s grow responsibly!
ime’…
