Can you summarize that conclusion? please . Conclusions Having reached this poin

Question

Can you summarize that conclusion? please

. Conclusions

Having reached this point, the reader may feel we have come no closer to solving the practical problem of how to measure sustainability. Indeed we have aimed more at exploring the theoretical basis for defining sustainability than providing a practical manual for measuring it. In spite of the large body of literature on sustainability, we feel that there is still need for clarifying the concept. Since sustainability is a topic of both policy appraisal and scientific study, its definition must be useful for both fields of work.

We believe that separating the needs of the present from the needs of those who will come after us is a sensible way to analyze scenarios and assess the impact of policies, because it clarifies the choices that need to be made. We propose to call the former well-being and the latter sustainability. This prevents sustainability from becoming an empty phrase indistinguishable from ‘goodness’. Well-being mostly corresponds with the social and economic dimensions of the ‘triple bottom line’, sustainability with the environmental dimension.

When assessing the impact of a policy on well-being, the distinction between social and economic dimensions is not helpful and often impossible to make in practice. It is better to use sociological insights to assign values to the different aspects of well-being, and economics to combine those values into an overall assessment. In arriving at actual measurements (inevitable for comparing different possible outcomes), some important but imponderable costs and benefits may have to be left out because they cannot be expressed in quantitative terms. However, they should be left out only from the measurement, not from the assessment. In this way, decision-makers can at least see how much an unmeasured benefit will cost, or what has to be sacrificed for a certain increase in measured well-being. The concept of welfare may be useful as a subset of well-being—namely, that part of well-being that can be quantified and valued in money terms.

When assessing sustainability, a distinction should be made between strong and weak sustainability. Both can have a place in impact assessment: strong sustainability as thresholds that should not be crossed, weak sustainability for those environmental amenities, natural resources or ecosystem services (these three terms are more, or less, interchangeable) that are in principle substitutable for others. The setting of the thresholds is a matter of policy, but must be informed by scientific knowledge on the resilience of ecosystems. The thresholds can be set so restrictively that no sustainable outcome is possible, and all that policy can do is to minimize the extent by which thresholds are exceeded. The less restrictive they are, the larger the ‘sustainability space’, within which analysts can model and compare different outcomes. Potschin’s and Haines-Young’s notion of sustainability choice space [39] is a way of articulating this.

In such analysis the participation of natural and social scientists (including economists) is needed.

We see this as a possible way to resolve the perennial conflict between economists and ecologists about sustainability, or at the very least a method to handle that conflict. The latter tend to baulk at cost-benefit analysis in which natural resources may be substituted by man-made ones, pointing out that natural resources can become lost forever and that such loss should therefore be prevented at all cost. They therefore tend to prefer other tools of decision support, such as multi-criteria analysis. Social cost-benefit analysis has one great advantage, however: once goals have been stated clearly, it shows up the best choice among alternatives. This forces policy-makers to show their hand and put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Qualitative tools leave them the freedom to choose one alternative over another more or less arbitrarily, though there are of course examples of political decisions being made contrary to cost-benefit indications. The major disadvantages of cost-benefit analysis are our ignorance of the future (especially technical progress) and the difficulty of quantifying many variables. Hence we propose to identify some natural resources as belonging outside the domain of cost-benefit analysis. That tool should be restricted to those resources where substitutability is believed to be applicable. Which resources can be so treated remains, of course, a matter of debate and, ultimately, of politics.

Those resources which we deem irreplaceable and which must therefore be preserved at all costs are the domain of strong sustainability. Here we must ask ourselves not only what degree of well-being we should bequeath to other generations, but even more profound questions relating to the long-term survival of our species as well as our responsibilities towards other species [40]. This, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

The ideas advocated in this paper are not new. Indeed we have been inspired by the authors quoted, last but not least by the Brundtland Report [1], which in the literature is generally recognized as the initiator of the sustainability debate and to which we hark back. We believe, however, that the particular way we propose to combine the various dimensions into well-being and sustainability is more precise as well as more comprehensive than the way the concept of sustainability is commonly used at present. Ultimately, the point of sustainability appraisal must be that a balance is sought between the requirements of stewardship on the one hand and the desire for a better life on the other—or even, the extent to which these can be reconciled.

Explanation / Answer

Sustainability should not be merely in papers and debates. It should be seen in all the areas where
it is affecting and the issues in those areas must be addressed. There are some aspects that were
not included in the sustainability of social and economic systems like recovering the lost species,
over usage of non renewable resources and not being aware of the fresh water losses. Sustainability
must be ensured so that the next generation people will be comfortable in carrying their lives.

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