People Work to Sustain Systems: A Framework for Understanding Sustainability
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 141, Issue 12
Abstract
Sustainability is commonly recognized as an important goal, but there is little agreement on what sustainability is, or what it requires. This paper looks at some common approaches to sustainability, and while acknowledging the ways in which they are useful, points out an important lacuna: that for something to be sustainable, people must be willing to work to sustain it. The paper presents a framework for thinking about and assessing sustainability which highlights people working to sustain. It also briefly discusses Integrated Water Resource Management and the example of the California Water Plan to explore what such a perspective brings that is overlooked in other approaches, and how this approach might be pursued. Ultimately, this framework argues that a system can only be described as sustainable if people’s work to sustain the system is biophysically possible, socially possible, and if people would freely choose to do the sustaining work.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Agrawal, A., et al. (2000). “Integrated water resource management.” TAC Background Paper No. 4, Global Water Partnership, Stockholm, Sweden.
Altieri, M. A. (1987). Agroecology: The scientific basis of sustainable agriculture, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
American Society of Civil Engineers, and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (1998). “Sustainability criteria for water resource systems.” ASCE, Reston, VA.
Ballweber, J. (2006). “A comparison of IWRM frameworks: The United States and South Africa.” J. Contemp. Water Resour. Educ., 135(1), 74–79.
Biswas, A. K. (2004). “Integrated water resources management: A reassessment.” Water Int., 29(2), 248–256.
Brundtland, G. H. (1987). “Brundtland report.” Our Common Future, Comissão Mundial.
California Department of Water Resources. (2014a). “About the CDWR.” 〈water.ca.gov/aboutus.cfm〉 (Feb. 11, 2015).
California Department of Water Resources. (2014b). “California water plan.” 〈waterplan.water.ca.gov〉 (Feb. 11, 2015).
Chaskin, R. J. (2001). “Building community capacity: A definitional framework and case studies from a comprehensive community initiative.” Urban Affairs Rev., 36(3), 291–323.
Davis, M. (2007). “Integrated water resource management and water sharing.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 427–445.
Dawe, N. K., and Ryan, K. L. (2003). “The faulty three-legged-stool model of sustainable development.” Conserv. Biol., 17(5), 1458–1460.
Douglass, G. (1984). “The meanings of agricultural sustainability.” Agricultural sustainability in a changing world order, G. K. Douglass, ed., The Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Figueroa, R. M. (2001). “Evaluating environmental justice claims.” Forging environmentalism: Justice, livelihood, and contested environments, J. Bauer, ed., Routledge, New York.
Flint, R. W., and Houser, W. L. (2001). Living a sustainable lifestyle for our children’s children, iUniverse Press, Bloomington, IN.
Foster, J. B. (1999). “Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology.” Am. J. Sociol., 105(2), 366–405.
Hawkes, J. (2001). The fourth pillar of sustainability: Culture’s essential role in public planning, Common Ground Publishing, Melbourne, Australia.
Holling, C. S. (1973). “Resilience and stability of ecological systems.” Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst., 4(1), 1–23.
Hooper, B. (2006). Integrated river basin governance: Learning from international experience, International Water Association Publishing, London.
Howarth, R. B. (2007). “Towards an operational sustainability criterion.” Ecol. Econ., 63(4), 656–663.
Howe, C. (2005). “The return to the river basin: The increasing cost of jurisdictional externalities.” J. Contemp. Water Resour. Educ., 131(1), 26–32.
Lebel, L., et al. (2006). “Governance and the capacity to manage resilience in regional social-ecological systems.” Ecol. Soc., 11(1), 19–39.
Lozano, R. (2008). “Envisioning sustainability three-dimensionally.” J. Cleaner Prod., 16(17), 1838–1846.
Norton, B. G. (2005). Sustainability: A philosophy of adaptive ecosystem management, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Ott, K. (2003). “The case for strong sustainability.” Greifswald’s environmental ethics, K. Ott and P. P. Thapa, eds., Steinbecker, Greifswald, DE.
Pintér, L., Bizikova, L., Kutics, K., and Vári, A. (2008). “Developing a system of sustainability indicators for the Lake Balaton region.” Tájökológiai Lapok, 6(3), 271–293.
Rijsberman, M. A., and van de Ven, F. H. M. (2000). “Different approaches to assessment of design and management of sustainable water systems.” Environ. Impact Assess. Rev., 20(3), 333–345.
Robinson, J. (2004). “Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development.” Ecol. Econ., 48(4), 369–384.
Rockström, J., et al. (2014). Water resiliency for human prosperity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Scott, J. (1999). Seeing like a state, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Seghezzo, L. (2009). “The five dimensions of sustainability.” Environ. Politics, 18(4), 539–556.
Shilling, D., Khan, A., Juricich, R., Fong, V., and Hodge, D. (2011). “The California sustainability indicators framework.” California Dept. of Water Resources, 〈waterplan.water.ca.gov〉 (Feb. 11, 2015).
Shrader-Frechette, K. (1991). Risk and rationality: Philosophical foundations for populist reforms, California University Press, Berkeley, CA.
Star, S. L., and Griesemer, J. (1989). “Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals on Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology.” Soc. Stud. Sci., 19(3), 387–420.
Steel, D. (2015). Philosophy and the precautionary principle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Swyngedouw, E., Kaïka, M., and Castro, E. (2002). “Urban water: A political-ecology perspective.” Built Environ., 28(2), 124–137.
Thompson, P. B. (1992). “The varieties of sustainability.” Agric. Human Values, 9(3), 11–19.
Thompson, P. B. (2010). The agrarian vision: Sustainability and environmental ethics, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, KY.
Trompette, P., and Vinck, D. (2009). “Revisiting the notion of boundary object, Revue d’Anthropologie des connaissances, 3(1), 3–25.
Van Wieren, G. (2013). Restored to earth: Christianity, environmental ethics, and ecological restoration, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC.
Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R., and Kinzig, A. (2004). “Resilience, adaptability, and transformability in social-ecological systems.” Ecol. Soc., 9(2), 5–14.
Werkheiser, I. (2014). “Food sovereignty, health sovereignty, and self-organized community viability.” Interdiscip. Environ. Rev., 15(2–3), 134–146.
Whyte, K. P. (2013). “Justice forward: Tribes, climate adaptation and responsibility.” Climatic Change, 120(3), 517–530.
Williams, C. C., and Millington, A. C. (2004). “The diverse and contested meanings of sustainable development.” Geog. J., 170(2), 99–104.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 141 • Issue 12 • December 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 8, 2014
Accepted: Jan 26, 2015
Published online: Mar 4, 2015
Discussion open until: Aug 4, 2015
Published in print: Dec 1, 2015
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.