Special Issue on Sustainability

The American Society of Civil Engineers has for many years been at the forefront of efforts to instill a sustainability ethic in the engineering profession and the public at large, and to promote sustainable engineering within the various communities of practice the Society represents. As early as 1993, ASCE advocated leadership in “planning, designing, building and ensuring a sustainable future,” formally adopting this commitment in its official policy (ASCE 2013). By 1996, the sustainability paradigm appeared in the first canon of the ASCE Code of Ethics: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties” (ASCE 2006).

In response to these directives, the ASCE Task Committee on Sustainability Criteria for Water Resource Systems began the challenging work of distilling the underlying philosophy and ethics inherent in sustainability principles into a more prescriptive guide to practical water resource management. The Task Committee issued a report in 1998 (ASCE 1988) that advocated systems approaches to planning and management; proposed guidelines and criteria for integration of economic, environmental, institutional, and social considerations in planning; and presented case study examples of projects and programs implemented both in accordance with and in opposition to these guidelines worldwide. The report describes sustainability thus:

“…a unifying concept that emphasizes the need to consider the long term future as well as the present. This includes the future economic, environmental, ecological, physical and social impacts that will result from decisions and actions taken today.”

This Special Issue on Sustainability provides snapshots of sustainability-themed research and practical implementation of sustainability concepts and criteria since sustainability entered the lexicon of civil engineering practice more than 20 years ago and the Task Committee offered its report a few years later. Notwithstanding the common theme, the articles included in the Special Issue represent a wider range of topics than perhaps is typical for a conventional issue of the Journal. The scope and scale of the Special Issue reflect diverse approaches and interdisciplinary resources that engineers and those in allied professions can call upon to frame and address some of the most important sustainability challenges of our time. The Special Issue presents technical papers, policy papers and case studies—13 in total—addressing one or more of the following aspects of sustainability:

Together, the research and case studies comprising the Special Issue reflect a progression of sustainability science and its influence on learning, research, systems thinking, and integration of economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability in policy, planning, design, and management of water resource systems. While not explicitly intended to advance philosophy or theory, the authors nonetheless help to define sustainability in practical terms and demonstrate the efficacy of various approaches to its implementation.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the urgent stressors associated with rising global temperatures and competitive demands on water, definitions of sustainability in more practical terms have not been particularly evident in the intervening years since the 1993 ASCE policy statement. The current ASCE definition of sustainability, for example, does not appreciably advance the Brundtland definition (WCED 1987) proposed nearly three decades ago, nor does it specifically emphasize what we now know to be the critical importance of integrated (environmental, economic, social) water resource management:

“[Sustainability is] a set of environmental, economic and social conditions in which all of society has the capacity and opportunity to maintain and improve its quality of life indefinitely without degrading the quantity, quality or availability of natural, economic, and social resources.” (ASCE 2013, op. cit.)

One particularly troublesome feature of this definition is the notion that continued economic development without environmental degradation is possible. This is an isentropic impossibility, however (McMahon and Mrozek 1997), and thus the definition offers little in the way of practical guidance for sustainable water resource development.

Several definitions of sustainability are presented in the papers in this Special Issue, as authors take various approaches to defining sustainability as they introduce readers to their work. The paper by Minsker et al. offers an excellent review of alternative definitions of sustainability and principles of performance-based infrastructure design, among these (1) conservation of energy, materials, and natural resources; (2) environmental footprint reduction; and (3) intra- and inter-generational fairness in distribution of economic, environmental, and social costs and benefits. Several authors in this issue have been collaborating with others within and outside ASCE to develop a definition framed in terms of social well-being:

“Sustainable human activities are those that, taken individually and collectively, maximize social well-being over time. Social well-being is characterized by: (1) a healthy environment, resilient in the face of natural and manmade disturbances; (2) a robust economy; (3) equitable distribution of essential goods and services; (4) participatory decision-making; and (5) adaptability to changing social needs over time.”

This definition moves away from considering each of the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, social) discretely and sequentially, in recognition of their tight interdependence. It also emphasizes their combined contributions to human welfare and quality of life; social sustainability criteria move from being a final set of criteria for consideration (after environmental and economic) and instead become the focus of evaluation of engineering outcomes. Finally, this definition is nonprescriptive, in that it describes a goal without fixing an approach. It allows for the goal itself to be moved and/or approaches to meeting it to be adapted to changing social preferences and environmental conditions over time. Readers are encouraged to think about definitional issues as they peruse this Special Issue. These articles should lead us to consider how such definitions can and should be crafted to provide further practical guidance to engineers.

The Editors are enormously grateful to the authors and reviewers who contributed to the diversity and quality of the technical papers, policy papers and case studies presented in this Special Issue of the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.