Note: This project, Project One, is a prerequisite for Project Two

The book ‘Making Sense of Sustainability: a breakthrough in understanding the workings and appraisal of sustainability‘ is yet to be written. I am seeking crowd-funding to help make that happen. The book’s purpose is to explain the logic of sustainability in a new and simple way, by extending already established theories and adding some deductions. It will offer methods for evaluating the sustainability of systems, point to principles that need further research. and most importantly, offer a basic framework for developing sustainability in the context of everyday life. 

Sustainability is a question that looms large over humanity. It is a question which is getting ever-increasing attention. It also may have been the very question that confounded Darwin. While it was clear that evolution and extinction were linked any efforts to combine them into a single theory at the time were premature. Not only was the concept of sustainability unknown, but so was the maths needed to unlock its deeper logic.

Considering its overall importance our popular notions about sustainability are surprisingly ill-defined. As the Environmental Law Institute noted recently,

“… the term sustainability was introduced in environmental policy discourse over 30 years ago”, when the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future. In addition to charting a path for future development, the lengthy report – which was released in conjunction with the United Nations in 1987 – is recognised as defining ‘sustainability’ as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
“Our Common Future puts forth what is largely considered to be the first definition of the term. However, as the leaders of the Environmental Law Institute note, sustainability, as a term and as a practice, still “suffers from the ambiguity that must be overcome if governmental and private-sector decision-makers are to optimize the concept’s potential.”
“In other words: ‘sustainability’, along with other terms such as – ‘green’, ‘eco-friendly’, ‘ethical’, ‘responsibly-made’, and in many cases, even ‘upcycled’ – lack concrete, uniform definitions with foundations in law that brands and consumers can observe.

So the world has become saddled with the notion that sustainability is somehow partnered to development. The most popular explanation is even based around the idea that our economy, society and environment are the ‘three pillars of sustainability‘. This is the upside-down speak: painting the tail to look like the head with no foundation in science. The notion that the attribute of sustainability is somehow supported by those three, or arises in some virtual space of their imagined overlap, is nonsense. In reality sustainability is not an add-on to be supported and marketed, but the very ground on which these so-called pillars are stood up on.

In my book I define sustainability in a totally different way, as:

‘A measure of the ability of a self-perpetuating process, or
nest of processes, to persist over [a defined period of] time.’

Key points of this definition

• sustainability should be measurable,
• sustainability applies to process-dependent systems.

Once the process outcomes of a system reach equilibrium there are characteristics patterns which arise. These are found throughout the natural environment but are not confined there. My book will argue that there is a universal template which can be applied to non-environmental systems as well.