Sustaintability

Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. In addition to natural resources, we also need social
and economic resources. Sustainability is not just environmentalism. Embedded in most
definitions of sustainability we also find concerns for social equity and economic
development.
Sustainability is the process of living within the limits of available physical, natural and social
resources in ways that allow the living systems in which humans are embedded to thrive in
perpetuity.
Sustaintable development
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable Development must balance the needs of
society, the economy, and the environment.
What are sustainability indicators?
Indicators are quantified information which help to explain how things are changing over
time. For many years, a limited number of key economic measures has been used to judge
how the economy is performing - for example, output, the level of employment, the rate of
inflation, the balance of payments, public sector borrowing, etc. These statistics give an
overall picture but do not explain why particular trends are occurring, and do not necessarily
reflect the situation of a particular industry, society or area. They do, however, provide policy-
makers and the public reasonable indicators of changes in the economy, assisting economic
policy decision making and allowing the public to judge for themselves how the economy is
performing overall.
Why do we need indicators?
There are three basic functions of indicators - simplification, quantification, and
communication. Indicators generally simplify in order to make complex phenomena
quantifiable so that information can be communicated. Some of the general public are
concerned about sustainable development and the environment. They like to be informed
about the state of the environment and the economy and how and why they are changing.
INDICATOR: THE PRESSURE-STATE-RESPONSE INDICATORS (PER) (model).
Unit process: contain quantitative data on inputs and outputs in relation a reference flow.
Are built using row data that is usually not expressed in relation to a reference flow and
hence that needs to be transformed.