Art 35

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September 1, 2013 | Vol. 14 | No. 9 | ISSN 1607 - 6079
ARTICLE
SUSTAINABILITY
Carlos Amador Birch
General Directorate of Computing and Information and Communication Technologies - UNAM

Department of Digital Collections
“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

http://www.revista.unam.mx/vol.14/num9/art35/index.html
SUSTAINABILITY
Summary
Two hundred years of modernity have had the double effect of bringing us to the point of
greatest progress in our development as a species and, simultaneously, to the point where
the permanence of these advances is threatened from multiple directions. The science and
technology of sustainability is proposed as a project
for the rational realization of a proposed alternative
paradigm. Its effective application requires a radical
change, and not just cosmetic modifications, in the
“
This science of direction of human activities. The recent idea of safe,
dignified and fair operating space for humanity clearly
sustainability, as it has shows the necessary direction.
been called, is
necessarily
Keywords: Sustainability science, Planetary Frontiers,
interdisciplinary, and requires Fair and Safe Space for Humanity.
the participation of all current
disciplines of science...
“ SUSTAINABILITY
Abstract
Two hundred years of modernity have come with the

mixed blessing of raising humanity to the top in its
development as a species while, at the same time, driving it to the brink of destruction, at
least in its present societal form. Sustainability science and technology is a rational attempt
of adopting an alternative paradigm that allows to avoid this destiny. In order to be effective,
however, it requires a radical change in the direction of human development.
Recently, the idea of a safe and just operating space for humanity has provided a clear
indication of the necessary direction.
Keywords: Sustainablity Science, Planetary Boundaries, Safe and Just Space for
Humanity
2
Department of Digital Collections. General Directorate of Computing and Information and Communication Technologies – UNAM
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainable development is development that meets the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs
(Brundtland Commission, 1987)
Introduction
There is no doubt, the path we have followed as a species - and particularly the one
we have followed for the last two hundred years - is unsustainable because it
No does not meet the needs of the present and compromises the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. The evidence for the first is multiple, painful and
very well documented. A limited list of unsatisfied needs includes evidence that, above
a certain income, obtaining greater wealth stops contributing to happiness [Kahneman
and Deaton, 2010], that the distribution of income is very inequitable - in the In the best
case scenario, the number of human beings living on less than 1.25 dollars a day is
estimated at 1.4 billion [The World Bank, 2013] -, as is access to food [FAO, 2013],
education [Barro and Lee, 2010], justice [Solt, 2009], etc. The evidence that we are
compromising our species' ability to meet its needs in the future also has a long list that
has been effectively summarized, for example, in the idea of the nine planetary
boundaries [Rockström et al., 2009] that include climate change, ocean acidification,
freshwater consumption and the loss of biodiversity, among others.
The discussion of the effects that the path we follow as a species may
have is as old as History, particularly with regard to the satisfaction of the
needs of the present - intragenerational equity. Attention to the conservation
of the possibilities of future generations to satisfy their needs - intergenerational
equity - is more recent and inevitably leads to the texts of Malthus [Malthus,
1798] and Carson [Carson, 1962]. In recent years, motivated mainly by the
recognition of the effects of global warming - the ten years of highest
temperatures in modern history have occurred from 1998 to date -, the
assignment of its causes to the generation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) - the
[1] The effort of many
authors to respond, continuous growth of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been
rationally, to the precisely measured since 1956 and momentarily reached, for the first time in
irrational nonsense
used by those who millennia, 400 ppm in 2013 [ Mauna Loa Observatory, 2013] -, the evidence
deny the evidence of
anthropogenic climate
that the main contribution to the generation of GHGs is anthropogenic - the
change is striking. combustion of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) generates 88% of the energy
For example, in their
extraordinary book
used by humanity - and the criminally effective discussion - due to the time it
Bankrupt Nature: has caused humanity to lose in addressing these problems - by those who
Inattention to Planetary
Borders, Wijkman and
deny this
Theincontrovertible
, evidence1
issue of sustainability has become a central topic in the scientific research
Rockström [Wijkman of environmentalists, ecologists, geoscientists and some other researchers.
and Rockström, 2012]
dedicate 20% of their This discussion has reached many attempts of mass dissemination to the general public,
work to demonstrating
the irrationality of
“contreras”.
3

through books, magazines, conferences and courses. Despite this, the issue of
sustainability has not yet achieved a single real effect that globally modifies the path that
humans follow, although some local achievements must be recognized.2
But even more interestingly, in the last ten or twenty years, attention has turned
to the issue of holistic sustainability - so to speak - which addresses not only the
problems generated by human activity in the environment, but also the shortcomings of
this activity in satisfying the needs of the
humanity itself as a whole; and studies these problems and their consequences both for
the current era -intragenerationally- and for the future of generations to come
-intergenerationally-. This science of sustainability, as it has been called, is necessarily
interdisciplinary, and requires the participation of all current disciplines of science and
the generation of new disciplines that integrate current knowledge and contribute to
generating new knowledge that allows us to address our situation in ways that are
necessarily different from those we know, since the tools of the present are the ones we
have used to get into this current mess.
In section 2 I present a short digression on the danger of the aforementioned

efforts being incorporated into existing paradigms and thus neutralized; The presentation
includes examples of how the most unsustainable companies wrap themselves in the
term sustainability and thus create sustainabilityblablabla, and a funny cartoon that
illustrates the problem. The recent combination of planetary boundaries, the
environmental limits that human development has reached and whose surpassing
endangers the security of our species, and the social foundation required to guarantee
the access of every human being to the opportunity to a dignified and just life is presented
[2] European advances in
the use of sustainable
in section 3. Finally, by way of conclusion, I present in section 4 an emphatic argument
energy can be mentioned, in favor of the general application of sustainability sciences.
but reality insists on
maintaining my
pessimism. My favorite
plan, despite his
recent lost battle, is
the one proposed
Sustainblablablabla
by the president of
Ecuador when asking
the world to finance
This is how the proposal of Robert Engelman, director of the Worldwatch Institute, can
the development of be translated in the first chapter of State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still
his country with 3.6
billion dollars in Possible?, a collective book recently published by that institution [The Worldwatch Institute, 2013].
exchange for not
extracting oil from the
Yasuní National Park - We currently live in an era of sustainblablabla, a cacophonous profusion of
in the Amazon. . After
six years, and only
uses of the word sustainable to indicate everything from environmental
getting 13 million dollars, improvements to “fashionable” […]
Correa announced
that his government is going to start drilling.
The reaction of the Currently, the term sustainable is more frequently used to refer to corporate
world - and of those
who can raise 3,587 behavior known as greenwashing3 . The media is saturated with phrases
million - will tell us like sustainable design, sustainable cars, even sustainable underwear.
how close we are to
taking the urgency One airline informs passengers that “the cardboard used on this flight has
of sustainability seriously.
been taken from a sustainable source,” while another informs that the new
[3] Perhaps greenwashing organization of its flights based on a “sustainable effort” saved enough
can be used in
comparison with aluminum in 2011
brainwashing . (N. of A.)
4

“to build three new airplanes.” None of these comments help to reflect on
whether it is possible that the global operation of the airline - or of
commercial aviation itself - can be maintained in the long term on the
current scale. (p.3)
The word sustainblablabla is invented to describe the appropriation of the term

sustainability within the paradigms of the current state of things, and has the effect of
trivializing the term, downplaying its importance and, above all, urgency. As usual,
cartoonists describe the situation better than any text, as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1:
The use of the word
sustainable is not sustainable.
[With permission from www.xkcd.com]
In a certain sense, the abuse in the use of the concept of sustainability

unfortunately favors its neutralization. That sector of society that defends the status quo
and believes that the development model followed to date works without the need for
modifications has traditionally been very effective in its campaigns to discredit these
proposals, which have included everything from the rustic attacks on Rachel Carson
around 1962 - the fact that she was not married despite being physically attractive was
sufficient cause to say that “she was probably a communist” - to the characterization of
environmentalists as tree huggers and proponents of the impossibility of growth
permanent economic like doomsayers. And to the campaigns that, in a spirit
5

much more sympathetic and, I want to believe, for different reasons they include the Talking
Heads song and the cartoon in Figure 1.
Nothing but flowers
Once there were parking lots

Now it’s a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
Talking Heads (1988)
Planetary borders and social borders

It's very difficult to predict, especially about the future, Yogi Berra said. However, I dare to
predict that the work led by Johan Rockström, who defined planetary boundaries, will become a
fundamental reference for all attempts at sustainability. The original article appeared in 2009 in
the digital magazine Ecology and Society [Rockström et al., 2009a] - which has a relatively poor
impact factor of 3.310-1 and has been cited 89 times; the less technical version that appeared
the same year in Nature [Rockström et al., 2009b] - which has another type of impact factor,
38,597-2, has been cited 583 times.4 In my opinion, the most important part of this team's
contribution is providing a simple way to describe the problem that humanity faces due to its
current form of development from a biophysicochemical point of view. As you will remember, the
idea of planetary boundaries is the interpretation that defines nine biophysicochemical processes
crucial for the stable development of the Earth. The processes originally recognized in that
work are: climate change, destruction of the ozone layer, accumulation of atmospheric aerosol,
ocean acidification, consumption of fresh water, chemical pollution, agricultural land use, loss of
biodiversity and nitrogen cycles and phosphorus. These nine processes - note that the nitrogen
and phosphorus cycles count as one - occur gradually in such a way that their current state can
be measured in relation to the level that, these authors consider, defines the border of the
operational space. safe for humanity. An additional success of the authors is having thought of
a graphic representation that allows their proposal to be effectively interpreted (Figure 2): we
have abundantly exceeded humanity's safe operating space in three processes: climate change,
[4] Which places it as
number 22 of the loss of biodiversity and the nitrogen cycle; and we are close to surpassing it in
most cited articles of
that year to date.
And that does not
mention graphene or
DNA. http://
apps.webofk-nowledge.com
6

almost two more: phosphorus cycle and ocean acidification. The resulting interpretation
is clear and forceful: if we continue to act in the way we have done in the last two
hundred years, we will be outside the safe operating zone for the species.
Figure 2:
The planetary boundaries
that define humanity's safe
operating space. The red
areas must not exceed the
green circle; although they
have already exceeded it in
three of the cases considered
and are close to doing so in
two more. Note that two of
the processes were not
qualified because we lacked sufficient data.
But what will confirm the fame and relevance of Rock-ström's original proposal
is the recent addition by Raworth [Raworth, 2012], which allows the general idea of
sustainability to be presented at a single glance. Because Raworth suggests that
Rockström's original proposal constitutes the “environmental ceiling” of the security
space, to which the “social foundation” must be added, that is, the set of resources that
every human being must access to have the opportunity of a dignified and fair life.
Eleven social priorities are proposed to define the social foundation of humanity:
1. food safety
2. economic income
3. water and sanitary facilities
4. health care
5. education
6. access to sufficient energy
7. gender equality
8. social equity
7

9. freedom of expression
10. access to work
11. security
Figure 3:
The “social foundations”
that define humanity's
safe operating space. The
orange areas must reach
the green circle to ensure
the minimum of justice
and dignity for all human
beings. Note that three of
the processes were not
qualified because, in the
author's opinion, there is
still insufficient data.
Unlike the Rockström case in which we worry about not exceeding the ceiling of
planetary borders, now the question is how close are we to reaching that floor, the minimum
necessary for equity and justice? Predictably, the answer is that we are currently far from
guaranteeing the existence of this space of security for large numbers of human beings.
Figure 3 shows Raworth's estimate. As can be seen, we are not able to guarantee the social
floor for humanity in any of the eleven categories initially defined and, even more serious,
in some categories - water and sanitary facilities, gender equality, access to sufficient energy
- we are very away from that floor.
8

And this combination of ideas provides a very precise definition of sustainability

as the art of placing ourselves in a safe, dignified and fair operating space for humanity.
The resulting “donut” – as it has been called – is presented in figure 4. Can we organize
ourselves to live inside the donut? That is the central question of sustainability.
Figure 4:
The gift of safe, dignified and
fair operating space for
humanity. Raworth's work
proposes eleven social
foundations, Rockström's,
nine planetary borders.
Sustainability proposes
reaching the social floor
without exceeding the
environmental ceiling.
Currently, although we have
not guaranteed the social
floor for all humanity, we have
exceeded the
environmental ceiling on the planet.
But what need for sustainability?

There are two types of people, those who think about the future of civilization and those
who don't. We are not going to mention the latter again in this work because the most
likely thing is that none of them will ever read it. Now, with respect to those of us who
belong to the first group, it has been said that one is born an optimist or a pessimist, that
it is very rare for those who change sides, and much rarer still for those who do so
rationally after seeing reality. Are we living in the best era of humanity? Are we getting
better or are we getting worse? The first question has been discussed abundantly -
[5] Jorge Manrique, Coplas
from the classic of pessimism “[every] past time was better”5 against the chilling optimism
for the death of his
father (c. 1470) of Hobbes since human life in the past was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”6 to
[6] Thomas Hobbes, the melancholic pessimism of “yesterday's poverty was less poor than what industry
Leviathan (1651)
offers us now. "The fortunes were also smaller" by Borges7 compared to Pinker's
[7] Jorge Luis Borges, The inevitably optimistic hard data [Pinker, 2011] -, but the idea that originates our
Old Lady in Brodie's
Report (1970)
9

Attention to sustainability is more related to the second question: are we getting better or
worse? And even more precisely, are we going to continue improving or are we going to
start getting worse? Looking at the past, the opinion of the man on the street is pessimistic,
in the manner of Manrique and Borges, but looking at the future not only is our opinion
optimistic, but we are actively committed to defending that optimism. Thus, humanity acts
in the present as if permanent economic growth were guaranteed, as if the availability of
cheap energy were assured, as if climate change did not exist. That inclination guides our
decisions: this is how we vote, this is how we buy, this is how we throw away, this is how
we consume, this is how we eat.
But one of the undoubted advantages of our present is the quantity and quality
of the information we have at hand. We have never dedicated so much effort to finding
out what is happening. And while it is true that we are very far from predicting the future
with precision, that our uncertainties are very large, that it is not impossible that the truth
ends up being on the other side of what is predicted, never before have we known so
much about what is going to happen. occur. We may not know much, but it is what we
have known the most in the history of humanity.
Current predictions of the effect of human activity in the near future are
approximate and subject to the possibility of uncertainty and error. But its denial - and the
omission to take actions that respond to these predictions - is more uncertain and
sometimes completely false. We know, for example, that if we burn all the fossil fuel that
we can extract, the average global temperature will increase above that which guarantees
the stability of the functioning of current society.
Is not this knowledge reason enough to act? Isn't it the responsibility of the
academy to lead this action? In my opinion, the answer is categorically affirmative in both
cases. What fate will human society choose in its first global test of survival? As Diamond
has shown (Diamond, 2012), different human groups have made wrong choices in
numerous local circumstances, making their permanence impossible. In our current
advantage, as already mentioned, we have never been so capable of modifying our
behavior and it is not impossible for us to reinvent ourselves and be able to avoid the evils
that surround us (Diamandis & Kotler, 2012). As always, for our modern society, our best
weapons are rationality, science, technology and education.
10

Bibliography
[1] BARRO, R. J. & Lee, J.-W. A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World [en línea],
1950–2010. National Bureau Of Economic Research. Working Paper 15902. [consulta: 30
de agosto 2013]. Disponible en http://www.nber.org/papers/w15902
[2] CARSON, Rachel (1962) Silent Spring, Editorial Crítica 2005. ISBN 978-84-
8432-630-4.
[3] DIAMANDIS P. H. & Kotler H. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Free Press.
ISBN: 978-14-5161-421-3. 2012 (Puede verse una conferencia del autor en http://
www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html
[4] DIAMOND, Jared Collapse: Why some societies endure and others disappear.
Random House Mondadori. ISBN: 978-84-8346-227-0. 2012 (A talk by the author can
be seen at http://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_
societies_collapse.html
[5] FAO Statistical Yearbook 2013 [online]. [consultation: September 11, 2013].
Available at http://www.fao.org/statistics/en/
[6] KAHNEMAN, D. & Deaton, A. High income improves evaluation of life but not
emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, 16489–
16493. 2010
[7] MALTHUS, Thomas An Essay on the Principle of Population, The Echo Library 2006.
ISBN 1-84637-394-8. 1798
[8] Mount Loa Observatory Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL. 2013. Available at www.esrl.
noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
[9] PINKER, S. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. Viking/Penguin
Group, New York. 2011
[10] RAWORTH, K. A safe and just space for humanity: can we live within the doughnut? [en
línea] Oxfam Discussion Paper, 2012. [consulta: 30 de agosto 2013]. Disponible en http://
www.oxfam.org/en/grow/policy/safe-and-just-space-humanity
[11] ROCKSTRÖM, J. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475.
2009b
[12] ROCKSTRÖM, J. et al. Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for
humanity. [en línea] Ecology and Society 14(2): 32. 2009a. [consulta: 30 de agosto 2013].
Disponible en http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/
11

[13] SOLT, F. Standardizing the World Income Inequality Database. Social Science
Quarterly 90, 231–242. 2009.
[14] The World Bank Poverty. 2013. [accessed: August 30, 2013]. Available at http://
go.worldbank.org/VL7N3V6F20
[15] The Worldwatch Institute State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
Assadourian E. y Prugh T. (editores). Island Press. ISBN 978-1-61091-449-9. 2013.
[16] WIJKMAN, A. & Rockström J. Bankrupting Nature: Denying our planetary

boundaries. A report to the Club of Rome, Routledge. 2012.
[17] World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. 1987. [consulta: 30 de agosto 2013].
Disponible en http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf
12

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Machine Translated by Google

September 1, 2013 | Vol. 14 | No. 9 | ISSN 1607 - 6079

Carlos Amador Birch

General Directorate of Computing and Information and Communication Technologies - UNAM

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

Two hundred years of modernity have come with the

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

Sustainable development is development that meets the

(Brundtland Commission, 1987)

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

In section 2 I present a short digression on the danger of the aforementioned

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

The word sustainblablabla is invented to describe the appropriation of the term

In a certain sense, the abuse in the use of the concept of sustainability

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

Nothing but flowers

Once there were parking lots

Talking Heads (1988)

Planetary borders and social borders

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

And this combination of ideas provides a very precise definition of sustainability

But what need for sustainability?

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

“Sustainability”, Carlos Amador Bedolla

[16] WIJKMAN, A. & Rockström J. Bankrupting Nature: Denying our planetary

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