Understanding Sustainability Indicators

Adapted from What Is Sustainability? by Maureen Hart

It s not hard to tell if your community is not sustainable. Just consider a few questions about your community: Is it economically worse off than it was 20 years ago? Are there fewer good-paying jobs, so people are working more and earning less? Is there more poverty and homelessness? Is there more crime?

These are traditional measures of communities in trouble, communities that can no longer sustain the quality of life they previously enjoyed. We use numbers to show how bad these problems are: "Unemployment rose .4 percent in January." However, the numbers only show changes in one part of the community without showing the complex links between the community s economy, environment and society. Solutions that target one area, such as the economy, often cause more problems in other areas because the links are neglected.

In a sustainable community, solutions to problems take into account the links between economy, environment and society. In fact, the very questions asked about problems in a "sustainable" community include references to these links. For example, the question "Are there fewer jobs that match the skills of the available work force?" looks at the link between economy and education.

Indicators measure whether a community is getting better or worse at creating solutions that provide its members with a productive, enjoyable life, both now and in the future.

What Is a Sustainable Community?

"To sustain" is to continue an activity without lessening it in any way. It implies that the activity could go on forever. A human "community" is a group of people who live and interact in a certain place or around a certain interest. A "sustainable community" maintains and improves the economic, environmental and social characteristics of a place so its members can continue to lead healthy, productive, enjoyable lives there.

"Development" means making change that improves a place or makes better some condition in a place. Sustainable development, therefore, improves the economy without undermining the society or the environment. Sustainable development is not an economic theory or an environmental movement. Instead, sustainable development requires the understanding that a healthy environment and a healthy economy are both necessary for a healthy society. These three parts of a community economy, environment, and society are linked in complex ways. A sustainable community takes these links into account when planning for the future.

Sustainable development focuses on improving our lives without continually increasing the amount of energy and material goods that we consume. A sustainable community does not consume resources energy and raw materials faster than the natural systems they come from can regenerate them. We are currently living unsustainable lives. If we are not careful how we use and dispose of resources, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have a poorer, more polluted world to live in.

A sustainable community is one where development is not unlimited growth; rather it is the enhancement of what already exists in the community. A sustainable community is not stagnant; sustainability does not mean things never change. On the contrary, it means always looking for ways to improve a community by strengthening the links between its economy, environment and society. A sustainable community is also not a utopia. It is not a community where nothing ever goes wrong. Sustainability does not mean that businesses never fail or that people never go hungry or that pollution never happens. Sustainable means that when problems arise, we look for solutions that take into account all three parts of the community instead of applying a quick fix in one area that causes problems in another.

The primary goal of a sustainable local community is to meet its basic resource needs in ways that can be continued in the future. To do this, we need to figure out what our basic needs are and how to meet those needs most effectively. Do we really need one television set for every room in the house? Do we each really need to use 188 gallons of water every single day? Or can we develop more effective, efficient ways to create a way of life that is not only equally or more satisfying, but can also continue indefinitely into the future?

Some communities have already started to work toward this goal. The most successful projects have three characteristics in common: First, the community created a vision of its future that balances economic, environmental and social needs. The community viewed its future in the long term: not on the order of years, but on the order of decades or generations. Second, the vision incorporated the views of a wide crosssection of the community. Third, the community figured out how to keep track of its progress in reaching that vision.

It is important for the community itself to become involved in the project. 
A sustainable community needs to be developed by the people who make up the community. It cannot be designed by a consultant. It cannot be implemented by experts hired specifically for the project. It needs to be implemented every day by the people who live and work in the community.

A sustainable community means many things to the different people who live there. To business owners it means a healthy economy so that their businesses have a place in which to create and sell their products. To parents it means a safe environment in which to bring up their children. Everyone wants a secure, productive job to support themselves. Everyone needs clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

Discovering the needs of the community and finding ways to meet those needs is not difficult, but it does require some effort. It begins by deciding what your sustainable community would look like. There are as many different ways to create a vision as there are communities that have done so. What is most important is that the vision be created by the entire community: the well-to-do and those living in poverty, business owners and union workers, young and old.

Just as important as knowing what a community wants to become is knowing how to reach that goal. We need ways to tell whether the decisions we make are increasing or decreasing the overall community health of our communities. Indicators of sustainability give us a practical way to measure our progress toward sustainable communities.

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