Sustainability

Fundamentals and Applications

Rao Y. Surampalli, Tian C. Zhang, Manish Kumar Goyal, Satinder K. Brar, R. D. Tyagi

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119434030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Agricoltura sostenibile

A comprehensive resource to sustainability and its application to the environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security sectors

Sustainability fills a gap in the literature in order to provide an important guide to the fundamental knowledge and practical applications of sustainability in a wide variety of areas. The authors – noted experts who represent a number of sustainability fields – bring together in one comprehensive volume the broad range of topics including basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and the socio-economic aspects of sustainability. In addition, the book covers applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, as well as carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects.

Sustainability addresses the challenges the global community is facing due to population growth, depletion of non-renewable resources of energy, environmental degradation, poverty, excessive generation of wastes and more. Throughout the book the authors discuss the economics, ecological, social, technological and systems perspectives of sustainability. This important resource:

• Explores the fundamentals as well as the key concepts of sustainability;
• Covers basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and socio-economic aspects, applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects;
• Argues the essentiality of sustainability in ensuring the propitious future of earth systems; and
• Authored by experts from a range of various fields related to sustainability.

Written for researchers and scientists, students and academics, Sustainability: Fundamentals and Applications is a comprehensive book that covers the basic knowledge of the topic combined with practical applications.

Part I
Fundamentals and Framework

1
Introduction to Sustainability and Sustainable Development

Prangya R. Rout¹, Akshaya K. Verma², Puspendu Bhunia³, Rao Y. Surampalli⁴, Tian C. Zhang⁴, R.D. Tyagi⁵, S.K. Brar⁵, and M.K. Goyal⁶

¹Department of Environmental Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea

²Department of Civil Engineering, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar, India

³School of Infrastructure, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India

⁴Civil Engineering Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Omaha, USA

⁵INRS, Université du Québec, Québec, Canada

⁶Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, India

1.1 Background and Definition

In the present-day world, which is more and more global, people have taken note of global issues. Sustainability is one of these vital issues and has progressively gained prominence in practice and in educational deliberations around the world over the past several decades (Rodrigo et al. 2017). Our contemporary practices, including the increased exploitation of non-renewable energy sources and unrestrained waste generation in all possible ways, have appeared as huge risks to the sustainable development concept (Adenike 2018). Although the idea of sustainable development has been accepted universally, it has hardly progressed from a concept to practical application since its inception (Yan et al. 2018). It is often said that “development” as intended today has moved, not necessarily progressed, through various forms and fashions during the post-Second World War era (Bell and Morse 2013). However, global development-mediated environmental deterioration and communal pressures have put civilizations under severe stress in the past couple of decades (Pedersen 2018). The global community now has a bigger accountability to implement sustainable actions so that natural resources may be preserved for forthcoming generations (Adenike 2018). The need for sustainable development was universally approved in September 2015 by attendees of the United Nations General Assembly; as an outcome, 17 Sustainable Development Goals were projected, prioritizing the role of education as the key strategy to stimulate sustainability (Fatima and Carolina 2017).

According to the Brundtland Report, “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987). The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) redefined it in a broader sense as “the objective of integrating economic activity with environmental integrity, social concerns and effective governance systems, while maximizing the contribution to the wellbeing of the existing generation, fairly sharing the cost and benefits, without compromising the potential for the upcoming generations to meet their needs” (IIED 2002; Fatima and Carolina 2017). In other words, sustainability is an advancement to safeguard the forthcoming and existing potential to satisfy vital human requirements within the ecological and resource limits of the planet earth (Blum et al. 2017). Therefore, sustainability aims to retain the environmental carrying capacity. The terms “sustainable development” and “sustainability” are often used interchangeably in the literature; however, some authors argue that sustainability denotes a progression, while sustainable development denotes the end state. For example, from the ecological point of view, sustainability implies the environmental aspect of sustainable development (Holden et al. 2014). However, a differentiation from Robinson (2004) states that sustainable development is related to government and governing by incremental approach, while sustainability is associated with non-government organizations (NGOs) and academic environmentalists and focuses on human beings' capability to continue to live within environmental limitations (Robinson 2004; Fatima and Carolina 2017).

1.2 Basic Concepts and Issues

The concept of sustainable development or sustainability found its roots in the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report Our Common Future, in which the earliest attempt had been made to correlate environmental stability with that of the matters of economic development. Sustainable development is a multifaceted and normative concept that evolved during the 1970s as an ecologically centered concept but gradually transmuted into a complete socio-economic-centered concept by the 2000s. The concept contains the philosophies of equality and mutual dependence, among not only the generations but also the nations and peoples of the earth. The concept also incorporates futurity, interdisciplinarity, participation, learning and adaptation for the development of socio-cultural, socio-economical and natural environments, which are crucial for the wellbeing of the human race and of nature. To understand the concept better, we have to look into the two main characteristics as follows:

1. “Sustainability is a people-centered and conservation-based concept that implies the development of the standard of human life by respecting nature's capacity to afford life-support facilities and resources.”
2. “Sustainable development is a normative concept that exemplifies standards of decision and action to be respected as ‘the society’ strives for satisfying its needs of survival and well-being.”

Recently, sustainable development issues have caused the global community to think beyond the customary classified action of environmental, economic and social concerns and paved the way for an advanced holistic and integrated means of development. The thematic illustration in Figure 1.1 pertinently portrays the integrations and collaborations among the environmental, social and economic domains of sustainability.

Figure 1.1 Illustration of sustainable development and the three pillars of sustainability.

The social conception of sustainable development aims at maintaining the steadiness of communal and cultural domains (Munasinghe and McNeely 1995). Contemporary society requires integration of heterogeneity and a policymaking framework for social sustainability. The sustainable development concept from the economic point of vi...