PART II - THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUSTAINABILITY
Summary
Part II analyzes the first public deployments of the term sustainability, and later its cognate sustainable development. The first uses of these terms were descriptors for resource management regimes intended to prevent the disruption of society. They first came into use in Europe as awareness of the impacts of industrialization grew. Particularly important were the disappearance of undisturbed natural areas and the dawning realization that growing populations and increasingly scarce resources might create problems for the people, governments and groups who controlled them.
As a result, two ideas for the first time became intimately intertwined during the mid to late 1800s. First was the notion of ecological limits, which had been noted and linked with population growth by Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) decades before. Malthus challenged the notion that society (and particularly European civilization) was on a trajectory of improvement and progress. In fact, he argued, if such “progress” continued society might face unpleasant encounters with ecological limits. This realization led to a second, that prudent utilization of resources might allow them to continue to provide for populations into the foreseeable future. The first government-sponsored foresters, then, aimed to find the formulae necessary to ensure that those limits did not create social unrest.
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- Religion and SustainabilitySocial Movements and the Politics of the Environment, pp. 41 - 42Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013