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Sustainability Theory and Conceptual Considerations:
A Review of Key Ideas for Sustainability, and the Rural Context
Lisa M. Butler Harrington
Department of Geography
Kansas State University
118 Seaton Hall
920 N. 17th Street
Manhattan, KS 66506-2904
lbutlerh@ksu.edu
Harrington, L. M. B. Sustainability theory and conceptual considerations: a review of key
ideas for sustainability, and the rural context. Papers in Applied Geography. 2(4): 365-382.
(doi 10.1080/23754931.2016.1239222)
See final published article
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Sustainability Theory and Conceptual Considerations:
A Review of Key Ideas for Sustainability, and the Rural Context
Abstract
‘Sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ have become important concepts and goals across
science and society. Sustainability, connected to desirable long-term conditions, is an inherently
applied pursuit in geography and other fields. An integrative statement of essential concepts
upon which sustainability studies and applications are being built has been lacking, however.
Based on the literature, a number of key ideas or theoretical concepts are discussed here,
including the importance of choice, place, scale, systems, limits, change, connected concepts,
and the identity of ‘sustainability.’ The rural context is used to present examples illustrating key
ideas for sustainability, but the concepts apply broadly to applications and research related to
improving the directions of environmental and social changes within local, regional, and global
systems under the influence of human actions.
Key words: sustainability; rural geography; global change; social-ecological systems (SES)
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1. Introduction
Sustainability, including sustainable development (WCED 1987; NRC 1999), has
become a core concern from global to regional and local scales, with numerous attempts to apply
the concept to a variety of places and concerns. As noted by Bettencourt and Kaur (2011), the
“concept of sustainable development…now pervades the agendas of governments and
corporations as well as the mission of educational and research programs worldwide.” The
intertwined concepts of sustainability and development are linked to concerns about the health of
social-ecological systems and the increasingly evident human dimensions of global change
(Vitousek et al. 1997; MA 2005; Kareiva et al. 2007; Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007;
Steffen et al. 2015a, 2015b). With rising concerns about the capacity of Earth systems and
human technologies to maintain ecosystem services and provide for human needs, sustainability
science emerged at the beginning of the 21st century, with attention to both basic and applied
research (Kates et al. 2001; Clark 2007; Elsevier and SciDev.net 2015).
Sustainability may be defined as the capacity to maintain or improve the state and
availability of desirable materials or conditions over the long term. This definition retains the
commonly cited characteristics of sustainability and sustainable development as oriented toward
the long term, and the basic identification of sustaining any particular conditions or materials as
keeping or maintaining them. The definition offered here also may be applied to particular
interests, as well as to any spatial scale. Other descriptions, such as “[m]eeting fundamental
human needs while preserving the life-support systems of planet Earth” (Kates et al. 2001, 641)
tend to accentuate the global scale. Pursuit of sustainability or sustainable development implies
that the goal is to maintain or improve beneficial conditions (to sustain them), particularly with
improved capacity to extend desirable conditions over the long term.
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It is clear that ‘sustainability’ emphasizes maintaining the desirable aspects of natural
and/or social conditions and, when possible, improving such conditions, including the status of
natural resources. Note that “sustainability” can be considered as a broader concept than
sustainable development. ‘Sustainable development’ focuses on human well-being (WCED
1987). ‘Sustainability’ may be focused on an ecosystem or biodiversity status, for example −
with or without explicit attention to human well-being − or may be focused on a specific aspect
of a human system such as educational equity, or even the financial health of an individual farm
(see, e.g., Palmer, Cooper, and van der Vorst 1997; Waas et al. 2011). In sum, the pursuit of
sustainability is oriented toward long-term treatment of natural resources, social systems, and
people in ways that are consistent with human well-being and dynamic system stability.1
While Bettencourt and Kaur (2011) have discussed the structure and evolution of
sustainability science, the literature on sustainability generally lacks an articulated compilation or
synthesis of overarching principles useful to both applied and basic efforts related to
sustainability and sustainable development.2 The main portion of this paper identifies key ideas
or theoretical concepts to help guide actions meant to support greater sustainability. This is
supplemented by examples drawn from situations in rural environments.
2. Purpose
My purpose here is to present important conceptual points or key ideas that can serve as the
theoretical framework for practical sustainability applications. These key ideas should be
particularly useful for planning for and making decisions related to the pursuit of sustainability,
as well as guiding further research. The key ideas synthesized here are essential concepts about
how social-ecological systems work and the conditions that affect sustainability; they are derived
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from foundational literature focused on sustainability and related concepts, and frequently
overlap. Such organizing ideas are identified as theoretical constructs in social science.
Recommended guiding principles include the interlinked concepts shown in Table 1, described
explicitly and implicitly below.
Table 1. Key ideas: Important considerations linked to application of the sustainability concept.
Related works
Choices Matter.
NRC 1999; Leathers
and Harrington
2000; Kates, Travis,
and Wilbanks 2012
It is not possible to sustain everything, everywhere, forever.
Transitions and pathways toward sustainability are key; we will
not be able to identify arrival at “sustainability.”
Because systems are dynamic, sustainability is a moving target;
there is no endpoint for efforts to reach or maintain it.
For any identified place or region, and for any identified material
or condition, there will be different states of lesser or greater
sustainability.
Gradual changes and sudden threshold-related shifts are both
possible.
Sustainability is a normative concept.
NRC 1999, Kates et al.
2001, Parris and
Kates 2003
The idea of sustainability is inextricably connected to what we
see as desirable.
What is desired varies with reference frame: people have
different desires, and judge possible futures in different ways
depending on the situation, including temporal outlook and
spatial location.
Research provides improved understandings relevant to
normative decisions.
Sustainability is a fuzzy concept.
More 1996; Palmer,
Cooper, and van der
Vorst 1997; Ducey
and Larson 1999;
Cawley, de S.M.
Bicalho, and Laurens
2013
Sustainability is defined differently by different communities and
interest groups.
Because the term is applied to many different desires, meaning
is not always clear.
Perceptions matter to judgments and management relevant to
sustainability
Utilitarian and human values tend to be focal concerns, but sole
attention to narrow definitions could cause irredeemable losses.
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Scale matters, in both space and time. Wilbanks 1994, 2006;
NRC 1999; Wilbanks
and Kates 1999;
Kates, Parris, and
Leiserowitz 2005
What is sustainability at one scale may not be so over a smaller
or larger area; to become ‘sustainable,’ cities will most likely
need connections to supporting rural areas that are sustainable.
Conditions change over time, and trends affect progress with
respect to sustainability goals, from local to global scales.
Place matters. Wilbanks 1994, 2006,
Wilbanks and Kates
1999, Bergstrom
2009, Bergstrom and
Harrington 2013
Places (at whatever scale) differ; at the most basic, the physical
environmental characteristics available for sustaining also differ.
Cultures differ from place to place and can greatly influence
societal efforts to move forward along a path toward
sustainability.
Systems thinking is an organizing concept.
Nelson 2005, Carpenter
et al. 2006, Liu et al.
2007, Reid et al.
2010, Bettencourt
and Kaur 2011,
Costanza et al. 2013
Systems of concern for sustainability and sustainable
development efforts are both connected and embedded
Dependence between systems is variable in time and space.
Both proximate and ultimate drivers of conditions and change
are of importance.
Limits exist.
Rockström et al.
2009a, 2009b; Mace
et al. 2014; Steffen
et al. 2015a, 2015b
The Earth is finite, and although humans have the capacity to
modify conditions and resource production, there are physical
limits to how far various aspects of the system can be pushed.
Feedbacks affect system resilience and nearness to thresholds.
Renewable resources should be removed and used at no more
than the rate of renewal.
Sustainability is interconnected with other essential concepts.
Gunderson and Holling
2002, Turner et al.
2003Walker et al.
2004, Adger 2006,
Eakin and Luers
2006, Walker and
Salt 2006, O’Brien et
al. 2012
• Practitioners should be aware of resilience, adaptive capacity,
and vulnerability.
Change is an essential consideration and challenge for
sustainability.
Turner et al. 1990a,
1990b; NRC 1999;
Kates et al. 2001;
Walker and Salt
2006
•
Environmental (climatic and oceanic systems, land use and land
cover), economic, and social/cultural changes are factors in
sustainability.
•
Change at one location/scale can propagate through systems at
different scales.
• Unanticipated change constitutes what is known as ‘surprise’
and requires adaptive approaches to management.
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The ordering of concepts is not based on any suggested differences in relative
importance; rather the order of description is based on clarity and ease of connections among the
identified principles. Some of the ideas expressed here are often implicitly recognized, but not
always explicitly acknowledged. Making such concepts explicit can help with follow-through,
although the broad ideas are simply stated in this compilation.
The concepts/key ideas presented here are broadly applicable across environments, from
urban to the breadth of rural and wildland areas. However, with the secondary purpose of giving
attention to rural sustainability issues in this paper, the more developed rural world serves as the
focus for examples relevant to theoretical concepts presented here.3 Rural environs in the
developed world have seen extensive modifications during the “great acceleration” in human-
caused changes to the environment during the last century (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007;
Steffen et al. 2015a, 2015b). Examples used to illustrate rural conditions and guiding concepts
or key ideas for sustainability have been selected based on clarity of connections to the key
ideas, as well as the existence of related literature.
The Rural sustainability and resiliency have garnered increased attention among scholars
(e.g., Marsden 2003; Essex et al. 2005; Robinson 2008; Wilson 2010; McManus et al. 2012).
Woods (2012) identified three of five key challenges for rural research in the 21st century as
“sustainable use of resources,” “resilience of rural communities to environmental uncertainties,”
and “rural economic development based on the sustainable use and management of
environmental resources.”
3. The Rural Context for Sustainability
As noted by Grimm et al. (2008, 756),
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The unprecedented rates of urban population growth over the past
century have occurred on <3% of the global terrestrial surface, yet the
impact has been global, with 78% of carbon emissions, 60% of
residential water use, and 76% of wood used for industrial purposes
attributed to cities … Urban dwellers depend on the productive and
assimilative capacities of ecosystems well beyond their city boundaries
‒ “ecological footprints” tens to hundreds of times the area occupied by
a city ‒ to produce the flows of energy, material goods, and nonmaterial
services (including waste absorption) that sustain human well-being
and quality of life.
In other words, the non-urban world provides the materials and energy for urban use and takes
up much of the waste materials released by urban people and processes.
Most of the world’s land area is rural and the dynamics of rural areas regulate many Earth
system functions, provide crucial ecosystem services, and are the source of most of the natural
resources that provision cities as well as rural places, including the global food supply.5 For
example, in an inventory of inputs and outputs for Rome, Italy, Zucaro et al. (2014) identified a
number of ‘imported inputs’ for 2008, including fuels at 2.35E+17 joules, food at 7.17E+11
grams, building materials at 2.11E+13 grams, and wood at 6.95E+11 grams. Such material and
energy exchanges, where environmental goods and services are provided to cities and waste
materials are exported to the countryside, have generally been studied from the perspective of
urban ecological footprints and metabolism (e.g., Kennedy, Cuddihy, and Engel-Yan 2007;
Villarroel Walker and Beck 2012; Moore, Kissinger, and Rees 2013; Zhang 2013). Zucaro et al.
(2014) described cities as “highly dependent open systems which rely on the provision of energy,
food, materials and information from other systems at different scales,” and noted earlier work
that emphasized “the parasitic nature of cities.” Hence, although urban environs are
unquestionably important, it also is important to recognize the role, status, and needs of rural
areas as they relate to their own, urban, and planetary sustainability.
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Rural residents generally live and very often work in close connection with the ecosystem
processes that support global, regional, and local populations. People living in rural areas often
are part of resource dependent social-environmental systems, whether based on agricultural
production, mining, timber, energy, or fisheries (Krannich and Luloff 1991; Randall and Ironside
1996; Stedman, Parkins, and Beckman 2004; Marshall et al. 2007; Lawrie, Tonts, and Plummer
2011). This rural resource dependence is related to an economic dependence on outside markets:
transfers of food products and other materials, including wood, fuels, construction materials, and
embodied energy and embodied or virtual water, are important for sustaining both urban life and
the economic well-being of many rural residents.
Agriculture provides a relevant example. Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of
freshwater withdrawals in the U.S. (Kenny et al. 2009), and most freshwater usage worldwide
FAO 2016). Much of this water supports urban populations in the form of ‘virtual water’ where,
in essence, movement of food, forest products, and other goods also represents movement of
water inputs to these products. There are global concerns with freshwater availability and
quality connected to high demands for agriculture and other uses associated with changing
populations and resource consumption (Simonovic 2002; Hoekstra et al. 2012; UN WWAP
2015). In addition to freshwater scarcity, resource sustainability concerns connected to rural
situations include soil salination; erosion; reduced soil fertility; deforestation; and loss of natural
habitats, biodiversity, and ecosystem services like pollination (MA 2005; Foley et al. 2005,
2011). According to Foley et al. (2005, 570), there is a “worldwide loss of ~1.5 million hectares
of arable land per year, along with an estimated $11 billion in lost production” due to salination
of irrigated land, and perhaps 40% of global croplands are being affected by erosion, reduced
fertility, and overgrazing. They also noted that “modern agricultural landuse practices may be
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trading short-term increases in food production for long-term losses in ecosystem services,
including many that are important to agriculture.” Clearly, all these losses do not support
sustainability of rural economic systems, food production, or other ecosystem services essential
to both rural and urban inhabitants.
A number of key ideas to guide the pursuit of more sustainable conditions in rural areas
and beyond can be identified, as shown in Table 1 and described below. Awareness of these
foundational concepts and their interconnections should aid practitioners’ efforts to enhance
sustainability in a variety of situations.
4. Sustainability and Sustainability Theory: Key Ideas and the Rural Context
The key ideas or conceptual-theoretical foundations for applications of sustainability (Table 1)
are complex. There are not clear boundaries among these key concepts, and they are
interconnected. To introduce and organize the more complex, interwoven concepts for
sustainability applications, key ideas have been simplified as short statements, with elaboration
in the discussion of each.
4.1. Choices matter
It will not be possible to sustain everything, everywhere, forever: either by choice or default, in
a given place some things will not be sustained over the long term. In some cases, conflicting
desires lead to management that preferentially sustains some resources or qualities over others.
Such is the case in U.S. National Forests, where a multiplicity of uses cannot always be
maintained at the same levels in a specific area. For example, timber production, recreation, and
cattle grazing are all uses for which National Forests are managed, but they generally are not
compatible in a specific area. Additionally, some resources are not renewable and can only be
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used at faster or slower rates. Fossil groundwater in the High Plains/Ogallala Aquifer region of
western Kansas, USA, is a relevant example: it may be used more slowly to lengthen its useful
lifespan for irrigation, but it will eventually be depleted to the point where the cost to extract
water will exceed its economic benefits to crop agriculture (e.g., Kromm and White 1992;
Harrington 2005; Kettle, Harrington, and Harrington 2007; Harrington, Lu, and Harrington 2009;
Steward et al. 2013). The current choice is to use (up) the resource, limiting the lifespan of
irrigated crop agriculture. Agriculture in some form will likely survive in the region, but
sensitivity to rainfall and rainfall variability will increase with conversion to rain-fed crop
production. The absence of explicit sustainability-related decision-making still is a choice, and
the outcome (sustainable or otherwise) is affected.
The ways people relate to their physical and social environments – and their associated
decisions – are affected by a number of emotional and reasoning-related ‘internal’ factors. These
include values (e.g., humanistic altruism, biospheric altruism, biospheric attitudes/associations,
self-interest, traditionalism, and openness to change) frequently approached through the value-
belief-norm (VBN), new environmental paradigm (NEP), and implicit association frameworks
(e.g., Stern and Dietz 1994; Stern 2000; Dunlap et al. 2000; Dietz, Fitzgerald, and Shwom 2005;
Schulz et al. 2004, 2005; Dunlap 2008; Dunlap and York 2008; Hawcroft and Milfont 2010). A
farmer may choose to produce with organic methods, risking reduced yields but gaining organic
premium pricing and the psychological benefits of a closer connection to the environment. Other
farmers opt for conventional agriculture with higher inputs but usually a higher yield, along with
greater risk of externalities like soil and water contamination. These choices reflect values and
personal normative decision-making.
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In addition to more individually-based decision-making, institutions and governance
structures also affect choices made and scales of policy development, recognizing that
conflicting interests are thus addressed. Policy development and management actions, such as
the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which incentivizes protection of highly erodible
soils and wildlife habitat, are directed to sustainability or sustainable development of certain
aspects of human-environmental systems. As of May 2016, well over 9.6 million ha of
agricultural land is enrolled in CRP and subprograms (USDA FSA 2016). Effectiveness of such
programs depend in part on group and individual experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and internal
values, as well as specific program requirements, general economic conditions, and land
characteristics. Land managers may make decisions counterproductive to policy intent when
there are opportunities to do so at a profit (see Leathers and Harrington 2000).
4.2 Sustainability is normative
Deliberate choices are, of course, based on desires − what people want and see as “good” or
preferable in some way. With its link to choice, sustainability is a normative concept (NRC
1999, Kates et al. 2001, Parris and Kates 2003): sustainability and sustainable development have
been widely adopted as representing something “good” (or “better”) and beneficial for people
and environmental health. The directive of medical ethics to “first, do no harm” is an ideal goal
and relevant for pursuit of sustainability and sustainable development. In environmental risk
management this is applied as the precautionary principle: the goal is to ensure that outcomes
and safety of an action are known before adopting it. Given the complexity of Earth systems,
however, and the choices that must be made, there may be instances when “harm” is done to one
system characteristic in order to sustain others. This may be intentional, as people pursue
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competing interests, but history indicates that harm often occurs unintentionally following from
incomplete understanding of system complexities. The use of DDT for insect control, leading to
cascading effects in the food web, and the use of CFCs as coolants, leading to stratospheric
ozone depletion, are two clear examples of actions that led to unintentional harmful changes. An
example of intentional alteration occurs with land use change from forests and other ecosystems
to farming or ranching. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) points out that
human populations have benefited from enhanced production of crops and livestock since the
mid-20th century but there have been related unintentional losses of other ecosystem services.
Wild foods, wood fuel, erosion regulation, and pest regulation have seen diminished status.
Essentially, the choice to sustain/increase food production for the growing world population has
meant a reduction in the sustainability of a number of other environmental components,
particularly when considering biodiversity losses.
In rural regions, the traditionalism that many observers associate with farming and other
rural livelihoods like timber production and fisheries becomes a normative value-shaping
approach which may in some cases hinder overall environmental sustainability or well-being.
The Goulburn-Broken Catchment in Australia has seen increased sensitivity to rainfall and rising
saline groundwater related to agricultural practices and water use (Anderies 2005; Anderies,
Ryan, and Walker 2006; Walker and Salt 2006; Walker et al. 2009). As Walker and Salt (2006,
41) described the situation, the choice of farmers to “continue doing things the way they’ve
always done things” is largely at fault, with irrigation applications helping to raise the water table
and keeping soils in jeopardy of salinization. Normative values, as well as aversion to change,
frequently support the status quo, or “business as usual,” in order to maintain production in the
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immediate/short term, rather than changing how the system works in the longer term.
Oftentimes sensitivity to the economics of farming supports short-term decision-making.
Sustaining agriculture in places like the High Plains/Ogallala and Goulburn-Broken
regions may require a normative judgment that some other form of agriculture will be better in
the long term (combined with economic incentives to change the current system). At times, a
normative preference for business as usual or maximized profit may conflict with other values,
such as a farmer’s or rancher’s desire to leave the land in as good or better condition for future
generations. Application of specific resource policies, including economic support for
conservation activities or changes to agricultural practices, can help reshape preferences and
choices to enhance sustainability. Communications among members of a group through
governance processes also strengthens recognition of particular values related to sustainability
and may lead to decision-making that is more focused on long-term well-being. For example,
the Malpai Borderlands Group in southern Arizona and New Mexico has led to successful
approaches to range management and communications among (supposedly) different interest
groups (see, e.g., Allen 2006).
4.3 Sustainability is a ‘fuzzy concept’
There are frequent expressions of concern about the lack of clarity or absoluteness of a definition
of sustainability (see Palmer, Cooper, and van der Vorst 1997). Multiple applications of the
terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ often complicate decision-making, but
benefits may exist in recognizing sustainability as a “fuzzy concept” – an idea that is variably
applied. In describing ecosystem management, More (1996, 21) noted that it is a fuzzy concept
defined through “practices, techniques, goals, and objectives that share overlapping attributes or
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characteristics.” Although lacking in a singular definition, concepts like sustainability and
ecosystem management still are useful; their fuzziness can actually be “liberating” according to
More (1996, 22) (see also Ducey and Larson 1999). In his view, the approaches or means being
applied are less important than the goals. With sustainability (which More also recognized as a
fuzzy concept), the benefit of having a ‘fuzzy set’ of approaches means that the basic goal of
sustainability (maintaining or improving desirable conditions, and more broadly strengthening
the capacity to do so) can be pursued with more flexibility, for example by identifying the
conditions of particular concern (sustaining everything is not practical) and by identifying
options for pursuing their continuance/improvement.
Notwithstanding the potential benefits, the application of a term like sustainability runs
into difficulties when special interests attempt to apply it in ways contradictory to more widely
accepted conceptualizations. Confusion, and potentially mistrust, result from a broad range of
descriptions and applications of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ (Palmer, Cooper,
and van der Vorst 1997; see also Devlin and Sophocleous 2005, Aras and Crowther 2009),
particularly when used unnecessarily and without a clear (real) connection to the topic being
discussed. Rural specialists describe and apply sustainability in various situations, often
emphasizing one aspect over another (e.g., agricultural sustainability, protected areas, sustainable
tourism [see Cawley, de S.M. Bicalho, and Laurens 2013]). This can be quite appropriate:
variations do not render the term useless, but pursuit of sustainability will benefit from clear
identification of how the term is being used in a particular situation, including the associated
normative values. Ambiguous use of terminology is problematic and does not serve the purposes
of sustainability, policy-making, or management.
4.4. Scale and place matter
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The question “of what, to what?” has been asked about resilience (Carpenter et al. 2001),
pointing out the importance of context for this sustainability-related concept. Other questions for
sustainability may be added: sustainability of what, where, and for how long? These questions
recognize the need to identify what is to be sustained (NRC 1999), temporal concerns (NRC
1999; Kates, Parris, and Leiserowitz 2005), and the geographic aspects of sustainability efforts
(Wilbanks 1994, 2006; see also Wilbanks and Kates 1999). Place, scale, and time contexts are
important to system processes, their results, and related decision-making.
Place matters with respect to all kinds of conditions and connections, as geographers well
know. “Place” can vary with spatial scale, from hamlets and neighborhoods to regions covering
large parts of continents. Both physical and social-cultural conditions differ from place to place,
and both ‘averages’ and ranges of conditions differ by location and scale of place. Possibilities
for sustainability and normative choices for sustainability and sustainable development differ
depending on place characteristics. For the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), smaller
places in the larger region have some similarities, but they also have been found to differ greatly
regarding the emphases for local sustainability, including local planning and management
(Bergstrom 2009, 2010; Bergstrom and Harrington 2011, 2012, 2013). Places differ, but there
also are variations between the GYE and its subparts when data are considered at different
scales.
Spatial scale matters to the possibilities that conditions sustainable at one scale will be
unsustainable at another, and to relationships like embeddedness and systems’ connections
(Wilbanks 1994, 2006). Pathways toward sustainability are locality-dependent, with cultural
norms and decision-making key to the possibility of sustainability transitions (though often
influenced by external forces), and with the cumulative effects of local change acting over time
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as the determinant of a broader, global sustainability effort (Wilbanks and Kates 1999). The
regional scale can be particularly important, but Bettencourt and Kaur (2011) noted that only
about 2% of the sustainability science literature deals with regional studies. Both physical
environments and societal conditions (including economies and cultural traits) vary with place,
and descriptions of places at different scales can be highly variable. Consider, for example,
variously described ecoregions at levels I-IV developed to aid environmental management
efforts (Omernik 1987, 2004; Omernik and Griffith 2014; US EPA 2016).
Farmers often are faced with policies applied at a state or national scale that don’t fit a
local context. Sometimes modifications are made as differences become apparent: with respect
to water management, as settlers moved westward in the United States to more water-scarce
areas there was a change from the original riparian doctrine to prior appropriation. This tends to
be more state or locally-based, however: it is difficult for national policy to address spatial
differences across a country.
Although pursuit of sustainability is oriented to the long term, the length of that term for
a specific project or purpose may vary (NRC 1999; Kates, Parris, and Leiserowitz 2005). Scales
of attention can affect the outcome both for the specific sustainability-oriented action and for
other places and times. In connecting spatial and temporal scale to ecological conditions,
Wilbanks (2006, 22) noted that “in many cases shorter-term phenomena are more dominant at
local scales than at global scales” and vice-versa. The positive temporal-spatial connection also
pertains to the atmosphere (short-term phenomena, like small tornadoes, are local; longer-term
phenomena like long waves in the jet stream cover large areas) and the oceans (undertows and
rip-currents tend to be local and short-lived, ocean gyres are ongoing and very large). Individual
decisions made for the term of a lifespan are more important at the local scale, however, while
18
national scale political decisions tend to be relatively short-term (Wilbanks 2006). Hence, the
‘rule’ may be different or more variable for social systems than for environmental systems when
we consider scale and sustainability-related decision-making.
The CRP program has now been in place for 30 years, but has undergone changes during
that period. Changes in the program and to its effects are seen both temporally and spatially.
Farmers have contracts of 10 to 15 years; depending on economic conditions at the time of
contract expiration, a farmer may or may not pursue renewal. This, of course, affects the longer-
term effectiveness of the program locally and over the entire eligible acreage. Additionally,
Congress has reduced the maximum number of acres that can be enrolled over time: this
reduction may mean a reduction of program effectiveness over the larger scale.
Putting the scale and place key ideas into the context of rural sustainability, it should be
recognized that an individual farm may be more or less sustainable than the surrounding
agricultural region or landscape. This will depend on management, as well as on intrinsic
characteristics, connections to other places, and conditions present within the broader socio-
economic system. Disruptions to either economic conditions (e.g., a recession) or physical
conditions (e.g., drought or a disease outbreak) can affect sustainability at different spatial and
temporal scales. Depending on how farms are managed and for what products, a drought or
other negative externality that is devastating to a specific farm may have a lesser total effect on
the greater region. The opposite also could be true. Much of the variability and changes in
conditions at different places and scales relates to in- and between-systems connections.
4.5 Systems thinking is an organizing principle
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Systems and subsystems are conceptualized as organized around stocks and fluxes or flows of
matter and energy. ‘Systems thinking’ became a focal concept for late 20th and early 21st century
science and environmental management efforts. Human, environmental, and human-
environmental systems are both connected and embedded (Costanza et al. 2013): certain sets or
types of conditions are parts of and dependent upon other spheres of influence. Systems vary
widely as to size or scale and to what people use as their defining characteristics. They can
include the entire Earth, a farm, or a rotting log, as well as ecosystems, the atmosphere, oceans,
politically-organized systems like the European Union or the United States, and systems based
on trade. Whether natural, social, or a coupled social-ecological system, concepts such as
perturbations, response times, lags, feedbacks, and surprise (the potential for dramatic
unforeseen events) have helped advance understanding of interactions and change globally and
regionally. A systems-level mandate for sustainability science efforts was noted by Bettencourt
and Kaur (2011), reflecting the need for systems thinking as people attempt to pursue greater
sustainability of desirable conditions.
To a very large extent, human systems (e.g., society/ies, economics, infrastructure) are
dependent on ecological/environmental systems – including the Earth’s now largely semi-natural
or managed systems – for the environmental goods and services that support life and social-
economic functioning. Kates (2011) observed that publications related to coupled human-
environmental systems have been dominated by those focusing on the environmental subsystem,
with less attention to the human parts. It is logical that, as the basis for life support and resource
provisioning, the environment receives a great deal of the attention. In many situations, but
particularly in rural regions, human systems are embedded in environmental systems, with
important livelihood connections to production in forests, farms and ranches (agroecosystems),
20
aquatic systems, and others. Social, economic, and environmental components are all important
to modern concerns with sustainable development and sustainability, however. Especially in
regions of the more industrialized world, rural inhabitants are economically reliant on more
urban regions due to the operations of market economies, while urban residents depend on the
production of more rural places. Connections and interdependencies/feedbacks vary based on
the nature of the economies and the levels of urbanization.
Liu et al. (2007) noted feedbacks in rural areas (the Kenyan Highlands in Africa and an
area near Altamira, Brazil), where changes due to agricultural production led to soil degradation,
reduced productivity, and additional forest conversion to agriculture. Another feedback was
described for the Northern Highland Lake District of Wisconsin, USA, where tourism activities
are attracted by the ecosystem, but tourism in turn degrades the environmental qualities that
attract people in the first place (Liu et al. 2007).
Interactions and change are highly complex, and drivers of change may be direct or
indirect (Nelson 2005, Carpenter et al. 2006). Drivers of change to system components and
entire systems include those clearly connected to identifiable changes in particular places (pulses
and longer term trends or presses6), known as direct or proximate drivers. Other causes of
change are more removed and spur the more easily ascertained direct factors. Although these
indirect or ultimate drivers are often less clear, they are nonetheless important. Direct drivers of
landscape change include local climate variation, nutrient pollution, water use rates, land
conversion, overexploitation, and invasive species and diseases, while indirect drivers include
demographic, economic, sociopolitical, scientific, technological, cultural, and religious factors
(Geist and Lambin 2002, 2004; Nelson 2005).
21
Crop failures may be related to abnormal precipitation patterns (a direct driver), but these
patterns could be a result of global climate change indirectly driven by human activities at much
larger scales. Diversion of cropland to biofuel production directly affects production and prices
of other agricultural goods, as well as having direct and indirect effects on environmental service
provision. DeFries et al. (2010) found that deforestation trends are driven by urban population
growth and agricultural expansion. Agricultural expansion is a direct or proximate driver of
forest loss and easily observed. Population growth is an indirect factor.
An important consideration for sustainability-oriented policymaking and management is
the capacity of a system to remain productive. To the extent possible, both direct and indirect
drivers of change need to be identified and addressed. Additionally, the limits of a system – for
example, to continuing its functioning under conditions of change – are important.
4.6. Limits exist
For several decades, and far more if we consider the work of Malthus (1798), there have been
concerns about limits on the Earth and its subsystems. Apprehensions often have been
connected to human population and population growth in combination with levels of resource
consumption, with modern attention dating particularly to the late 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Ehrlich
1968; Ehrlich and Holdren 1971, 1972; Meadows et al. 1972). The key idea of limits is linked to
several concerns. First, there are worries that production of food and other provisioning
resources cannot support − at least at a desirable quality of life − the total number of people on
Earth now, and the numbers that growth trends suggest will be reached in the not-too-distant
future. In addition, the average resources consumed per person have increased globally over the
last several decades, adding to concerns about limits, population, and well-being. As the impacts
22
of people have grown with population, the capacity of Earth systems to assimilate waste
materials also has become a cause for apprehension. “Environmental footprints” (Wackernagle
et al. 1999; Meadows, Randers, and Meadows 2004; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2009), linking usage of
ecosystem services to the Earth’s production and assimilation capacity, and “planetary
boundaries” (e.g., Rockström et al. 2009a, 2009b; Mace et al. 2014; Steffen et al. 2015a, 2015b)
regarding identification of ‘safe’ limits are newer concepts based on suggestions that some
operating limits of Earth’s systems are being neared, and others have been exceeded.
From an environmental perspective, physical limits have been seen as an important
aspect of ecosystems for a long period of time, with von Liebig’s law of the minimum and
related ideas concerning limiting factors applied to plant growth for over a century. More
recently, provisioning resources and other natural capital (MA 2005) have become particularly
important in considerations of limits. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005)
identified a number of resources and ecosystem services in decline. Declines are related to
human activities, but also affect human well-being in terms of food provision, water quality and
availability, means of livelihood, and quality of life. Global limits related to chemical cycling,
biodiversity loss (for “biosphere integrity”), climate change, ozone depletion, land cover change
and other factors have most recently received attention by scientists attempting to estimate the
relative condition of the planet (Rockström et al. 2009a, 2009b; Steffen et al. 2015a, 2015b;
Wilson 2016) and sustainability. Such limits connect to system thresholds or tipping points, and
resilience theory (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Walker et al. 2004; Walker and Salt 2006;
Stallins, Mast, and Parker 2015).
Views of limits in the economic system have shifted over time, but have come closer to
ecological concepts of limits. Neoclassical economists − particularly economists practicing prior
23
to the latter part of the 20th century − rarely, if ever, considered limits to resources (Daly 1987).
Today, more economists accept that there are limits, and focus efforts on considering economics
from a qualitative view of human well-being rather than continually growing economies (e.g.,
Daly 1987, Jackson 2009) or from the perspective of ecological economics (e.g., Costanza et al.
1997, 2013), a hybrid between economics and ecology which focuses on matter-energy stocks
and fluxes.
Limits to a variety of system types (ecological, social-ecological, economic, rural, urban,
etc.) vary by scale, and of course vary by system components and connections. Although limits
and footprints often are described globally or nationally, at the local scale important constraints
appear regarding waste assimilation and soil and vegetation conditions. Salinization related to
irrigation has long been known in rural areas; more recently awareness of the build-up of
chemicals via both fertilization and pesticide usage has become a concern for rural soil and water
resources. Damage has been done to the US Everglades system due to phosphorous releases
from agricultural areas, a situation that has led to reduced resiliency and perhaps the crossing of
a threshold to an alternate state based on disturbance and nutrient limits with a build-up of soil
phosphorous (Gunderson 2001, Walker and Salt 2006). With respect to resource availability,
irrigated agriculture in the Ogallala region of Kansas has run into local limits, crossing a
threshold and shifting to dryland agriculture locally (Kettle, Harrington, and Harrington 2007).
4.7. Interconnected concepts are important
Sustainability, resilience, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are interconnected concepts
“related to the ability of systems to adjust and maintain themselves in the face of change”
(Harrington 2005, 169; see Folke et al. 2002; Smit and Wandel 2006). Sustainability practice
24
benefits from awareness of these related concepts. Resilience has sometimes been characterized
as the ‘ability to bounce back’ following a disruption (Mileti 1999, e.g.), but more recent systems
thinking characterizations focus on resilience as the capacity to absorb a disturbance while
retaining the system’s structure and function – to not cross a threshold to new system makeup
and functioning (Walker et al. 2004). Vulnerability refers to susceptibility to harm from a
change or disruption (Adger 2006, Eakin and Luers 2006). Adaptability, or adaptive capacity
when applied to social or social-ecological systems, refers to the ability to alter processes and, if
needed, to convert structural elements in response to actual or expected changes in the
environment in order to minimize harm/maximize benefits (see, e.g, Brooks, Adger, and Kelly
2005; Pahl-Wostl 2009). Clearly, sustainability is increasingly questionable when resilience or
adaptive capacity decreases or when vulnerability increases.
Just as choices that may support one part of a system may be incompatible with the
sustainability of other system components or processes, mitigation of one problem may produce
greater vulnerability to another, and perhaps reduce sustainability (e.g., Harrington 2005,
Harrington and Harrington 2005, O’Brien et al. 2012). One of the differences between much of
attention to sustainability and to vulnerability is the time frame of concern: sustainability efforts
tend to focus on conditions promoting longer term well-being while vulnerability studies often
focus on hazards and risks that are felt most acutely in the short term. Vulnerability can be
approached from a longer term perspective, however, and can be associated with environmental
or societal stressors that are likely to be concerns of sustainability efforts as well as hazards
work. Vulnerability research connected to climate change stresses as well as hazard events has
become important.
25
A highly vulnerable or sensitive system generally would not exist in conditions of long
term sustainability because perturbations to which the system is sensitive will lead to changes in
system structure and function. Ghost towns are evidence of specific instances of vulnerability
and a lack of resiliency or sustainability: they were not able to survive under conditions of
changing resource, economy, or transportation status. Desertification in overgrazed areas,
particularly where precipitation is marginal, also indicates that a system boundary has been
crossed. It can be exceedingly difficult to cross back.
Normatively, societal desires are for both increased sustainability of natural/biophysical
and socio-economic systems and decreased vulnerability to hazards and the effects of
environmental and social changes (Harrington 2005). Although change should be expected, a
certain level of stability tends to be desirable, at least when conditions are both beneficial and
understood. Under complex adaptive systems/panarchy and resilience theories (Gunderson and
Holling 2002, Walker and Salt 2006), stability may be considered as dynamic maintenance of
system conditions without approaching thresholds or tipping points. Conditions within the
system shift over time, but may throw the system or region into completely different operating
conditions and create a ‘new’ system if boundaries are reached. In this sense, relative (dynamic)
stability under beneficial conditions is desirable, but should not be equated with a lack of
change. The traditional U.S. ‘cornbelt’ SES centered on Illinois and Iowa has been fairly stable
for some time, with some shifts in ownership patterns, crop emphases, and farming practices
(Laingen 2012, Auch et al. 2013). A shift from commonly plowing fields to no-till practices has
helped to retain soil, for example, increasing sustainability. Attention to the use of agrichemicals
within safe limits, as well as efforts to conserve soil resources, will help system
26
stability/sustainability, although regional climate change attributes may constitute another push
toward limits.
4.8. Change happens
Fluctuations and changes are natural, but vary in magnitude and cause. Global climate change
and other forms of change with anthropogenic origins motivate concern with sustainability of
individual resources and systems’ health, and is a consideration as actions are taken. Although
climate change received minimal mention in the seminal Brundtland report (WCED 1987) on
sustainable development, it has become a central concern relevant to ideas about sustainability in
recent years. Other global changes connected to climate change (ocean acidification, glacial
melt, sea level rise) or those based on population growth or increasingly tightly-connected
economies and social shifts (“globalization”) also are of concern. With respect to climate
change, considerations relate to all spheres of sustainability: environmental/ecological, social,
and economic. Economy and society drive anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, for
example, changing atmospheric chemistry, which feeds back to affect human activities and
place-based vulnerabilities. Attention to climate change in rural contexts has for some time
focused on agricultural effects, carbon sequestration, perceptions, and adaption (e.g., Chiotti and
Johnston 1995, Bryant et al. 2000, Post and Kwon 2000, Eakin 2005, Smith et al. 2007,
Raymond and Robinson 2013).
Trends in human impacts on the environment include increases in the number of types
and combinations of ways people affect the environment; the scale of impacts; the complexity,
magnitude, and frequency of impacts; and per capita resource consumption rates and impacts
(Ehrlich and Holdren 1972, Turner et al. 1990b, Kates et al. 2001, Goudie 2013). Global scale
27
changes are both systemic and cumulative (Turner et al. 1990a, 1990b). Global climate change
through greenhouse gas emissions is systemic – greenhouse gases are emitted directly into the
atmospheric system and spread around the Earth. Global change also occurs cumulatively from
shifts that occur locally, but are widespread and affect much of the earth: deforestation has
occurred in a variety of locations, resulting in forest loss at the global scale of accounting.
Similarly, population trends vary regionally, but the cumulative effect has been continued global
population growth. All sorts of change, whether occurring locally or globally, whether primarily
in the realm of the physical environment or the social and economic sphere(s), and whether
occurring as systemic or cumulative change, represent SES stresses and have implications for
sustainability at a variety of scales. Of particular concern are changes that happen suddenly and
without (much) expectation, including tipping-point related surprises. These may be exemplified
‒ perhaps somewhat less suddenly ‒ by situations in the Everglades and Gouburn-Broken
Catchment as described above, as well as the potentials for sudden changes in the atmospheric-
climate system (see Schneider, Turner, and Garriga 1998; Alley et al. 2003).
Several of the examples described above illustrate change in rural situations as well as
other key concepts (e.g., Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Everglades region, Ogallala/High Plains).
In southern New Mexico, it is thought that overgrazing by cattle led to a change from grasslands
to shrublands. This change, considered a form of desertification, is not easily reversed; it
appears to be an instance of the system crossing a threshold to an alternate state (Valone et al.
2002). In the Amazon, climatic conditions/the hydrologic cycle appear to have changed due to
deforestation brought about by clearing for agriculture, and “large-scale forest loss tends to
reduce rainfall” (Malhi et al. 2008, 169). There have been suggestions of a number of feedbacks
among global and local climate conditions, greenhouse gas emissions, and land cover (e.g.,
28
Malhi et al. 2008; Bagley et al. 2014; Swann et al. 2015), so change can beget further change
(and surprise). The existence of change and surprise in systems leads to recommendations for an
adaptive pathway (NRC 1999) or adaptive management (Walker and Salt 2006), with constant
monitoring of a system so that appropriate adjustments in management may be made in response
to change.
5. Conclusions
The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, and the approaches of sustainability
science, are growing in importance. Emphasis on sustainability is driven in part by the many
economic, social, and environmental stresses being felt in the world today and an orientation
toward understanding human-environment relations and social-ecological systems. Practitioners
hope to apply better understanding to improve human well-being, sustain life support systems,
and redirect global trajectories. Pursuit of greater understanding via sustainability research
draws on a number of current core scientific topics. Key ideas, presented here, help form the
backbone of theory development for sustainability studies and sustainability science. Many of
these concepts relate to applied geography’s long history of connecting humans with their
environment(s), and some are easily accepted as clearly appropriate by geographers and other
disciplinary specialists. It should be reiterated that there are considerable overlaps among the
suggested key ideas for sustainability efforts. Examples from rural contexts given above
illustrate the overlapping nature of key concepts.
Although pursuit of sustainability is a normative (and sometimes fuzzy) process, science
provides policy-relevant information about what ‘is’ and what ‘could be’ to help guide decision-
making toward normative goals (what ‘should be’). Utilitarian and human values are focal
29
concerns of sustainable development, but sole attention to these could cause irredeemable losses,
such as extinction of species not seen as critical to human survival. Focus on high-yield
industrial crop varieties may benefit the global need for food, but we may lose genetic attributes
of wild, landrace, and heritage varieties that could be beneficial should we run up against a
system threshold. Governance activities must consider both normative concerns and scientific
information.
People have pursued their interests with insufficient attention to – or understanding of –
environmental conditions and processes through much of our history, leading to high levels of
negative environmental change. Earth system science can help decision-makers understand
patterns and processes, including how to work with natural processes and how our actions may
disrupt them. Social scientific work can help us to understand human priorities and decision-
making with respect to sustainability, helping to identify shared values and needs for increased
well-being.
The concepts presented here are theory-focused, but connect to applied geography and
related applications particularly through the need for planning, policy development, decision-
making, and stake-holder communications to be well-informed and mindful of the complexity of
systems in order to maximize sustainability. The well-being of humankind, natural systems,
social-ecological systems, and Earth as a whole is connected to sustainability considerations,
including scales of consideration, linkages within and among systems, and conditions like
adaptive capacity and resilience.
In spite of a history of scientific ideals oriented toward – or at least presented as – pursuit
of fact without application of values, those who work in sustainability recognize that it is a
normative endeavor, involving preferences, judgments, and choice. The quest for sustainability
30
involves connecting what is known through scientific study to applications in pursuit of what
people want for the future.
Notes
1. Although humans may prefer the idea of stability, it has long been recognized in ecology that
systems are more apt to display “dynamic” stability, with patchiness and various disturbances
and change occurring in a system. A relatively stable condition over a broad area might be
maintained for some time, although it’s very likely that parts of the area/system are constantly
changing. Resilience theory has embraced the idea of constant change, maintaining relative
stability (for a time) in operations to maintain system conditions in adaptive cycles, or within
a ‘basin of attraction’ unless or until a threshold is reached (Gunderson and Holling 2002;
Walker et al. 2004; Walker and Salt 2006; Stallins, Mast, and Parker 2015).
2. There have been few exceptions to this generalization, including Wilbanks’ (1994)
suggestions for the beginnings of sustainable development theory. Cumming (2011) has
worked toward tying together “SES theory” and resilience.
3. Broadly speaking, the rural developed world (‘Global North’) and the developing or less-
developed ‘Global South’ have differing characteristics and have been approached by
geographers and policymakers in different ways (Harrington 2017). For the purposes of this
paper focus on the developed world was judged to be appropriate, although key concepts
would apply to any situation.
4. In the United States, and commonly across countries, ‘rural’ is defined by exclusion: urban or
metropolitan areas are specifically defined, and rural is all area left over (Cromartie and
Bucholtz 2008; see also Cloke 1985). Although some researchers differentiate ‘rural’ from
31
wildlands or wilderness, others include the breadth of environments beyond city boundaries
(see Bell 2006). This might depend on one’s identification of domination by “extensive land
uses” (Cloke 2006) as a defining factor of rurality. In this paper, the focus is on areas that are
not considered wilderness, but are often used for production of food and fiber (and possibly
fuels).
5. Crops and other materials produced or extracted from the Earth (before undergoing extensive
processing) may be considered part of the broad category of natural resources used for various
human purposes, in spite of the fact that there has been modification of crops and livestock
through long human involvement in their development from wild progenitors. Likewise, soils
– often greatly modified through human activity – continue to be considered natural resources.
Other natural resources include (but are not limited to) timber, fuel and nonfuel mineral
resources, fish, shellfish, and fibers like wool and cotton.
6. Bender 1984 described press and pulse as types of ecological perturbations; event-based
disturbances (Dornelas 2010) also are direct drivers.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to John A. Harrington, Jr., and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on
the manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge others who have inspired and affected my
thinking on sustainability concepts over the years, including especially Tom Wilbanks and Bob
Kates, but also Walter Dodds and Matt Sanderson.
32
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