NCSSM Online

Honors Energy and Sustainability

Reading Questions -- Sustainability Primer
Meera Butalia

1. What was the Brundtland Commission? How did that commission

define sustainability?

The Brundtland Commission was formed by the UN in 1987, to create

a definition of sustainability for the world to agree on, and to create an
international conversation about how the world needs to live and plan
for the future. The definition created states that is sustainability is:
“development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.” The commission also solidified the understanding that society,
economy and the environment are linked, so the success of humankind
is dependent on the state of the environment.

2. What fields of academic study are important to finding

sustainable solutions globally?

Because sustainability is multi-faceted, and requires a thriving

environment, economy and society, fields of study that address human
rights issues, psychology, STEM, economics, and more, are all linked and
dependent on each other for success, just as a sustainable world is
dependent on the coexistence and collaboration of the fields. One
example of this is how human rights and environmental issues interact,
which also bring economics, politics and power imbalance into play.
Many developing countries deal with dwindling resources as a direct
result of more powerful developed countries exploiting them and their
resources, and doing all of this at a systematically increasing rate,
because of overconsumption. This abuse of resources often involves
child labor and other violations of human rights that aren’t as policed in
countries with no infrastructure to handle them. The power the
developed countries have over developing countries, as well as the
unbalanced focus of mainstream media on the issues of developed
countries, mean these injustices often go unnoticed. The exploitation of
developing countries for their natural resources can also destabilize
them, as they lose their ability to carry out sustainable actions for their
economic and societal health, when struggling to survive already.

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This demonstrates just how dependent all parts of the world’s
system are on each other, and how breakthroughs in only one field of
study won’t help if all of them aren’t working towards a defined goal
that leads to a sustainable future.

3. How are we contributing to these problems even now, even 28

years after the Brundtland Commission Report? What are the
basic problems that make our current ways of living
unsustainable? (describe 3 key problems).

The Brundtland report stated that the goal was to reach “sustainable
development by the year 2000 and beyond” (Our Common Future, pg. 5)
which is clearly still a problem. It also called for more unity between
countries, and stressed the importance of working together on the
agreed upon goals presented.
Recently, the world’s major powers have been turning towards
nationalistic policy and rhetoric as the answer to their problems,
directly opposite the advice of this report. The policy of each country
working independently of each other does not allow for everyone to
work towards a common goal. Even with some making changes, every
country needs to be involved to deal with systematically increasing
obstacles towards sustainable development.
Some major powers have even gone so far as to declare our issues
with climate change, and the stress we are putting on the world’s
resources, fictional. One reason for this may be that larger more
developed countries have the resources to enact short term solutions
whenever hit with an issue stemming from an unsustainable world.
These solutions work for the short term and they are able to forget the
root cause of what’s happening. In developing countries, where they
don’t have the resources to push these issues aside, the threat of things
like rising sea levels and polluted water are already affecting them.
Dealing with this denial of the state of the world, or denial that the
health of the environment, and reaching an understanding of what the
world’s goal for the future is, are the first steps towards a sustainable
world. That would allow for all countries to collaborate on a plan for
sustainability. Even this goal, of a mutual understanding, has not been
reached.

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Because many large countries remain in denial of the issues we are
facing, they continue to develop and overconsume without regard to the
long term impact of those actions. Deforestation, polluted water
supplies, depletion of the ozone, and rising sea levels are just some of
the symptoms of an unsustainable world, and are happening at a much
faster rate and larger scale than they were when the Brundtland
Commission was first convened. The rate of overconsumption at which
many developed countries are proceeding is what is making it harder to
reach sustainability as our problems increase.

4. How well does the Funnel Metaphor work for you? Does it help
you to understand the problem better? Would you use it to
explain sustainability to a friend or a colleague? Why or why not?

The funnel metaphor helped to understand our world’s struggle with

sustainability better by demonstrating to me that the less we address
these issues and the more we let our overconsumption increase, the
harder it will be to improve our sustainability when the world finally
comes to the realization that we need to. It helped me to understand
that we can be sustainable while using natural resources, but the real
issue is how our consumption is systematically increasing each year. I
would use this to explain sustainability to a friend or a colleague to get
across how urgent addressing our unsustainability is. The funnel shows
that as the demand for resources and ecosystem services increases, and
the Earth’s capacity to provide those things decreases, it gets harder and
harder to solve original problem. It also includes the societal aspect of
things, showing how it gets harder to address environmental
sustainability when you have unrest or social tension that comes from
abuses of power and inequality. Showing how all of these aspects work
together to hinder our steps towards sustainability shows how we have
to address each aspect of the world, like the environment, society, and
economy to solve the overarching issues that affect all of them, whether
directly or indirectly.

5. What is a system and how will understanding how systems

functions help us to build a more sustainable world?

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A system consists of its parts, and depends on the relationship
between these parts, and much as it depends on the parts themselves.
To understand a system, you need to understand the limits which it
operates with, what goes in and out of a system, and the relationship
between its parts. Understanding how systems function will help us
build a more sustainable world because the world is a giant system, and
economy, society and environment are all of its parts. These parts must
operate within the limits of nature, but often we try to change the
environment to address issues, instead of operating within the laws of
nature to fix them. Understanding that the environment, economy and
society are all related and dependent on each other will help solve many
issues that we face, because their causes usually come from more than
just one of these parts. The best way to solve issues within a system is to
look for underlying system errors, so the same must be done with the
world and the issues we face today.

6. What Max-Neefs nine human needs? Do you think this list covers
all of your own and your family’s needs? Are there some needs on
the list that you think are not essential?

Max-Neefs nine human needs are universal across cultures and time-
periods, and meeting these needs are important for physical, mental and
social health, though people are often prevented from meeting them
through political and economic systems. The nine human needs are:
subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure,
creation, identity, and freedom. None can be substituted for another,
and without any of these needs people experience a poverty of some
kind. I think this list covers all of my and my family’s needs, but there is
one that could be considered unnecessary. I think creation could be
considered unnecessary for some, but in my personal experience, I think
creation is important to maintaining good mental health because it gives
you a sense of worth and satisfaction to make something, and can
therefore help with self-esteem issues.

7. What is the “Triple Bottom Line”? What does it mean for creating
a more sustainable world?

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The “Triple Bottom Line” is the concept that the environment,
economy, and society are all part of creating a sustainable world, and
are co-dependent upon one another for success. The economy and
society are dependent on the environment for its resources and
ecosystem services, so the environment has the biggest impact on
sustainability. The economy is dependent on society’s actions, rules and
regulation, so economy has the least impact. But society can determine
the health of the environment through its actions which are influenced
by the economy, so the influence goes both ways. Understanding that
what we are most dependent on the environment for the success of the
economy and society can help focus efforts to achieve a more
sustainable world by providing goals to work towards that take into
account these three different influences.

8. How does the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small

portion of society make us less sustainable? Can you provide an
example from your own experience or from something you have
read other than this Sustainability Primer?

The concentration of wealth in the hands of a small portion of society

make it harder for the portion of the world with little or no wealth to
meet their most basic needs. The inability of people to meet their basic
needs prohibits them from taking steps towards sustainability, and
often they have to rely on unsustainable actions to meet their needs,
which exacerbates the problem. The actions can be detrimental to the
economy, environment, society, or all three at once, and can also
contribute to political unrest, which further impairs the ability of people
effected to take sustainable action.

9. What is backcasting? Have you ever used this method to

accomplish goals before? Describe an experience where you have
used backcasting. Was it helpful?

Backcasting is the act of planning and starting with the end in

mind when you plan. When backcasting, you decide upon conditions for
success, and stick to these conditions to achieve a certain vision. I have
used this method to accomplish goals before, like getting into NCSSM
Online. When I first established with myself that I was a goal of mine to
get into NCSSM, figured out what I was already doing to achieve success,

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and what else I needed to do to get in, like take the SAT and study for it.
I set up my conditions for success that I had determined from doing
research about the admissions process, and used those to carry out a
plan. This helped much more than if I had just used forecasting, where I
look at my past trends and decide if I would get in based on those
trends. Backcasting was a much more active type of planning, where I
set a goal, and worked for it, regardless of past trends.

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