Sustainability and Food Miles
Sustainability (or more properly Sustainable Development) is a word that crops up all the time in the papers and on TV & radio. The Media - whether it is Green, Blue or any other colour - seem to use it to mean whatever they want it to mean. I suppose that is a cue to quote Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” but we will resist that in favour of a more authoritative version.
What does it really mean…….?
Confusion is to be expected when we are surrounded by definitions of Sustainability but the authoritative one is the meaning given by the World Commission on Environment and Development in their report to the United Nations in 1987.
“ Our Common Future”, also known as The Brundtland Report, alerted the world to the pressing need to make progress toward economic growth that could be sustained without depleting natural resources, harming the environment or condemning people to grim living standards. The report provided a key statement on sustainable development defining it as:
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The Brundtland Report primarily addressed how to secure, at least in some measure, global equality. It recognised that redistributing resources towards poorer nations was essential whilst encouraging their economic growth, if this was to be achieved in harmony with protecting their often fragile environments. The report suggested that equity, growth and environmental protection were simultaneously possible and that every country is capable of achieving its full economic potential whilst at the same time enhancing the essential resources for life.
The well researched but lengthy report highlighted the three fundamental components needed to deliver truly sustainable development:
- environmental protection
- economic growth
- social equity
By working on all three issues together it would be possible to conserve the environment, enhance the resource base, increase social justice and increase the economic activity of a nation. You will come across many other references to “Sustainability”, for example the instant coffee served on the Trans-Pennine Express trains that rumble through the AONB can also give an insight into this over-arching principle of the eco-economic language of the 21st Century!
The words on the paper cups the coffee comes in (a less weighty tome than the Brundtland Report – at least when the contents have been drunk) - define Sustainable Development as being
“about ensuring that what we do today to meet our needs doesn’t make it harder for future generations to meet their needs.”
equity, growth and environmental protection - simultaneously possible
