Sustainability, like many complex concepts, is difficult to precisely define. However, most people would agree that sustainability has to do with planning and implementing actions that consider whether those actions will have future negative effects. Historically the term arose from environmentalist groups worried about the natural environment, but also has been used by the United Nations and other global groups to apply more broadly to social and economic environments, coming out of concern for sustainable development.
Sustainable living focuses on the personal level of planning, decision making, and actions. Focusing on your own ecological identity and what makes up The Good Life for you are useful activities to move toward more sustainable living. Sustainable development focuses on the larger issues of planning, decision making, and actions of groups, communities, governments, businesses, and other organizations.
Recommended sites to learn more on sustainable living.
Here are some different types of sites that might be of interest to people. I think National Geographic has a nice webpage that covers the science of sustainability without activism or hype.
Eartheasy has a nice part of their webpage devoted to a whole list of environmental sites for kids. I checked out a few and all have some positives. Eartheasy is also a place that sells things, so only part of this site is educational.
Ecokids is an award winning Canadian site that might appeal to older kids and certainly to teachers.
Bioneers is a group that focuses their mission on positive solutions. You can see some great presentations and inspirational speakers discuss sustainability at their vimeo site. I particularly like Gary Hirschberg’s presentation.
I also like Ecogeek and their newsletter because of positive messages about technology advances and solutions.
There are many very good TED talks about sustainability. Three of my favorites are Janine Benyus, discussing how we can use biomimicry and nature’s designs to learn to solve human problems. Ted Jackson discusses prosperity without growth and Paul Stamets talks about how mushrooms and fungi can help save the world.
You can click on this link to read a paper I presented on how self-directed learning connects to sustainability education.
SDL and Sustainability Education
If you are interested in knowing more about my interests in sustainability, please contact me (Lorraine.Lander@esc.edu).
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