Political apathy and social inertia can only be combated in ongoing daily efforts to inform, arouse and provoke. Happily, social-political inefficiency can be addressed more methodically. Governments, businesses, non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations alter and influence the state of our social and natural environment every day. Actors which seek to bridge the gap between these entities and the general populace and to facilitate their interaction, aided by extraordinary new technologies of participation, have a grand role to play in the future of social-political sustainability.

An evocation of these challenges would not be complete without a consideration of the dynamic interactions the social-political domain engenders with other elements of sustainable development. Economics is the science of resource allocation, the study of the ways in which we satisfy human wants and needs. No human need is more fundamental than that of nourishment. In a revealing illustration of the interdependence of sustainable development's three constituent parts, rising world food prices now pose a grave threat to social-political sustainability around the globe. One need only turn to recent social unrest and political instability in Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines to be assured of that. These rising prices stem from uncertainties regarding the sustainability of our agricultural processes. To be specific, some have very explicitly cited efforts in the West to subsidize and encourage biofuels production as a leading inflationary factor (though burgeoning middle classes in India and China seem surely to be responsible for other upward price pressures). And all this as the viability of biofuels falls under a penetrating scrutiny.

These challenges of social-political sustainability will remain inextricably bound to the future of sustainability as an enterprise.

Page 2 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next