Publications
Publication Date
5-2014
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Harm Benson, Melinda and Robin Kundis Craig. "The End of Sustainability." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/utton_pubs/50
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Agriculture Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Food and Drug Law Commons, Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law Commons, International Law Commons, Land Use Law Commons, Litigation Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons, Water Law Commons
Comments
It is time to move past the concept of sustainability. The realities of the Anthropocene warrant this conclusion. They include unprecedented and irreversible rates of human-induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change. These factors combine to create an increasing likelihood of rapid, nonlinear, social and ecological regime changes. The recent failure of the Rio+20 provides and opportunity to collectively reexamine - and ultimately move past - the concept of sustainability as an environmental goal. We must face the impossibility of defining - let alone pursuing - a goal of "sustainability" in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty and lack of stationary. After briefly examining sustainability's failure, we propose resilience thinking as one possible new orientation and point to the challenges associated with translating resilience theory into policy application.