What’s Global Sustainability?

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Global sustainability boils down to studying the use of resources over time. There are many facets to this science, mainly related to technology and research progress. Typically, sustainability is a measure of how long something will last, often in terms of a specific company or environment. Global sustainability focuses on worlds as a whole and how individual resources are exploited globally. In this case, rather than focusing on one area, the world’s people are seen as a collective sharing the limited resources available to them.

All sustainability issues address a basic problem; how long a specific resource will last. In some cases, this resource is natural. Sustainability studies of mines, oil fields or groundwater are quite common. In other cases, these studies focus on man-made systems or markets. For example, how long will a market for a product persist or whether an older hotel has the price and services to remain competitive.

When the focus is on global sustainability, the systems seen are almost always natural. This science focuses on how long specific pockets of natural resources will last or how current practices affect the future of an area. This could be as simple as estimating the amount of globally untapped oil, or as complex as using water for mapping along hundreds of miles or kilometers of rivers and tributaries.

Global sustainability draws heavily from multiple sciences and areas of study. The most prevalent part is the commercial aspect of companies and governments using natural resources. This part of the science attempts to understand the means, methods and motivations for commercial practices involving a studied resource. It is believed that by understanding the business aspect of the system, it will be easier to understand the rest.

Secondary to business are mathematics and anthropology. The math part of global sustainability calculates the hard numbers, such as how much of a resource is left or how much of a resource is used daily. These numbers are the framework on which the studies are based.

The anthropological aspect of global sustainability is less obvious. To understand how a resource is used and why it is exploited as it is, it is important to understand the culture of the people who use it. It is unlikely that three people from three parts of the world would have exactly the same views on how and why to exploit a natural system. By understanding people, it is easier to divine what is currently happening and what will happen in the future.

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