Learn How
Sustainability is the capacity to achieve enduring self-reliance by balancing ecological, socio-cultural and economic needs.
How do we gain such a capacity?
We live in interdependent ecological, socio-cultural and economic systems and participate in government, business, education, non-proifts and/or the community. Each system and group has basic needs, as do each of us. We can achieve sustainability by satisfying those basic needs. This map and some of these additional guidelines may act as a starting framework to modify, evolve and build upon.
Heed Your Needs
"Human needs are few, finite and classifiable (wants are infinite and insatiable). Needs are also the same in all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way or means by which the needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system - i.e. they are interrelated and interactive" (Max-Neef 1989).
Feed Your Needs
Satisfiers satisfy needs and can come in the form of economic goods, types of social practices, organizations, political structures, subjective conditions, values and norms, spaces, contexts, types of behavior and attitudes. These satisfiers can be broken down into three types: depleters, maintainers and enrichers. Enrichers are best for all situations. Maintainers also work, but less effectively, while depleters should be avoided entirely if possible.
Depleters
Depleters come in three unsavory flavors:
1) Destroyers don't actually satisfy needs at all but destroy the possibility of satisfying a need and impair the satisfaction of other needs. An example of a destroyer is the arms race. It was meant to satisfy the need for protection but instead threatened to destroy those societies that were to be protected.
2) Pseudo-satisfiers generate a false sense of satisfaction. Stereotypes are examples of pseudo-satisfiers which appear to satisfy a need for understanding, but which do not give real understanding.
3) Inhibiting-satisfiers oversatisfy a given need, thereby hindering the satisfaction of other needs. E.g. an authoritarian classroom may oversatisfy the need for understanding and hinder participation, creation, identity and freedom.
Maintainers
Maintainers (or singular-satisfiers) accommodate one particular need. Insurance is an example of this. It satisfies the need for protection, without satisfying or hindering other needs.
Enrichers
Enrichers (or synergistic-satisfiers) contribute to the accommodation of several needs while taking care of one intended need. Breast feeding, for example, contributes to satisfying the need for subsistence while also contributing to protection, affection and identity.
*(This concept of satisfiers is the work of Max-Neef 1989)