Educating People

The term ecological sustainability is subject to many different interpretations. These range from ecocentric (living within limits) to cornucopian (unending progress with no limits).

Different disciplines of knowledge see ecological sustainability from their own vantage point, in ways that are most consistent with the worldview of that discipline. For example, economists tend to see it in cornucopian terms while physical and life scientists see it in terms of limits. Experts are generally reluctant to go beyond the conventional boundaries of their disciplines to critically examine the transdisciplinary issues that are vital to an understanding of ecological sustainability.

In the pragmatic world of politics and business, the most common interpretation is that ecological sustainability is some kind of balancing act trying to achieve growth in an ‘environmentally friendly’ way. A number of economic ‘imperatives’ (particularly growth) are seen as not negotiable and any solutions that reduce or do away with these imperatives are immediately dismissed. Consequently, economic growth is a key element of pragmatic interpretations of ecological sustainability, with the Brundtland paradigm of sustainable development (from the 1987 UN report Our Common Future) being the most notable of these. Contrary to the sustainable development paradigm, ecological sustainability requires humans to consume ‘usefulness’ no more quickly than nature’s economy produces it – see ecologically sustainable world

Quest 2025 aims to educate people in the following ways:

* Producing discussion papers on what sustainability is;
* Promoting an understanding of the imperatives of sustainability particularly within academia and government bureaucracies; and
* Promoting the National Discussion Day process – see Vision