Syllabus concepts to know

• 1.3.1 Sustainability is a measure of the extent to which practices allow for the long-term viability of a system.
• 1.3.2 Sustainability is comprised of environmental, social and economic pillars.
• 1.3.3 Environmental sustainability is the use and management of natural resources that allows replacement of the resources, and recovery and regeneration of ecosystems.
• 1.3.4 Social sustainability focuses on creating the structures and systems, such as health, education, equity, community, that support human well-being.
• 1.3.5 Economic sustainability focuses on creating the economic structures and systems to support production and consumption of goods and services that will support human needs into the future.
• 1.3.6 Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• 1.3.7 Unsustainable use of natural resources can lead to ecosystem collapse.
• 1.3.8 Common indicators of economic development, such as gross domestic product (GDP), neglect the value of natural systems and may lead to unsustainable development.
• 1.3.9 Environmental justice refers to the right of all people to live in a pollution-free environment, and to have equitable access to natural resources, regardless of issues such as race, gender, socio- economic status, nationality.
• 1.3.10 Inequalities in income, race, gender and cultural identity within and between different societies lead to disparities in access to water, food and energy.
• 1.3.11 Sustainability and environmental justice can be applied at the individual to the global operating scale.
• 1.3.12 Sustainability indicators include quantitative measures of biodiversity, pollution, human population, climate change, material and carbon footprints, and others.
• 1.3.13 The concept of ecological footprints can be used to measure sustainability.
• 1.3.14 The carbon footprint measures the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (in tonnes).
• 1.3.15 Biocapacity is the capacity of a given biologically productive area to generate an ongoing supply of renewable resources and to absorb its resulting wastes.
• 1.3.16 Citizen science plays a role in monitoring Earth systems and whether resources are being used sustainably.
• 1.3.17 There are a range of frameworks and models that support our understanding of sustainability, each with uses and limitations.
• 1.3.18 The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of social and environmental goals and targets to guide action on sustainability and environmental justice.
• 1.3.19 The planetary boundaries model describes the nine processes and systems that have regulated the stability and resilience of the Earth system in the Holocene epoch.
• 1.3.20 The doughnut economics model is a framework for creating a regenerative and distributive economy in order to meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet.
• 1.3.21 The circular economy is a model that promotes decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.