Saying something is sustainable does not make it so. In fact, some resource gurus tell us to distrust claims of sustainability. Like justice, peace and love, sustainability is often understood as an ideal – something to strive for but never fully attained.
For more than 100 years, the term “sustainability” has been used in forestry and fisheries. Since the World Commission on Environment introduced the concept of “sustainable development” in its 1987 book, Our Common Future, the term now encompasses to the whole world.
Perhaps the easiest way to begin discussing sustainability is to say first what it is not. Sustainability does not exist when something desired is in decline. There are examples everywhere: endangered species, degraded habitats, disrupted ecological processes, declining local forest economies and increasing unemployment.
Something fundamental is clearly not working and the stakes are high. It must be clear, even to those in deep denial, that old concepts of sustainability are not sufficiently deep, focused, nor consistent enough to sustain and restore the forest values important to us.
In the old forestry model of volume-based sustained yield, if something is not working, then we must try harder. In BC, because we are not successful in sustaining a forest economy at an allowable annual cut of 70 million cu m a year, then obviously a cut of 100 million cu m a year is needed!
The triple bottom line of ecological, economic and economic sustainability is our goal and getting from the “here” to the “there” requires a strategy. Unfortunately, strategy is the most misunderstood resource management concept today.