APEC Environment Youth Forum Summary Report

Part I - Sustainability

According to the United Nations, sustainability means "the ability of one generation to meet its own needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Sustainability can also refer to how we use our resources. Some resources, like natural gas, are inherently non-renewable, whereas other resources, such as water, are renewable.

A common theme that arose in many people's definitions was how we must begin to revise the way we consider nature, to really understand what sustainability is. Many of the participants suggested that the first step is understanding how intrinsically tied we are to the fate of the natural environment around us. One of the "chatters" commented that "we are a part of the earth as it is a part of us." Other chatters suggested that this principle was very different from predominant North American attitudes, and that sustainability challenges us to rethink a lot of these attitudes. For example, sustainability requires a shift from the attitude that assumes there will always be more resources: if one supply is used up, the solution is to find another. Sustainability requires that we accept that resources are limited, and seek to change our behaviour, rather than to expand the availability of resources.

Another angle that came out of these discussions was a kind of "re-emphasis" away from thinking globally towards a strengthening of the attachment to the community one lives in. This does not defy global thinking, but rather promotes the particularity of place, and one's attachment to it as the principle tool of the environmentalist. Thus, we must defend the place we know, in the general sense, the earth, as our fate is bound to it.

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© 1997 - TG Magazine / The Students Commission
© 1997 le magazine TG / la Commission des étudiants