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What is Sustainability?

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This is one of the most popular search questions about sustainability on the Web.

There is no one definition although a popular one cited is the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations of March 20, 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  The soul of sustainability is our interconnectedness of Mother Earth and her children through to the next seven generations. 

Curated by mokiethecat

Indigenous peoples who have intimate and sustained contact with their lands and waters and who have maintained the spiritual basis for relating to everything in their environment have a profound understanding of what "sustainability" really means even though that is not the word that they would use. Western concepts of sustainability generally are used out of meaningful context, limiting the depth to which we can go collectively and as a society in restoring harmony in our relationship with Mother Earth. Indigenous elders worldwide say that one day the world will look to indigenous peoples for the wisdom in caring for our Earth Mother, and many feel the time is NOW as her life supporting systems are being pushed to the edge of viability.

View here on Vimeo. 

Kalliopeia Foundation, 2012

EarthSayer Ilarion Merculief