People, planet and prosperity

Sustainability (n.)
A means to "meet the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs."
— The Brundtland Commission

By Stefanie Loh

Amber Mees / Photographer

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Ashley Baer / Photo Editor

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Vanessa Van Voorhis / Photographer

For many people, that word instantly evokes images of recycling bins, greenery and the salvation of the swirling orb of blue and green that we’ve come to recognize as our planet. For others, it is so broadly defined — or misused — that it has little meaning.

“Sustainability” refers to the process by which we’re trying to save our world.

The Brundtland Commission — created by the United Nations in 1983 to address the deteriorating state of the Earth’s environment — highlighted the importance of instituting sustainable development practices to save the Earth more than 20 years ago.

But as a civilization, we are only now beginning to heed the commission’s advice.

It is only in the last few years that “sustainability’ has quickly morphed from being a mere concept to a buzzword that has seeped its way into public consciousness and is now finally being put into practice. From the popularity of former Vice President Al Gore’s climate-change movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy’s “sustainability challenge,” sustainability is becoming something that has real meaning for Americans.

With this issue of MOSAIC, we explore how sustainability fits into people’s lives, their work and their environment. We’ve tried to show readers that sustainability is not just about tree-huggers and environmental activists.

Instead, sustainability is about the “triple bottom line”: The economy, environment and social equity.

People, planet and prosperity.

All of those elements are in this publication.

As Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, once said, “The only new thing in this world is the history that you don’t know.” .

Truman actively championed the value of the past in the world of the present, and often stayed up late at night in the White House, poring through historical tomes to try and find solutions to the crisis of the day.

By that same measure, this publication opens with Katie Wilson’s story on ghost towns in Oregon. Because to properly demonstrate what sustainability is, we first have to examine what was not sustainable, and to learn from the mistakes our predecessors made in their original attempts at developing independent and self-sufficient towns.

¬ Nat Levy then takes us forward and into modern times with his examination of the state of downtown Eugene and Mayor Kitty Piercy’s plans to create a bustling, sustainable city center.

We’ll show you how several environmentally aware communities have already grown frustrated with the majority of the population’s current state of apathy surrounding the deterioration of the Earth, and have decided to take matters into their own hands by starting their own farms and living off the land.

But as we’ve pointed out before, sustainability applies to concepts as well as entities.

Amber Mees’ story on the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde takes a look at the issue of cultural sustainability and shows the struggle that Native American tribes go through to preserve their ageold culture in an increasingly westernized modern world.

Julie Blakley examines the institution of marriage — how its meaning has evolved through the years, and what it takes to keep a marriage going and to keep passing on the tradition of an eternal union to generations that have come into being through the crucible of an ever-evolving world.

And finally, Bob Albrecht presents three profiles that capture the cycle and effects of sustainability on the micro level — as part of the athlete’s tug of war with his or her own body: How much training is too much? How do athletes tune into their bodies’ signals and take notice of what they’re trying to tell them before pushing themselves beyond the edge of human ability?

As these stories will show, sustainability is much more than just a master plan to keep the Earth alive for our children and the generations to come. It should be regarded a way of life, and is every bit as much a part of the natural world as the ecosystem and the organisms that thrive within it.

It is a living, breathing and ever-evolving concept that will be omnipresent for as long as the world exists.