The origins of sustainability

In this blog series I will talk about the idea of sustainability, the food systems, food&water security and habitus&sustainability. 

I would like to start with where the word “sustainability” comes from? The word sustainability in English is believed to have derived from 18. Century German forestry term “sustained yield”. The concept of sustainability (Nachhaltigkeit in German) was applied to forestry. The concept has a balance between extraction and forest management that would give the highest yield in time. 

There are two basic “classical“ sustainability rules:  • Only cut as much wood as (you) can grow in a certain period!  • Preserve your stocks and live on the earnings! 

When we think about the resource extraction and forests in Europe, they have an important connection because lots of ancient forests in Europe were harvested to build sailing ships for transporting goods, slaves and convicts. In addition to these, other relations are immigrants fleeing from the potato famine and dispossession of their lands due to privatisation of the commons and rising capitalist economic relations in Europe. Several wars among the major European powers and later on with the Americans (1690-1815) also increased to the consumption of timber resources for shipbuilding. 

Until European colonisation had been stopped, all the colonial activities and industrial expansion transformation changed the U.S landscape significantly.  

References: Nightingale, A. J., Böhler T., Campbell, B. & Karlsson, L. (2019). Background and History of Sustainability. In Nightingale, A. J. (Ed.). Environment and Sustainability in a Globalizing World. Routledge (Chapter 2, 13-34).