What is a Sustainable Community?

Before we can look at what a “Sustainable Community” is, we first need to define what we mean by “sustainable” and “community”.

The United Nations Brundtland Commission defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

UNESCO defines a community as a “Group of people sharing common characteristics or interests. A community can be either a geographically based group of persons or a group with shared interests or common demographic composition irrespective of their physical location within a country.”

Hence “a ‘Sustainable Community’ makes choices that simultaneously enhance or maintain the wellbeing of both people and ecosystems while not placing unbearable burdens — environmental, economic, or social — on future generations.

To achieve this vision all community members – individuals, groups and organizations in all sectors, need to adopt sustainability as a core value to guide to decisions and actions.”

– Sustainable Communities for a Sustainable Planet (written for the Government of Canada by Steven Peck)