Sustainability is a bit hard to explain in one web page because every discipline across our campus sees sustainability from a different perspective. Below you'll find an introduction to what sustainability means to different people, different disciplines, and different worldviews. If you see that a certain perspective is not-included below and would like to add a definition please contact Jessica at goldenratiojess@yahoo.com.

American Dictionary:
Sustain: 1) to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure, 2) to bear (a burden, charge, etc.) 3) to undergo, experience or suffer; endure without giving way or yielding.

Paul Hawken:
"The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them"

Wikipedia:
Sustainability discourse is a discussion of how to make human economic systems that last longer and have less impact on ecological systems, and particularly relates to the concern over major global problems such as climate change and oil depletion.

Brundtland Commission
"meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Natural Step Framework
A sustainable society is one which does not systematically increase concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust, or substances produced by society; that does not degrade the envrionment and in which people have the capacity to meet their needs worldwide (Wikipedia).

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
Identified considerations for technical cooperation that affects the following three types of sustainability: institutional sustainability, economic and financial sustainability, and ecological sustainability.

Australian Agency for International Development 2000
"the continuation of benefits after major assistance from the donor has been completed"

The Biomimicry Institute
"Promoting the transfer of ideas inspired by Nature to the design of our world, for a more sustainable, healthier planet."