Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship 

The definition of sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future.  This is one of the most important global environmental issues today.  Environmental stewardship is the practice used to promote sustainability.  With natural resources diminishing, sustainability needs to be considered a priority.  Aspects of sustainability include air quality, water quality, climate, renewable energy, ecology, coral reefs, and wildlife.  While this is not a new issue, public awareness has increased greatly over the last decade.  Research is now being conducted to develop biofuels, energy efficient technology, new water purification systems to prevent water shortage, solar energy technology, and wind energy technology.   There are seven principles of sustainability: 1) human-ecological system integrity; 2) sufficiency and opportunity; 3) equity; 4) efficiency and throughput reduction; 5) democracy and civility; 6) precaution; and 7) immediate and long-term integration.  

Sustainability is an emerging science and is still very subjective and often a contested subject between individuals, governments, industry, and non-profit organizations.  It is an issue of complex integration of different systems and factors (e.g., integration of human and ecological systems).  Sustainability also requires considering both temporal and spatial scales as it involves looking toward the future.  Currently, there is a lack of guidance or policy documents for sustainability and until such documents are produced, sustainability will remain very ambiguous.  

An increasingly popular method for addressing environmental and sustainability issues is the collaborative-environmental management (CEM).  This approach engages citizens, government officials, and stakeholders in the policy process and development.  By incorporating comments from administrators to citizens, conflicts are easily identified and quicker to resolve.  This allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem and possible solutions. 

Governmental organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations Environment Programme have programs and research devoted to sustainability.  Major corporations and industries, from Wal-Mart to DuPont to the US Postal Service, take sustainability into consideration and have either developed or are developing programs and guidelines.  Including a discussion of sustainability in a mission statement show consumers and stakeholders that a company is environmentally responsible.  In addition, many actions related to sustainability involve energy efficiency, thus reducing costs. 

Environmental stewardship may involve programs as small as recycling to mapping out the life-cycle of a product to determine and negate all the possible human and environmental impacts.  Proper life-cycle management starts with the basic raw materials and continues through processing and manufacturing to product use and finally to a product’s end-of-use.  In addition to determining a product’s life cycle, stewardship requires understanding of local versus global ecosystems and their interactions.  

In 2000, European leaders created a non-binding action plan, commonly known as The Lisbon Agenda, to further unite the European economies by encouraging innovation, new jobs and growth, while ensuring environmental sustainability.  However, current assessment of the Lisbon Agenda progress demonstrates that much of the work still needs to be done.  With the ever increasing alarm on global warming and climate change, this issue has been pushed into the foreground once again.  Renewable European industries are asking for firm regulations and guidelines requiring clean technology.  In addition, the European Renewable Energy Council stated in November 2008 that renewable industries could deliver ~20% of the energy needs of the European Union by 2020 if the member states continue to invest in new clean technologies, such as solar, wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture. 

The Sapphire Group, Inc. is prepared to develop sustainable strategies and science policy for environmental stewardship programs.  One of the factors that make sustainability so subjective is the requirement of predicting future needs of both humans and the environment.  Developing life-cycles and models to estimate environmental footprints will reduce the ambiguity of this science.  Our scientists are extremely adept at model development.  Another key area is our scientists’ experience in community relations, public comments, and media/public participation.  Allowing for open communication with the public and government is a vital area of increasing understanding of sustainability issues. 

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