IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijsusd/v5y2002i4p381-391.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability as an evolutionary process

Author

Listed:
  • Roger Wilkinson
  • John Cary

Abstract

This paper describes a process-oriented construction of sustainability. The main argument is that sustainability is not a fixed ideal, but an evolutionary process of attempting to improve the management of systems, through improved understanding and knowledge. The process is not deterministic: the end-point is not known in advance. The starting point of the process is not some degree of sustainability because this cannot be known or observed. It is considered that unsustainability – which can be seen – is necessarily the starting point for this process. What is known to be unsustainable will change and evolve with new information and experience, which makes the process dynamic rather than static. Within this evolutionary approach a sustainable system is one that evolves as a consequence of adaptation to changing circumstances, rather than one that resists all assaults upon it.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger Wilkinson & John Cary, 2002. "Sustainability as an evolutionary process," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(4), pages 381-391.
  • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijsusd:v:5:y:2002:i:4:p:381-391
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=3759
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Murray Bruges & Willie Smith, 2008. "Participatory approaches for sustainable agriculture: A contradiction in terms?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 25(1), pages 13-23, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijsusd:v:5:y:2002:i:4:p:381-391. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=25 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.