Column by Tate White

To the delight of many UK students, faculty and alumni, President Lee Todd shrewdly entered the new year by signing an official Sustainability Policy Statement for the university. UK’s Sustainability Policy Statement grew out of the former Sustainability Task Force. When the green fee championed by UK Greenthumb failed to pass for spurious reasons, the temporary task force was transformed into the more permanent President’s Sustainability Advisory Committee. The drafting of the policy statement carried over with the Provost making final edits a few months ago. Ernest Yanarella, a political science professor, director of UK’s environmental studies program and co-director of the UK Center for Sustainable Cities, served as a valuable resource in the statement’s creation but many made contributions, making the statement an impressive product of collaboration.

Now, I know that multiple readers are probably perplexed by the notion of sustainability, considering it truly is an evasive concept proving difficult to grasp. However, it is vital that the reader has a formidable comprehension of sustainability before he or she can begin to adequately appreciate or critique any kind of statement related to sustainability. Luckily, the carefully drafted statement addresses this early in the second section, highlighting various definitions and concluding with a more comprehensive one. An overarching definition for sustainable development cited on a regular basis was developed by the Brundtland Commission, formed by the U.N. to initiate discourse about society’s relationship to the natural environment.

Sustainable development was elucidated as in the interest of all nations to combat with growing environmental problems and depleting natural resources. The report resulting from the Brundtland Commission defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Although this definition gets to the heart of the matter of what sustainability is ultimately about and aims to achieve, it remains somewhat incomplete. Granted, achievement of sustainability primarily involves environmental and natural resource issues, but equally important social and economic aspects are often not realized as being subsumed under this necessarily broad notion.

An alternative definition of sustainable development offered by the UK Center for Sustainable Cities reads “local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process, operating within its Sustainable Area Budget, exporting no harmful imbalances beyond its territory or into the future, and thus opening the spaces of future opportunity and possibility.” This definition more successfully encompasses the social equity and cyclical nature inherent to the achievement of sustainability. Its presence at the beginning of the Sustainability Policy Statement is representative of the document’s grasp of true sustainable development, demonstrated further by the remainder of this articulate statement.

President Lee Todd’s acknowledgement and embrace of the Sustainability Policy Statement provides a foundation for the implementation of policies to make UK’s campus more sustainable and is something the whole campus should celebrate as it promotes the future livability and health of the campus community.