Thoughts on Sustainability

Though I have spent most of my life not understanding what was meant by "sustainability," my review of UN, EPA, and widespread architecture and engineering manuals has led me to share Brudtland's frustration at the slow pace that sustainability concepts have been applied and adopted.  I see sustainability as coming into the conversation of development alongside the globalization of assessment, standards, and evidence-based approaches to management.  I worry about the compartmentalization of sustainability in that it might defer much needed reflection on standard operating procedures of global governance that produce widespread degradation across ecosystems and non-accountability for the actors that produce it.  I would again like to look at the US in comparison to other countries for my research work this semester.