Abstract:

As announced in our previous works, this paper is part of a larger research that deals with sustainable development and environmental protection in extractive industry. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to show how ecologists think about sustainability. We will not be considering whether or not sustainability should be a policy objective. That is the sort of ethical question that other previous paper addressed. Here we will take it as given that sustainability is desirable, that it is agreed that the current human generation should take account of the interests of future human generations. In this respect, this paper identifies other ways of conceptualizing the sustainability problem and looks at ecological approach to sustainability. We then discuss an approach which sees the problem primarily in terms of social processes and institutions. These different ways of conceptualizing sustainability should not be seen as competitive or mutually exclusive. Rather, they are complementary; and the last paragraph attempts to draw, at a general level, some environmental policy lessons.