Sustainability and the U.S. EPA (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 History of Sustainability
2 History of Sustainability
Pages 15-34
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When customarily dry conditions recurred, huge dust storms swept across the unprotected landscape, making farming impractical and life much more difficult and hazardous due to dust pneumonia. Soil conservation practices, including crop rotation and fallowing land, were introduced on a large-scale basis afterward, and the Dust Bowl has not recurred (Egan 2006)
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culture -- a recognition that led to conservation laws which began to emerge in the late nineteenth century. The second was based on the realization that some of the chemical and physical agents increasingly released into the environment because of industrial development were harmful to people and the environment -- a realization that led to such events as the original Earth Day and the formation of EPA in 1970 and the ensuing media and pollutant-based environmental laws.
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. The first major federal environmental law is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)
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Beginning in 1970, however, it overhauled these prior laws to impose limits and permitting requirements to protect air quality (Clean Air Amendments of 1970) and water quality (Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972 [PL 92-500]
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EPA is the primary federal agency responsible for administering most of the major environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, RCRA, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA. However, EPA is not the only agency with environmental responsibilities.
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. The strategy represented the "integration of conservation and development" in the form of "sustainable development." It defined conservation as the "management of human use of the biosphere so that it may yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while main taining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations." The IUCN acknowledged the difficulty of merging the two concepts: "Conservation and development have so seldom been combined that they often appear -- and are sometimes represented as being -- incompatible." It nonetheless concluded that "integration of conservation and development" is needed to "ensure that modifi cations to the planet do indeed secure the survival and well-being of all people." The World Commission on Environment and Development (known as the Brundtland Commission, after its chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland)
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The U.S. Clean Air Act and other environmental laws enable the adoption of standards based on the possibility of harm rather than complete certainty (Ashford and Caldart 2008)
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Box 2-1 identifies some of the key meetings. Sustainable-development concepts have also been incorporated into a variety of international treaties, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, both of which were opened BOX 2‑1 International Sustainable Development Conferences Several commitments and conferences related to sustainable development are of note: • genda 21, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (UNCED A 1992a,b)
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(2009) noted that "EPA must continue to use science to fulfill its mandate" to protect human health and the environment and also to "use sustainability science to move beyond the current regulatory framework and to develop a more integrated systems-based approach to address challenges of this new century." Sustainable Development Outside the United States Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration were not simply agreements about sustainability ideas; they were also agreements to achieve sustainability.
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. The strategy identifies the following areas as priorities and contains specific measures to address them: climate change and clean energy; sustainable transport; sustainable consumption and production; conservation and management of natural resources; public health; social inclusion, demography, and migration; and global poverty and sustainable development challenges (CEU 2006b)
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conservation and environmental law has advanced sustainability in some areas. Nonetheless, the United States has not used a national strategy or sustainability "indicators" (see Appendix C)
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Sustainable development also raises questions that are not fully or directly addressed in U.S. law or policy, including how to define and control unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and how to encourage the development of sustainable communi ties, biodiversity protection, clean energy, environmentally sustainable economic development, and climate change controls.
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encouraging green investment could help enable a short-term economic recovery and create a more sustainable infrastructure for the long term. The OECD also called for the development of "a Green Growth Strategy in order to achieve economic recovery and environmentally and socially sustainable economic growth" (OECD 2009, p.3)
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applies a definition of sustainabil ity that is drawn from NEPA: "to create and maintain conditions, under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations." This report also uses that definition. The phrase, "create and maintain," captures the two senses in which the term sustainability is used by the committee in this report -- as a process and as a goal.
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1993. Sustainable Environmental Law: Integrating Natural Resource and Pollution Abatement Law from Resources to Recovery.
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Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.
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Dernbach, ed. Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.
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1994. Environmental Law, 2nd Ed.
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Dernbach, ed. Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.
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