Sustainability’s Triple Threat
(Section Summary)

The confusion about sustainable development and the inability to act sustainably in today’s world is related to the many variables that affect the way human beings live. These variables can be categorized into three major points of view: economic, social, and environmental (Flint and Danner, 2001). These points of view can be distinguished as the triple threat to sustainability because they are traditionally dealt with as separate, isolated sectors in our world. But these sectors can not be separated when analyzing for sustainable solutions to our global problems. Considering problems in isolation, usually from an economic stand point, sooner or later can bring about changes on temporal and spatial scales that were unpredicted and also found to be undesirable (Norton, 2005) – thus reference to the “triple threat” to sustainability.

Humans have the power and technology to be the dominant force on a landscape and therefore can’t ignore the long-term consequences from trying to gain short-term economic benefits. Success in the short-term with regards to economic goals often overshadows triple threat issues that can set in motion both social and ecological processes undermining the foundation of a stable functioning environment. A new model of problem-solving must consider each point of view systematically and strategically, addressing primary concerns and how these relate to one another across the different points of view (Flint, 2004). From this perspective, the concept of sustainable development becomes much more than environmental protection in disguise. The triple threat concept distinguishes between environmentalism, which so often focuses only on ecological integrity, and the sustainability movement, which is more holistic and inclusive (McDaniel, 2002).

Threats to societal and ecological well-being are woven together in mutually reinforcing ways (Gibson, 2002). Thus, sustainable development involves the carrying out of activities that offer economic benefits in the present without negatively affecting social and environmental choices that are available to people in the future, or in other places. Unsustainable activities are those that do not consider the “triple threat” to more slowly changing system dynamics such as ecological function, and thus change what today might be viable opportunities into constraints sometime in the future. .......... read more!

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