Hypotheses+What is a Sustainable Society?

This is just a part of my research not my report

1) Develop hypotheses about what factors create a sustainable society.

It is hard to develop a concrete model for social sustainability as no society is completely sustainable. Each society will have its weak points and its strong points, the points that lead to its prosperity and the points that lead to its collapse. It would probably be easier to get an overview of the definition of social sustainability before I go any further.

According to the wikipedia on sustainability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability), (wonderful resource...not very reliable ^^) 'Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely.' Although most sustainable societies do come to an end (or fall in to decline and become only a shadow of their former selves)

Something interesting in that article was a paragraph on the effect of a cultures moral values on sustainability: 'Values vary greatly in detail within and between cultures, as well as between academic disciplines (e.g., between economists and ecologists). The introduction of social values to sustainability goals implies a much more complex and contentious debate, and those focused on ecological impacts tend to strongly resist non-ecological interpretations.'

Another website (http://www.humboldt.edu/~envecon/ppt/309/food/tsld004.htm) defines societal stability as:

'Definition of a sustainable society:
The economics of a sustainable society,
“occurs at the intersection, or balancing, of three global imperatives: environmental integrity, economic efficiency, and the well-being of people and community.” '

This summarises that the sustainability of a society is dependent on a variety of factors from a wide range of topics such as environmental and economic.

Another definition of sustainability (http://www.answers.com/topic/sustainability?cat=technology) is:

Capable of being sustained.
Capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment: sustainable agriculture.

This wasn't really very helpful at all, but it supports the other definitions that I have found. Something a little more useful from this site though was to do with environmental stability:

"The Entropy Law and the Economic Process") suggests the following three operational rules defining the condition of sustainability:
1. Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate.
2. Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place.
3. Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless.

They are rather basic principles but they are something that modern day society struggles with.

Most of the results that my searches turned up were to do with the defintion of 'sustainable development' which is has more to do with the human population and its effects on the environment- lots of humans=depletion of resources+waste=damage to the environment

Social sustainability depends on a wide range of factors and it is possible for a society to survive if they are only succesful in a few of these factors, although their days will be numbered because of this. Collapse is inevitable.

My definition of a sustainable society is, a society that has some form of government system, transport system, cultural complexity (artwork, religion, etc.), social stability (stable within itself) and economic gain/trade....or at least that is my definition at this point in time.