Sustainability: Importance of issue
Sustainability is the integrating concept that helps us understand how well we, as a society, are living within our means. The previous report set out the principles of sustainability, identified many influences that have helped shape Queensland society and examined several aspects of our stewardship of our resources (EPA 2003).
In 2007, water security, drought and cleaner energy have become dominant issues of community concern and public policy debate, brought to the fore by increasingly compelling evidence of climate change. The principles of sustainability persist unchanging. However, measures are needed with which to gauge progress and the effectiveness of actions by governments, industry and the community.
More efficient use of resources-eco-efficiency-continues to deliver benefits for individual enterprises. The potential for realising these benefits is finite, being limited by the amount of water, raw materials, energy and waste inefficiency that can be eliminated in any particular business. Eco-efficiency alone cannot, therefore, deliver sustainability. Efficiency improvements do, however, provide savings, giving time to develop more enduring processes of redesign for sustainability. Beyond this lies the chance to rebuild natural and social capital-the non-financial benefits that are the basis of sustained prosperity, competitiveness and society's wellbeing.
This paper summarises the headline economic, social and environmental effects being experienced by industry and the community, and the natural resource and environmental stressors underlying them. A new calculation of Queensland's ecological footprint is presented as a measure of progress in the pursuit of sustainability, followed by examples of how specific recent initiatives are helping us progress towards it.
Impacts
The impacts experienced or anticipated as a result of climate change and diminished ecosystem function relate to crop production, water availability for rural and urban consumption, and coastal vulnerability to extreme weather events, particularly storm tide, flood inundation and wind damage.
Potential effects include:
- increases in occurrence of invasive species;
- changes in growth and carrying capacity of agricultural systems;
- water becoming scarcer because of reduced rainfall and increased evaporation;
- changes to frost frequency and severity affecting growing seasons and product quality;
- increasing damage from more extreme events such as hail, wind and heavy rain;
- consequent reductions in certainty about investment;
- increasing heat stress that may affect productivity and animal welfare;
- increases in crop water-use efficiency and reductions in grain quality because of higher carbon dioxide concentrations;
- changes to world markets; and
- deterioration of ecosystem function leading to lower primary productivity, diminished carbon stocks in natural and managed systems, changes in water yield, flows and ecosystem use, and loss of ecosystem services such as water, shade, soil formation and biodiversity.
These impacts constrain the sustainability of existing activities and, therefore, the capacity for investment in mid- to long-term design for sustainability and rebuilding of natural capital, as well as reducing certainty in investment decisions.
Return to State of the Environment Queensland 2007 content page
Last reviewed 17 May 2011
Last updated 5 February 2008