The Sustainability Coordinator: A Structural Innovation for Managing Sustainability

Abstract

A recent report from the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Global Footprint Network, and the Zoological Society of London estimated that the health of planetary ecosystems, as measured by the populations of over 1300 vertebrate species, declined by about 30 percent from 1970 to 2003. During the same period, the global human ecological footprint—the amount of biologically productive land and ocean required to provide resources used and absorb waste produced—has more than doubled, from approximately 6 billion hectares to over 14 billion hectares. The total human ecological footprint is now estimated to exceed the available carrying capacity by about 25 percent (Hails, Loh, and Goldfinger 2006). The clear trend is toward even greater declines in ecosystem quality and increases in resource use and pollution, thus further exacerbating overshoot beyond the carrying capacity and portending a future overshoot-and-collapse scenario (Meadows, Meadows, and Randers 1992).