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Given the inertia of the status quo, it can be hard to imagine a seemingly esoteric ideal like ecological sustainability ever gaining any real traction, and yet that word “sustainability” just keeps elbowing its way into the conversation.                   
                                                                                                       Green Steps Journal, 2006

Each generation is entitled to the interest of the natural capital, but the principal should be handed on unimpaired.

Canadian Conservation Commission, 1915

...development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

World Commission on Environment and Development
 (Brundtland Commission)

.A transition to sustainability involves moving from linear to cyclical processes and technologies.  "The only processes we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end."

Dr. Karl Henrik-Robert, MD, The Natural Step, Sweden

.Sustainability is our long-term cultural, economic, and environmental health and vitality.

Sustainable Seattle

    The Earth Charter declares 16 principles and values of a sustainable world, summarized as: Care and Respect for the Community of Life, Ecological Integrity, Social and Economic Justice, and a Culture of Peace, Nonviolence and Democracy. The Earth Charter principles provide a comprehensive set of policies and ethics that society must adopt, if humanity is to become sustainable.      www.earthcharter.org

Sustainability – Native to our Nature
Relearning the Language of Community

 
   Sustainable living in the Delaware Valley is nothing new – the Lena’pe, original peoples of the area, acted as caretakers of this land, and each other, for over 10,000 years.  They naturally embraced animals, plants, minerals and the waters as part of their community, honoring the earth’s resources as native to their culture. Sadly, that way of being, that marrow-deep “languaging” of and “belonging to” the earth as ancestor, family, and friend became thinner and lost.   As that voice faded, our region – the Great Delaware Valley - lost its sense of sacred place.

 To bring true sustainability back into our region a shift in worldview – a relearning the language of fuller community, a renewal of belonging to each other and the land is needed.