Social Sustainability

Running Head: SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY 1
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
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SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY 2
Introduction
Environmental economics was developed in the 1960s as a result of the intensified
pollution levels and the increased awareness about the environment and its importance in the
existence of the human race among the people living in western countries. During this period,
economists became aware that for sustainability in economic growth, the economic system
needed to take into account the importance and uses of the environment and ensure that there
was no depletion of natural resources thus making sure that the environment was not overused.
In the 1970s the growth of environmental economics was initially within the neo-classical
structure which was mainly concerned with matters of usage and management of public goods,
market failure and inappropriate allocation of resources.
In this approach, however, very little concern has been shown on the relationship
between the economy and the environment. Some environmental economists who identified the
limitations of this approach led to the development of ecological economics. Being a
transdisciplinary field, ecological economics aims at improvement and expansion of the
economic theory for the integration of natural systems, human values and their well-being(Benn,
Edwards & Williams, 2018). The goal of ecological economics is to define and elaborate more
on complex relationships between humans and use that scientific understanding to formulate
policies that will effectively ensure that the world is ecologically sustainable (Ekins, 2016).
Environmental sustainability aims at ensuring that there is an improvement in human welfare by
making sure that natural capital such as land, air, water, minerals and so much more are
protected. A program or initiative can be defined to be environmentally safe if it ensures that the
needs of its population are attended to without having to compromise the welfare of future
generations. Under this pillar of sustainability, businesses are encouraged that they can still
achieve their goals without imposing any harm on the environment whether short-term or long-
term. Ecological sustainability requires that the allocation of economic resources should lead to
the stability of the economy–environment system as a whole.

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY 3
To create a sustainable society, there has to be a balance between the rate at which the
available resources are being used and the rate at which waste is being produced and reabsorbed
by the environment. The social aspect of sustainability aims at preserving social capital by
creating and investing in services that make up the structure of society. Social capital refers to
benefits obtained through human interactions and the basic structures of the society such as our
laws, traditions, educational systems, languages, and institutions. Social capital largely
contributes to the collective well-being of society. Social sustainability is concerned with an
improvement in social quality with concepts such as coherence, interdependence and morality
and the prominence of relationships amongst individual in the society (Schaltegger, Hansen, &
Lüdeke-Freund, 2017). It can be exhilarated and supported by laws, information and educating
people on equality and rights. The status of a company’s relationships with its stakeholders can
affect either directly or indirectly to the local communities, its customers, employees and even
the participants within the value chain (Ayres, Turton, & Casten, 2014). It is thus important for
businesses or rather companies to take charge of such since lack of social development,
including poverty and inequality, can negatively affect business growth and its operations.
Steps taken towards the achievement of social sustainability may lead to the realization of
new markets, attraction, and retention of business partners or be a start for the innovation of a
new product or service line (Costanza, 2015). Businesses can in different ways help the
government attain social sustainability by providing goods and services to help meet people's
basic needs, creating decent jobs, promoting public policies that support social sustainability and
making strategic social investments such as the construction of hospitals, schools and social
halls(Epstein, 2018). This will in the long run result to a more sustainable social future.
The ecological economists based their arguments on several assumptions and concepts.
First, ecological economics perceive the economy to be an open system embedded in the
biosphere’s carrying capacity which is defined as social metabolism. They assume that natural
capital is only very substitutable by other forms of capital such as the economic and social
capital(Reed, Van, Deakin, & Barlow, 2019).These theoretical assumptions which also include
the non-substitutability of physical capital are aligned with many ecological economists' views as
to physical capital is a complement and not a substitute to natural capital(Gold, 2016) . This