Sustainability and its Challenges in Achieving a Balanced Change

Running head: SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability
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SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability refers to the process that can help in maintaining change in a manner
that is balanced. Sustainability ensures that the exploitation of the resources and the
institutional changes are in harmony with each other that can prove to be useful in meeting
the human needs. Sustainability can be defined with the help of interconnected domains or
the pillars like environment, economic along with social (Wood et al., 2015). This essay
states that it is difficult to attain sustainability and achieving sustainability is difficult for the
developing countries.
People in the society can live in a sustainable manner if the resources of the earth are
extracted without damaging the resources. According to Crane & Matten, (2016),
sustainability can be stated to be an impossible ideal as all the countries in the world use up
the water, oil and the coal and hence it can be said that it wold not be possible to achieve
sustainability. The collective footprint of the human beings on the planet earth can be said to
be huge that would make it impossible to achieve sustainability. For achieving sustainability,
systemic transformation should be brought about in the society. It has been argued by
Childers et al., (2015) that the culture prevailing in a particular place should regard
sustainability as worthy goal that can help in attaining sustainability. The world population
growth is growing at a rapid rate that puts a lot of pressure on the ecosystems. There are
problems that occurs owing to environmental degradation along with lack of the water supply
that puts a lot of pressure on the environment. The rapid urbanization taking place in the
present age will make sustainability an impossible ideal and it would not be possible for
people to adopt practices that can ensure that of sustainable development.
On the contrary, it can be stated that the mentality of the people changing can help in
bringing forth sustainability in the society. According to Epstein, (2018), the Americans have
started building smaller homes and they are asking for green-build certification. The people
understanding the fact that energy should be handled in the efficient manner and the use of

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SUSTAINABILITY
the non-toxic materials can prove to be of great use in attaining sustainability in the present
age. It can be stated that growing the food in the back yards can help in dealing with the
challenges related to sustainability in the society (Eizenberg & Jabareen, 2017).
It has been argued by Wolfram & Frantzeskaki, (2016) that mentality of the people
would not change due to the fact that the best decisions that are taken in business do not align
with that of best ecological decision. The pro-environmental practices can help in creating
positive brand association among the consumers and the regulators. Innovations would be
required that can help in overcoming the environmental challenges that can prove to be of
benefit for the organizations. The employees can be said to have higher morale in the event of
them knowing about what their company is doing. According to Pant, Adhikari & Bhattarai,
(2015) that the organizations in the present age have to abide by “triple bottom line” which
means people, planet and the profit. It has been found that the interests of the profit goes into
conflict with that of the interests of the people and the planet. A company would be at a loss
if it makes use of fair trade products across that of supply chain. The ecologically sensitive
decisions can be made in a company which can help a company in earning profits. It can be
stated that the mentality of the people would never change as they would be interested solely
in their profit that will make sustainability an ideal that will be impossible to attain within the
society. It can be said that cutting down the forests and building the malls would pave the
path for the creation of employment opportunities that most of the people in the society
would like to enjoy. According to Mani et al., (2016) that in the event of a company taking a
step towards sustainability it would not make the business sense. The principles pertaining to
sustainability can be said to be opposed to that of world of the commerce.
The developing countries lack the financial resources that makes sustainability an
impossible ideal. According to Keiner, Koll-Schretzenmayr & Schmid, (2016), the people
living in the developing countries do not have access to that of regulated financial services.