Social Sustainability

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Social sustainability has gained increased recognition for being key aspects of the sustainability debate in recent years. Previously, the concepts of environmental and economic sustainability were dominant in the social sustainability debate and it wasn’t until the 1990s that social issues of society were added into the subject of sustainability (Drexhage and Murphy, 2010). Social sustainability is defined by “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (World Commission on Environment and Development,2009:40.) A combination of the increasing population, rising levels of consumption and a limited amount of resources creates issues in the ability to meet the …show more content…
The MDGs were predominantly focused on human development outcomes and in contrast the Sustainable Development Goals goes into a whole range of other territories including sustainable growth, reducing inequality, climate action, peace promotion and responsive governance (Clarke, 2015). This is both a good and a bad thing when discussing the ambiguous nature of social sustainability because it is clear that there are different aspects which may not have previously been associated with sustainability within society which need to be understood as a key part of what social sustainability is. On the other hand, this is perhaps where the Global goals add to the complexity of our understanding of Social Sustainability. Due to the social sustainability being thing made up of a composite of many different issue within society and therefore the scale of the project what needs to be one in order to achieve social sustainability and the need to understand and locate a solutions to the many themes which construct social sustainability the whole concept becomes complex and perhaps seems unachievable. The scope of issues that fall into social sustainability means that it cannot be clearly defined as one concept and this adds to the complexity of exactly what social sustainability …show more content…
Whilst the goals to aid our understanding and add clarity to the debate through identifying the different aspects that fall under the concept of social sustainability which we need in order to fully understanding what social sustainability encompasses and how it is going to be achieved. Tackling the However ultimately the Global Goals add to the complexity of our understanding of what is social sustainability because of the huge scope of the issue that is social sustainability highlighted by the global goals. The global goals draw together a wide range of targets to deal with the identified within society such as gender inequality and therefore what exactly social sustainability it becomes increasingly

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