Determining the sustainability of something is multi-faceted, because focusing too much on one particular outcome can have unintended consequences. Pretty much everything we produce or do has some impact on the planet, so to my mind what we are trying to do is reduce that impact.

So, can a formula be worked out that will provide a quantitative answer to sustainability? The answer is maybe, but it’s complicated.

As I set out in a previous post, sustainability is a key component of coexistence. But what does sustainable actually mean? If you look it up on Wikipedia you find reference to ‘the capacity for the biosphere and human civilization to coexist’ and a UN report defining sustainable development as “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

By any objective measure we are not meeting this definition of sustainability. The Global Footprint Network measures the demand on and supply of nature and calculates our Ecological Footprint every year. In 2022 we exhausted our ‘supply’ of nature, meaning we used up what the Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate in a year, on 28 July.

My, and I suspect many others, favourite conversationist is Sir David Attenborough. In 2020 when he published A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and Vision for the Future I spent the weekend of its release reading the book and watching the accompanying documentary. Here is the review I wrote.

I previously had an ecommerce site called Buy Sustainably, which sold sustainable products for consumer use. I wound that site up when I moved back to New Zealand from the United Kingdom and when I came to start a new site I realised that sustainability, while a very important part of the environmentalism, didn’t cover the whole picture.

The word that seemed more all-encompassing was coexistence. The reasons why are too many for one blog post, but here’s a start. To coexist is the state of existing at the same time or in the same place, and more importantly, existing in harmony.

Despite the uniqueness of our planet, in our short existence it is fair to say we haven't treated it or its other inhabitants well. Our population has exploded, growing from just 4 million at the dawn of civilization to over 8 billion today. But it’s not only our population that has grown exponentially, so have the numbers of the animals that feed us – to the extent that 96% of the biomass of mammals is now humans and livestock.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that things can’t go on as they are. We act as though Earth’s resources are infinite when they are not. Unless we can return to a state of coexistence with our planet then we risk losing the conditions that have enabled us to become so successful.

22 April marks the 53rd annual Earth Day and the perfect opportunity for the soft launch of WeCoexist.Earth. This site aims to raise awareness about some of the challenges facing our planet, but more importantly to focus on solutions, and the people and companies that are rising to meet those challenges. When you pause for a moment and think about all the wonder that exists in the natural world, preserving those wonders for future generations is surely the duty of us all. Today is the start of a journey that will hopefully educate and inspire, and I hope you will join us.