Environment sustainabilities: An analysis and a typology

Abstract

Most approaches to the business of considering environmental sustainability have taken either a definitional or a discursive form. Both these approaches have their limitations. Better is an analytical strategy revolving around the distillation from the literature of the questions to which any theory of environmental sustainability would have to have an answer. This produces a framework for analysis which can be transformed into a typology by grouping the answers to those questions into four ‘conceptions of sustainability’. Two ‘diagnostic packages’ may be proposed for determining the causes of, and solutions to, unsustainability. These conceptions and packages are useful in themselves for orientation purposes in the increasingly complex territory occupied by discussions of environmental sustainability, but they also have potential for use as tools when considering the normative implications of sustainability policies.