ABSTRACT
Introduction Sustainability is most often associated implicitly with human economic activities or complex systems of human economic activities that are constrained by environmental limits – sustainable agriculture, for example. Here I critically examine two classic concepts of sustainability: sustainable yield and sustainable development. From the perspective of current environmental concerns – and especially concerns about the loss of biodiversity – both of these familiar and essentially economic ways of understanding sustainability are fatally flawed, short of a thorough conceptual overhaul. I introduce and commend a third way of understanding sustainability that I dub ecological sustainability. In passing, I also critique a recently developed alternative way of understanding sustainability proffered by Bryan G. Norton.
