ABSTRACT
The modern sustainability parable is based on the evidence that nearly all of human wealth is currently acquired on the back of diminishing and disabling ecosystem services, and the usurpation of labour and the ill-being of the disadvantaged and discriminated-against. The drive to afford coherence and credibility to the role of ecosystem services is a drive to challenge the biases of valuation and power in the determination of market-based exchange. To shift the default position to sustainability will require global recognition of the essentialness of ecosystem services for viable continuation of wealth creation. Sustainability nowadays is shifting ground. There is a resigned recognition that a society which is treated unfairly and unjustly cannot embrace sustainability. The focus of attention in the sustainability stakes rests on inequality, on enforced vulnerability, on the scope for ecosystem viable enterprise, and on a new moral framework for living and consuming based on pride and community approval.
