THE GREAT KNOWLEDGE QUIZ - Duropal

What you always wanted to know.
THE SUBJECT fOR TODAY: SUSTAINABILITY.
FIRST APPROACHES TO A MULTI-LAYERED SUBJECT.
Everyone has heard about it. It is under continual discussion. Whole talk-shows are devoted to the subject. And it
really does concern us all. However, the concept of sustainability is and remains strangely abstract for most people. In
order to throw some light on the subject, we have put together for you on this page the most frequent and
interesting questions covering various aspects of sustainability, ecological trends and current counter-trends.
62 _ HPL World
EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT IT, BUT WHERE DOES THE TERM
SUSTAINABILITY ACTUALLY COME FROM?
However paradoxical it may sound, in order to discover the linguistic origins
of the future subject of sustainability, we have to go quite a way back into
the past — to the German forest of the 18th century, to be exact. Here we
find the reference to ‘nachhaltend’ use in connection with reforestation programmes,
which was exported to England under the name “sustainable”.
WHAT DOES SUSTAINABILITY STAND FOR TODAY?
over 200 years passed until the term surfaced again. already used previously
in specialist circles, ‘sustainability’ (German: Nachhaltigkeit) became
one of the buzzwords of the 1992 UN Environmental Conference in rio de
Janeiro. Since then, sustainability has been the subject of public discussion
throughout the world, and for several years now has been held up as one of
the guiding principles for the viable future development of mankind. the
aim is to bring the satisfaction of basic human needs into harmony with a
high-quality environment and a healthy economy.
HOW SUSTAINABLE IS THE SUBJECT OF SUSTAINABILITY?
Sustainability is certainly more than just a trend subject, since it includes
aspects such as social responsibility, ecological thinking and the efficient
utilisation of resources. these are all anything but new, and will in all probability
also remain topical in the future.