← A large natural environment

Sustainability: all three dimensions

At Level 2, "sustainability" means social, economic AND environmental sustainability together — addressing only the environmental dimension answers only a third of the concept.

What each dimension actually asks

  • Environmental: does the use degrade the natural characteristics (soil, water quality, vegetation cover, species) over time, or can the environment recover between uses?
  • Economic: does the use remain profitable or viable long-term, or does it undermine its own resource base (over-fishing removing future catches, over-grazing reducing future pasture quality)?
  • Social: does the use support the wellbeing and continuity of the people who depend on the environment (a community's livelihood, cultural practices, access rights)?
  • A genuinely sustainable use satisfies all three; a use that is environmentally sound but destroys a community's livelihood, or economically profitable but ecologically destructive, is NOT fully sustainable.
Worked example Evaluating sustainability across all three dimensions Evaluate the sustainability of high-intensity dairy farming on land converted from native tussock in a large natural environment. ENVIRONMENTAL: intensive irrigation and fertiliser use can degrade water quality in nearby rivers and reduce native biodiversity — this dimension is under strain. ECONOMIC: dairy farming can be highly profitable in the short term, but declining soil health or water restrictions from environmental damage could threaten long-term viability — economic sustainability partly DEPENDS on environmental sustainability. SOCIAL: the industry supports rural employment and community services, but conflicts can arise with groups who value the original tussock landscape for recreation or cultural reasons — social sustainability is contested, not clearly positive or negative. OVERALL JUDGEMENT: the interdependence between dimensions (economic viability relying on environmental health) is itself worth stating explicitly, not just listing the three separately. ✓ A comprehensive answer explains that the three dimensions are not independent scores to total up — one dimension often depends on or conflicts with another, and naming that relationship is the more sophisticated observation. ✕

Treating sustainability as only an environmental question

A common weak answer discusses only pollution, degradation or biodiversity loss when asked about sustainability, ignoring the economic and social dimensions entirely. At Level 2 the standard specifically wants all three addressed, and ideally the RELATIONSHIP between them (e.g. environmental damage eventually threatening economic viability) rather than three disconnected paragraphs. ℹ

Sustainability is not always the specific concept asked for

Not every task will explicitly name "sustainability" — it may appear implicitly in a question about the consequences of an interaction, or about whether a use of the environment can continue. Recognise when a question is genuinely asking about sustainability even without using the word, and bring in the three-dimension structure where it is relevant.

Practise just this