Measuring up to sustainability

As a concept sustainability has captured our imaginations and aspirations. As a tangible and identifiable goal it eludes us. Having developed indicators to measure and monitor economic, social and environmental conditions, we want now to measure sustainability. Our emphasis on the physical, the objective, and the rational, however, sees only the external manifestations of sustainability. The internal manifestations of sustainability, the non-material, the subjective, and the experiential, are put to one side, since they are messy, interpretive and time-consuming—the world of hermeneutics. Sustainability, however, is more than a `thing' to be measured, since it is about ecological integrity, quality of life and transformation or transcendence. Rather than ask how we can measure sustainability, it may be more appropriate to ask how we measure up to sustainability.