Towards Sustainable Community : A Rights-Based Perspective

Efforts to address the sustainability crisis, especially in the U.S., have made important strides over the last twenty-five years, and continue to evolve. Yet, current sustainability discourse and practice reveal some challenges, risks and emerging needs. In particular, the modern sustainability movement faces:• The challenge of merely ‘greening’ the unsustainable status quo• The risk of remaining perceived as a partisan concern on the political and economic margins• The need for a refined definition of what sustainability means and seeks, which is expressed through new behavioral norms and a more robust, reinforcing regulatory regime. The next generation of sustainability solutions requires a framework that is more morally inclusive, procedurally responsive, and substantively real.This article proposes shifting from a “sustainable development” construct to a “sustainable community” construct. It appropriates resources from history, theology and human rights discourse to offer a more holistic decision-support framework. It also advocates for: (1) comprehensive environmental literacy education; (2) the reformulation of strategic roles and institutional arrangements; and (3) new economic incentives and legal tools, including a substantive environmental human right