Environmental stability and sustainable development

Many scholars have advocated that the cornerstone of sound environmental management is an effective control of stability of the human life-support system. A common theme running through these suggestions is that we should maximize the inherent stability of the life-support system. This essay proposes a new scheme or technique of classifying the stability of systems. Then the essay describes how the stabilizing mechanisms may be considered as a force that holds the human lifesupport system intact. Stabilizing energy is the energy available to do work, without compromising the integrity of the configuration. The anthropogenic processes of harvesting or using the system as a sink for pollutants are the counterforce that tends to destabilize the system. The basic conclusion is that if society is using a system, then the maximum energy of the anthropogenic processes cannot exceed the stabilizing energy. If this occurs, the system reaches its metastate. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.