Issues influencing sustainability

Issues influencing sustainability - global to local

Many diverse issues currently influence sustainability outcomes, including:

• escalating world population growth and rapidly increasing consumerism
• pressure on finite natural resources
• widespread pollution and deterioration of air, land and water quality
• climate change, and increasingly limited capacity of the natural environment to sequester escalating greenhouse gas emissions
• diminishing oil supplies and increasing fossil fuel costs
• escalating issues of obesity and related health problems
• competitive and cultural pressures on world food production, and
• the impact of booming industrial development in China and India.

One-way or another the impacts of these issues, and many others, are increasingly being felt at not only the global, national and State levels of society, but also at the local level.