Triple Bottom Line Approach to Individual and Global Sustainability

Abstract

Industrial ecology is founded on analogies and lateral thinking, borrowing and adapting, and opening up the frontiers of imagination and innovativeness to make the road to sustainable development more tractable. Talking of the key role mankind needs to play to make sustainable development a reality, a wonderful analogy is uncovered – between holistic individual human development and the triple bottom line approach (economic, social and environmental) to sustainable progress of humanity as a whole on the surface of the earth. An individual starts off from gross materialism (body) but needs to aim for the right blend of physical, emotional and spiritual advancement in life. When all individuals do so, a lop-sided socio-economic technosphere will gradually meta-morphose into a fully-evolved one. Paradoxically, individuals need to delve in and comprehend their spiritual selves, for the technosphere to fan out and embrace the earth of which it is just a small component.

Keywords: Economic, environmental, physical, social, spiritual, sustainability

JEL Classification: O13, Q2, Q32, Q41, R11, M14