Studying Business Sustainability Indices in Malaysian Cities - Dissertation Example

The solution is to control the world population, limit the activities of people to a certain extent, and extraction of raw materials from the environment must be following sustainable programs. However, meeting the demands of the people is affected by several factors like globalization, communications, the living standards of people, and many others.
Sustainability became a popular term when commentators and policymakers noticed that the earth’s population exceeded food production. Governments started to deal with the notion that our world could be full of people and there would be a lack of food and space. Years after doomsayers made their predictions, humans still roam the planet. Technology has saved mankind, for the time being, by increasing production while the notion that sustainability can be attained has increased. Developing countries are still striving to feed their ever-increasing populations and provide higher nutrition values of food, provide jobs to millions with hungry families to feed, at the same time, a separate middle class living in cities is growing (Ramachandran, 2002, p. 15).
The earth’s processes, like the atmosphere and oceans, are complex and strongly interrelated that when one part changes, the whole system will be affected. Protecting the environment and restoring the earth’s carrying capacity is society’s responsibility, and attaining sustainability must be following socio-political values (Portney, 2001).
Determining sustainability is a problem because there are no agreed standards or values wherein sustainable development can be assessed, but there are variables that can be used to determine the sustainability of cities. There have to be some agreed standards and determining variables that must be accompanied by empirical research. Identifying the variables would be one of the major steps, but this is limited by the availability of information and data. The problem lies in how to determine and define sustainability indices in cities that can be used as a framework. There are sustainability indicators that have been used by developed cities but to apply this to cities in the Asia Pacific region is still questionable.
Cities use indices of sustainability as significant policy and planning tools (Alberti, Briassolis 2001; Harner et al., Warner 2002, as cited in Pearsall & Pierce, 2010, p. 570). These are tested indices for their own application and implemented by agencies known as initiatives or international bodies that guide decision-makers in their needed indicators of sustainable development. For example, there is the UN body known as the ‘Indicators of Sustainable Development of the Commission on Sustainable Development (DSD), which followed the Brundtland report about sustainable development and focused on the social, environmental, and economic framework. The indices are benchmarks that enable policymakers to measure their development over a certain period and to respond to pressures from the government and the general public.
According to the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (2005), sustainability refers to an aspect of changing systems “that maintain themselves over time” which of course does not have a fixed definition. Environmental sustainability emphasizes “long-term maintenance of valued environmental resources in an evolving human context”.