Social sustainability: Satisfying human needs

Hi, Alec here.

Which human needs do we have to satisfy
to live a sustainable life?

Interestingly enough,

most definitions of sustainability
mention meeting needs.

The Brundtland Commission
of the United Nations, in 1987,

defined sustainable development
as development that meets

the needs of the present
without compromising

the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs.

In a previous video,
we used natural science to see

that sustainability can be
defined as meeting human needs

within ecological constraints.

One of our four sustainability principles
says in a sustainable society,

people are not subject
to conditions that systematically

undermine their capacity
to meet their needs.

So what are these needs?

How can they help us
become sustainable?

You may be familiar with
Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I won't get into it here but
there are many resources available online

if you are interested.

And here is another interesting theory
about human needs

that was developed by Chilean economist
Manfred Max Neef.

He published in 1991
a book called Human Scale Development

demonstrating that human needs
are finite and classifiable.

There are nine fundamental human needs
that are constant through all cultures

and across historical time periods.

What changes is the ways
these needs are satisfied.

So these nine human needs are:

Subsistence:
we need food, water, shelter;

protection: we need a safe place to live,
social security;

participation: being part of decisions
that affect our life;

idleness: some free time or relaxing;
affection: we need friends, love;

understanding: learning, meditating;
creation: cooking, designing, inventing;

identity: a sense of belonging,
knowing oneself;

and freedom: being able to choose
how we live our lives.

Although these needs are the same
than the Roman or the Native people

used to have thousands years ago,
some of the ways we satisfy,

say, our need for protection,
participation, or freedom

can be very different today
than they were then.

While some satisfiers
satisfy only one need,

for example, insurance
provides us with protection,

some satisfy several needs
at once, for instance,

breastfeeding satisfy
a baby's need for subsistence

but also protection,
affection, and identity.

These are called synergistic satisfiers.

Max Neef differentiates other types
of satisfiers called destroyers.

By supposedly satisfying a need
that stop us from meeting several others.

For example, censorship pretends
to satisfy our need for protection

but it actually stops us
from meeting our need for

understanding, participation,
creation, identity, and freedom.

Some are pseudo-satisfiers,
for example, fashion and trends

can generate a false sense of identity.

And finally, Max Neef also organizes
satisfiers in four categories:

being, having, doing, and interacting,
depending on how we satisfy our needs.

So how is this helpful
to become sustainable?

First, when working
towards reducing

and eventually eliminating
all contribution to conditions

that systematically undermine
people's ability to meet their needs,

we now have a framework
to organize our thinking