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The Natural Step is a systematic approach to reach sustainability

While written to be clear scientifically, the specific wording of the four system conditions can be confusing to non-scientists who try to put them to work. Fortunately, the system conditions can be reworded as basic sustainability principles that provide explicit guidance for any individual or any organization interested in moving towards sustainability. The table below contains the four system conditions on the left and the reworded the basic sustainability principles on the right..

The Four System Conditions...	. . . Reworded as The Four Principles of Sustainability
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:	To become a sustainable society we must...
1. concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust	1. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth's crust (for example, heavy metals and fossil fuels)
2. concentrations of substances produced by society	2. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society (for example, dioxins, PCBs, and DDT )
3. degradation by physical means	3. eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes (for example, over harvesting forests and paving over critical wildlife habitat); and
4. and, in that society, people are not subject to conditions that systemically undermine their capacity to meet their needs	4. eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs* (for example, unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on).

At first reading, the system conditions and basic principles might seem to imply that we must rid society of all materials extracted from the earth and all substances produced by society and that, further, we must never disturb a natural landscape. But that's not what they mean. The problem is not that we mine and use heavy metals, or use chemicals and compounds produced by society, or disrupt natural processes, or even temporarily interfere with people’s capacity to meet their basic needs. It is, rather, that our industrial system has developed so that substances extracted from the earth and produced by society will continue to build up indefinitely in natural systems. That means a progressive buildup of pollutants and substances that not only harm us directly but damage natural processes that have taken billions of years to develop...

*Max-Neef identifies nine fundamental human needs that are consistent across time and cultures: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Max-Neef points out that these fundamental human needs cannot be substituted one for another and that a lack of any of them represents a poverty of some kind.

 Read the full article at: http://www.naturalstep.org/~natural/the-system-conditions