Since I see relocalization as the process to create or achieve a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice, let's start off by defining what sustainability actually means. A major advantage of using a fairly strict definition of sustainability is that it will provide a foundation and a benchmark to evaluate proposals and to measure success in reaching the goal of a sustainable future.

The following definition is much more biocentric than it is anthropocentric. I've distilled the core concepts and commonalities from dozens of working definitions that have been used over the years by sustainability advocates and groups from all over the world who all see protecting and restoring the earth for future generations as a prime imperative. This definition also has the advantage of including the aspect of carrying capacity that has proven to be legally defensible for communities wanting to put the skids on unfettered growth (known in land use law as a growth threshold standard). Here's the definition:

Sustainability means to integrate our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain rather than degrade or destroy the environment; it is a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; and it entails finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation so that watersheds and bioregions can maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.

It follows from this definition that sustainability must adhere to certain natural systems principles, which in my research I've distilled to four core principles: 1) mutual support and reciprocity, 2) no waste, 3) no greed, and 4) increasing diversity. All living systems, which are non-hierarchical and self-organizing, use these principles to create mutually supportive relationships, which is the prime activity of living systems. All activities within a healthy, vibrant, and resilient ecosystem emerge from, or are congruent with, these principles. Healthy and vibrant ecosystems provide the models and metaphors necessary to build sustainability into human systems. It's important to remember that humans, as natural systems themselves, embody these principles.

It's also important to remember that sustainability is not just an environmental movement; it is a community movement. When we talk about communities and economies from the perspective of sustainable development, we also must realize that development is not growth, but a means to improve; make better; to bring to a more advanced or effective state.

To further refine what we're talking about, let's also briefly talk about what growth means.

Growth occurs in nature until a living system reaches the point of maturation and then a steady state of development is maintained. The growth economy, however, depends on bankers loaning more money than they have on deposit, on the assumption that tomorrow's growth will pay for today's debt. Growth in the industrial economy is entirely dependent on ready access to cheap and abundant fossil fuels—-which are no longer either—-to power our factories, move us around, grow our food, produce our plastic trinkets, and create our increasing number of medicines—-which are increasingly necessary to overcome the ill-effects of all of the above.

The rejection of growth is not just a viable policy option, it is a survival strategy.