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Background: The Internet has changed the landscape for conducting business forever. Because of the highly connected, flattened world and broadened competition field, today’s companies are increasingly facing more opportunities (being able to reach customers and markets that they might never have thought possible) and more challenges (a globalized and ever-changing competitive marketplace). Companies with the vision and capabilities to deal with such a volatile environment are greatly benefiting from it, whereas others who resist adapting are having difficulty surviving. Assignment: Further to the above and because of its sheer size and complexity, mining the Web is not an easy undertaking by any means. The Web also poses great challenges for effective and efficient knowledge discovery (Han & Kamber, 2006). What are some of the main challenges of the Web poses for knowledge discovery? DEFINITIONS AND MEANINGS OF SUSTAINABILITY One of the reasons for the widespread application of the sustainability framework is that there are a variety of definitions. David Pearce, the eminent economist from University College London, and his colleagues developed a gallery of 40 definitions for sustainability.6 Definitions of sustainability may cover all three systems comprising this framework (social, environmental, or economic) or may be skewed to one of them; they may or may not address future generations; and they may address technology, resources, waste, pollution or other issues. The following are some definitions of sustainability and some thoughts about this concept: “[Development ] that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The Brundtland Report "Sustainable design is the set of perceptual and analytic abilities, ecological wisdom, and
practical wherewithal essential to making things that fit in a world of microbes, plants, animals, and entropy. In other words, (sustainable design) is the careful meshing of human purposes with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world, and careful study of those patterns and flows to inform human purposes." David Orr, Professor, Oberlin College, Ohio "Sustainability is equity over time. As a value, it refers to giving equal weight in your decisions to the future as well as the present. You might think of it as extending the Golden Rule through time, so that you do unto future generations as you would have them do unto you." Robert Gilman, Director, Context Institute "A transition to sustainability involves moving from linear to cyclical processes and technologies. The only processes we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end." Dr. Karl Henrik-Robert, MD, founder of The Natural Step, Sweden "Actions are sustainable if: There is a balance between resources used and resources regenerated. Resources are as clean or cleaner at end use as at beginning. The viability, integrity, and diversity of natural systems are restored and maintained. They lead to enhanced local and regional self-reliance. They help create and maintain community and a culture of place. Each generation preserves the legacies of future generations." David McCloskey, Professor of Sociology, Seattle University "Clean air, clean water, safety in city parks, low-income housing, education, child care, welfare, medical care, unemployment (insurance), transportation, recreation/cultural centers, open space, wetlands..."
Brazil and the slums of Manila whole families survive by gathering and selling metal and other materials from garbage dumps. Simultaneously the world is facing environmental crises and resource shortages that compound the problem for the world’s poorest and place stress on even the wealthier nations as energy prices rise, climate patterns shift, and the Earth’s dowry of biodiversity dwindles. The 1987 Brundtland Report identified this state of the world as stemming from a shift in the relationship between the world’s natural systems and humanity which depends on these systems for its survival. The rapid growth in population and consumption has resulted in a mismatch between the capacity of natural systems and human activities that are constrained to functioning within these natural systems. The Brundtland Report suggests there are two main imperatives needed to correct this imbalance. First, the basic needs of all human beings must be met and poverty must be eliminated. Second, there must be limits placed on development in general because nature is finite. The ability to meet the basic needs of everyone is bounded by the capacity of nature to help meet those needs. Technology must be developed and applied judiciously to help meet the first imperative without adversely affecting the capacity of nature, either due to depletion by excess usage, or via destruction due to the negative consequences of some technologies. The following sections describe some of the issues that are forcing a rethinking of conventional approaches to policy, production, and consumption and for which sustainability provides some answers.
Population and Consumption Much has been said about the role of population as the cause of many global problems due to the need to feed, clothe, and house Earth’s still rapidly growing human population. In fact the combination of population and per capita consumption is challenging the carrying capacity of the planet. In addition to the burden of a rapidly growing global population on relatively scarce food, water, land, and materials resources, the wealthier nations consume far more per capita than the poorer countries. The world’s wealthiest countries, with less than 20 percent of the world's population, contribute roughly 40 percent of global carbon emissions, and they are responsible for more than 60 percent of the total carbon dioxide that fossil fuel combustion has added to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began. But this picture is now changing rapidly, particularly in China, where emissions are now rising at 10 percent a year, 10 times the average rate in industrial nations. By 2007 China's fossil fuel emissions exceeded those of the United States and continue to grow rapidly.9 Global population continues to grow at an alarming rate, with a population the size of Mexico’s (about 80 million) being added to the planet each year and almost 1 billion people per decade. Consumption is another side of the problem, especially per capita consumption of key natural resources which varies greatly around the world. Typically, the
