decisions concerning their use should err on the side of caution.

A working definition of freshwater sustainability that is true to these attributes might be this: in any watershed, ensure that basic water needs are met for all people; preserve ecological infrastructure so as to provide the quantity, quality, and timing of water flows needed to sustain ecosystem services; and where groundwater is tapped, ensure

because the sale would steal from the poor and vulnerable, including future generations;

the main challenge of our times: re-engineering human cultures to be inherently sustainable.

CSP plants require an array of fairly unsophisticated mirrors, and the material production needs neither limit the potential for the technology nor impose a significant ecological footprint.

What, then, is the biggest source of stress on planetary boundaries today? It is the excessive consumption levels of roughly the wealthiest 10 percent of people in the world and the resource-intensive production patterns of companies producing the goods and services that they buy.

The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) prepared by the United Nations sets out to do just that, assessing changes in countries’ manufactured, human, and natural capital stocks—with

formulation and implementation of decisions concerning natural and social capital assets.

humanity has entered a new era of global resource use in which commodities will no longer be cheap and abundant.9