Sustainability: A Historical Approach of a "New" Concept - Oana Ivan

The concept of “sustainability” is a must today: from the tiniest farming product or restaurant menu, to the multi-million-euro budget projects, “sustainable” needs to be on the front cover, on the label, in the main title. We got so used to the term that we hardly ever think what it actually means. The present essay discusses one of the most used misconceptions of sustainability in relationship to the “good old days” when life was said to be simpler, care free and consumerism was unheard of. The present essay uses the centuries-long history of fishing in an UNESCO biosphere reserve, the Danube Delta, to de-construct this myth. It questions whether “sustainability” can so easily go hand in hand with “tradition” and whether local people using natural resources, (in this case, the fish) were actually living in harmony with nature since the dawn of ...