Systems for Social Sustainability: Global Connectedness and the Tuvalu Test

Taking social indicators and the triple bottom line as a jumping off point we discuss current approaches to social sustainability as part of the social welfare debate. We consider a broader systems framework in which everything is connected to everything else. We suggest life span as a fundamental social indicator and suggest a metaphor to convey its complexity. We conclude that social sustainability has a number of connotations, is a useful concept for advancing the sustainability debate, and can usefully be applied to a consideration of enduring social systems. Keywords: social sustainability, social systems, mid and endpoint indicators