‘Debates over what environmental sustainability means often focus on whether human-made capital can substitute for natural resources— whether human ingenuity will relax natural resource constraints, as in the past.

Whether this will be possible in the future is unknown and, coupled with the risk of catastrophe, favours the position of preserving basic natural assets and the associated flow of ecological services’ (UNDP 2011: 2). Does this remark provide a good rationale for the relevance of any one the three types of sustainability concepts (i.e., weak sustainability, strong sustainability, and SMS) discussed in this chapter? Explain.