it will increasingly be the framework in which many applications are set. The power of GIS for 
integrating various data on different scales and in different formats is well known. The use as a 
management tool is much more difficult and is often applied to large geographic areas with 
integrated approaches to achieve desired ecological conditions. 
2. Sustainable development as a concept and strategy 
Sustainability is a core concept of nature. The life system uses radiation from the sun as a 
renewable source of energy. It uses recycled carbon and oxygen, virgin and recycled nutrients 
and recycled water to initiate a food chain that supports and sustains a hierarchy of life. The 
life system is composed of communities of individuals in which each individual is a member of 
one of these hierarchies of species. Each species is interrelated to and dependent on other 
species in support of their community. Each fulfils a niche in sustaining life on Earth. 
Individuals compete with other individuals to acquire the resources needed to survive and to 
sustain their species. The system emphasises the individual within a community. It is self- 
organising and self-regulating and has sustained life on Earth for billions of years. These self- 
organising and self-regulating features of the system support population fluctuation in 
accordance with the circumstances, and thereby develop life as a renewable resource. 
Sustainable Development is a concept for a process of change, in which attitudes and 
behaviours are modified so that individuals and communities will enhance and maintain their 
well-being in endeavours to meet needs, achieve aspirations and preserve options for future 
generations. It can be regarded as a conceptual synthesis of environment and development. It is 
a common strategy of the global community to tackle the vast global environmental problems. 
The defined strategies for achieving Sustainable Development include two concepts. These 
concepts are: To maximise natural economic effectiveness and efficiency and attain and 
maintain a necessary balance. Maximising natural economics effectiveness and efficiency in the 
use of resources is required to attain the highest productivity and best use among alternative 
uses and to attain the highest utility from that which is used. Thus, maximisation of 
effectiveness and efficiency can achieve the best use of accessible resources and can better 
insure sustainability. Attaining and maintaining a necessary balance among resource 
accessibility, requirements and capacity to meet requirements, plus maximising economic 
effectiveness and efficiency is essential for meeting individual "needs" and "aspirations" and 
community requirements. The necessary aspect of balance is to ensure that requirements to 
meet survival "needs" do not exceed resource accessibility or the capacity to meet 
requirements. Such balance is necessary if humans truly believe in the sacredness of human life 
and aspire to voluntary rather than life system self-regulation of population. There is need for a 
new approach. That approach must recognise that there are limits to population growth, that 
accessible resources are limited spatially and finite quantitatively, and that nature's life system is 
essential to humankind's well-being and therefore should be nurtured for humankind's 
advantage. 3 
3. GIS: An appropriate tool but not a solution to a problem 
Sustainability needs spatial differentiation 
So far, the reflections tend to be general. More specifically, let's focus on the spatial specifics 
of the approach. In the Brundtland Report it is stated, that the development of dispersed and 
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