Schuylkill Sustainability

Figure 1: Image of West Pottsville

Schuylkill County is a southeastern Pennsylvania county nestled in the anthracite coal region. It is most known for its history of anthracite coal mining, the founding of Yuengling Beer, and it’s plethora of environmental spaces to draw in outdoor recreationalists. While 70% of the county is currently covered in forest, above state average, there are still environmental problems that persist due to current and past human practices.

Figure 2: Tuscarora State Park

Throughout this semester, I have assessed Schuylkill County’s sustainability practices through its management of air, water, agriculture, transportation, energy, and natural resources. Our class determines the definition of sustainability to be the following:

“A practice, process, or entity is sustainable if its initiatives, actions, or impacts serve to meet the social and economic needs of present and future generations within planetary boundaries while ensuring:

the extraction and use of resources in ways that maximize renewal, protect and restore the health of natural systems, preserve biodiversity, reduce pollution, support climate change mitigation and/or adaptation; and justly protects human health;
ethical economic development that promotes equitable opportunity and empowers rather than exploits people and the environment; and
an elevated standard of human well-being that ensures basic human rights, and social justice for all people.
This is best achieved using an inclusive and transparent process that includes a diversity of stakeholders, considers the intersectional nature of sustainability, employs systems thinking, is based on the growing body of scientific information while considering traditional practices, empowers individual and collective action, and is assessed using measurable indicators.”