COSAS Vanguard

Sustainable Environment

Measuring What 'Sustainable' Actually Means in a Project

COSAS Vanguard Editorial · Wed Mar 11 2026

Many project documents describe an intervention as sustainable without specifying what would have to be true for that to hold. Sustainable for whom, over what time horizon, and measured how?

Building that definition early, before data collection starts, is what turns “sustainability” from a claim into something that can actually be evaluated.