Editor’s note: This is the fourth part of a five-part series exploring the topic of sustainability. The final part will be about sustainability and what impact students can make.

Although it often goes unnoticed, there is also a human side to the term “sustainability.”

As defined by the “three-legged stool” concept, for a system to be sustainable, it must be socially and economically viable.

In an age of cheap goods produced in sweatshops, it can be hard to imagine what can be done to promote sustainability in the underdeveloped regions of the world.

However, some individuals do partner with those regions of the world to help their people use their own talents and resources to break the cycle of poverty. These social and economic facets of sustainability can be intertwined with environmental efforts.

Robert Mazur, associate professor of sociology and director of the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, works with two organizations in Uganda that help farmers secure food and nutrition security.

Mazur said respect is most important in the process of progress.

“We’ve just worked side by side with [the farmers] and then slowly raised questions and provided some suggestions,” Mazur said.

The center has been partnering with experts and Ugandan farmers since September 2004 with a goal of concluding direct support for the region’s farmers by August 2009.

Mazur said the first priority is to make sure the farmers have enough to eat over a yearlong period. But they also want to produce a surplus while engaging the farmers in marketing their produce.

The Center and the two Ugandan organizations help the farmers work collectively. Farmers are organized into groups of 15 to 30 and those groups are then organized into associations.

In early 2005, only 9 percent of the 800 farmers the organizations work with considered themselves to be “food-secure,” and Mazur said that number increased to 77 percent by July 2007.

“We think this can be sustained in the future,” he said.

Mazur said that, in addition to training in nutrition and marketing, the Center encourages natural resource management, which translates to farming that enhances soil fertility by composting, mulching and picking materials to put into the soil that slow down erosion and don’t attract insects.

“Here in Iowa, we rely on chemical fertilizers, but those are expensive, and the more you use those, the more you kill off the organic matter in the soil,” Mazur said.

Mazur described the word “sustainability” in the context of what the Center does as “helping people to enhance their capabilities or increase their assets and reduce their vulnerability to environmental or economic shocks.”

Tammi Martin, administrative specialist for the Center for Crops Utilization Research, has seen another dimension of social and economic sustainability. Martin was the manager of Worldly Goods, 223 Main St., a store that markets fair trade goods, for a five-year stint that ended in 2006.

Martin emphasized the importance of understanding that “fair trade” is not the same as “free trade,” two terms she said people often confuse.

According to the Fair Trade Federation’s Web site, “fair trade” is a system of exchange that provides fair wages in the local context. It supports safe, healthy and participatory workplaces, supplies financial and technical support to build capacity, is environmentally sustainable and respects cultural identities.

Public accountability and building long-term relationships with those who make the goods were also described as fair-trade acts.

Martin said a lot of the people who made fair trade items sold at Worldly Goods were women and that their ability to make extra income “opens a door into a whole other world.”

She said those individuals have more opportunities to educate their children, network with other women and increase their status in the community.

Martin said she had the opportunity to visit some of the locations where products sold at Worldly Goods were made, and she saw that the existence of fair trade made a big difference in the community.

“The biggest difference was that people were able to give their kids education and they had hope for the future,” Martin said. “They would just glow as they tell you about this.”

Martin said she thought of the word “sustainability” as suggesting the long term. It may mean reducing the impact on the environment but, socially, it may have a large and positive impact.