Sustainable Development: What does it mean and who wants to tell you?
Author: Daniel Lafleche
Today's journals of trade and popular culture are all but
awash in the buzzwords 'sustainable' and 'sustainability'.
Here, we are obliged to raise the red flag and warn of
lurking danger. These diverse and many advocates do a great
disservice in more ways than they know.
For in this great sea of 'sustainability', which spans
business strategies and regimens of weight loss, one all
too easily loses sight of the real battle. We know that
over-use of a term can have an unintended blunting effect.
But the word is so much in vogue, and its employment so
overzealous, that it has in many instances become obscured
entirely. So, you ask, what is sustainable development? Who
are its proponents and antagonists? And, oh yes, why
exactly is it to be so desired after all?
Ours is an age in which we have come under the twin
pressures of burgeoning population growth and an
accompanying intensification of economic development. This
development is necessary for the provision of the surging
population's needs and wants. Though rates of population
growth show signs of slowing, the number of earth's
inhabitants will continue to expand massively in the
foreseeable future. With the added variable of impending
climate change, there is a sudden and new awareness of the
potentially destructive nature of the human project.
These realities have given immense weight to calls for an
oversight which explicitly takes account of the fate of
future generations. Many nuanced definitions have been
devised, but the most commonly evoked is that sustainable
development "meets the needs of the present generation
without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs." General consensus holds that the
sustainability project spans three interactive domains;
these are (1) environmental sustainability, (2) economic
sustainability, and (3) social-political sustainability.
Environmental sustainability is concerned with the
preservation of resources and our earth's natural
environment. In the strictest sense, any process which
allows natural capital (the net sum of all natural
resources and other bounties of the earth) to be depleted
faster than it can be replenished threatens its ability to
function and to serve us properly and indefinitely.
Advocates of environmental protection actively seek
solutions which will minimize the present and future burden
to our natural environment of industrial and other
pursuits. The best solutions are those which find ways to
incorporate renewable methods of resource exploitation.
The notion of environmental sustainability is thus
inextricably bound to the premise of economic
sustainability. Rapid advances in new technologies and
production techniques are constantly altering and expanding
the boundary of production possibilities. But ultimately,
economics is the science of the allocation of a finite
resource pool. Promotion of economic sustainability thus
seeks to allow for future generations to reach their own
optimal allocations free from constraints imposed by our
own patterns of exploitation in the here and now.
The sphere of social-political sustainability is
interesting in that it expands beyond the simple necessity
of economic growth and its effect on the natural
environment to more directly include the human element in
the equation. Social-political sustainability promotes
social harmony and continuity of healthy political
institutions so that a mechanism is in place for the
enactment of the collective will (presumably a will which
is favorable to sustainability).
The project of sustainable development has inevitably
encountered resistance. Some are eager to point out that
any economic pursuit which entails resource depletion is by
that very fact unsustainable. But to make this charge is to
reduce the debate to semantics; to contend that the
impossibility of an absolute application invalidates the
endeavor wholesale is to court the ridiculous.
Another more prominent criticism is slightly more
troublesome to counter. Available evidence seems to confirm
the wisdom that as nations emerge from poverty and amass
wealth they are more willing to dedicate a portion of their
incomes to combat pollution and other unpleasantries. The
wealthy industrialized nations of the world at one time
advanced through dirtier stages analogous to the present
progress of developing economies. However at that time
there were no monitors or whistle-blowers. This school of
critics cries hypocrisy. They uphold "dirty" mediums of
economic growth that wealthier nations can now afford to
bypass as the only hope to elevate massive populations from
abject misery. In so doing, they seek to force arbiters of
sustainable development into the unenviable position of
choosing between the welfare of the earth's poor and that
of the earth itself.
In the face of these criticisms, proponents of sustainable
development strive for the national and international
coordination of environmental, economic and sometimes
social policies in the advancement of responsible progress.
They are mindful that the world more than ever is a system
of actors, none of whose actions bear no consequence for
others. Their goal is the day-to-day management of policy
decisions such that humanity might enjoy the bounty of our
natural environment without exhausting it, and without
selfishly revoking the privilege of coming generations to
do the same.
Without sounding the bells of certain alarmists,
sustainability of this color is to be venerated and upheld.
Dilution of the term's strength by those who would seek to
hijack its nobility is, on the other hand, to be regretted
and indeed resisted.
About the Author:
Daniel Lafleche is the co-founder of Alternative Channel, a
website dedicated to giving non-profit organizations
concerned with issues of sustainable development,
environmentalism, and humanitarian issues an online forum
for their video content. You can learn more at
http://www.alternativechannel
