It looks into both the needs of the developing world and the limitations the world has on the environments ability of meeting future needs which is constantly imposed by technology and social factors.
“Sustainable development is a meeting point for environmentalists and developers… it could be used both by environmentalists, emphasizing the sustainable part, and by developers, emphasizing the development part”.
The Bruntland Commission’s definition, “development which meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs” is often criticized by the public as being too vague. “Criticism of the vagueness of Bruntland’s definition is accepted to some extent by Nitin Desai . . . . Desai makes an important point. The problem in agreeing on the meaning of sustainable development is not fundamentally about agreeing upon a precise definition, but about agreeing upon the values that would underlie any such definition”.
Sustainability or Sustainable Development
The main question asked is whether sustainability and sustainable development are the same thing, or are they different? “In Agenda 21 the terms sustainability and sustainable development were used interchangeably. Tim O’Riordan drew a distinction between sustainability and sustainable development as a term that ultimately gave priority to development, while the idea of sustainability was primarily about the environment”.
Linguistic confusion or a ‘contestable concept’?
Donna Meadows definition of sustainable development is one of linguistic confusion. “You have stable population, you have stable throughput for each source and sink below its limits. To me that’s sustainable society. . . . . It’s a mess but social transformations are messy”.
Another viewpoint is Michael Jacobs. “Sustainable development is a contestable concept – one that affords a variety of competing interpretations or conceptions: many political objectives are of this kind: liberty, social justice and democracy”.
What does development mean?
As Nitin Desai said, “It is about human development by improving education and health, or about material consumption through economic growth”.
“The problem was initially seen as simply lack of jobs, but it was realized by the 1970s that the poor were held back by lack of education, bad health and nutrition, and policies that favoured the elite. A new approach was taken up by the United Nations, based around social inclusion . . . ‘The Basic Needs approach’”. The purpose of all this was to increase economic growth. “It was asserted that the benefits of the growth would eventually trickle down to the poor”.
Environmentalists have frequently seen nations such as Costa Rica, Cuba and Sri Lanka as a model for the rest of the world, achieving much of what growth is supposed to bring in human terms, but without the destruction of the environment. “Some greens have argued that Kerala and Sri Lanka are developed enough, even though the people have very little in material terms compared to those in the West. . . . extremely high consumption levels of the West are seen as overdevelopment”
Does material wealth bring happiness?
In conclusion of the chapter Dresner talks about studies into whether people are happier or not. “Western societies have become much wealthier in material terms, yet studies show that people are no happier than they were 50 years ago. . . . However, richer people in each society tend to report slightly greater levels of happiness than poorer people…..This argument leads to the conclusion that much of what is conventionally called development is really about joining a rat race of meaningless additional consumption….Over the ten years since UNCED, sustainable development has become a less and less fashionable expression”
Seminar Discussion Points
The focus of our seminar discussion are two main discussion points:
- Are sustainability and sustainable development the same thing, or are they different? Referring back to the statement by Tim O’Riordan that sustainable development gave priority to development while sustainability was primarily about the environment. To get an idea of what people’s views are of sustainable development we are splitting the seminar group up into three different categories – Developers, Environmentalists and the local community. We want them to write down what their ideas of sustainability are and the advantages and disadvantages of sustainable development to each of the different groups. We hope to facilitate a discussion and to make a linkage between each group in determining the future of sustainable development.
- Views on sustainable development from different countries perspectives. The chapter looks into Sri Lanka and Costa Rica. To build on this, we want to discuss how people think developing and developed countries view the future of sustainability and whether there are any significant differences between the two.
Reference
All references taken from:
Dresner, S. (2002) The principles of Sustainability: What Does Sustainable Development Mean? Earthscan, London
