Reading Materials: 

1.1 The road to sustainable development

Until the industrialization of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, wood was the primary material used for fuel, construction, smelting and shipbuilding. World trade and the great navies relied on a ready – and what some believed to be an inexhaustible – supply of timber.

However, these people were wrong.Although timber is a renewable resource, European nations were harvesting more trees than were being planted and nurtured to maturity.Governments in Britain, France and particularly Germany slowly recognized that such a rate of timber consumption was becoming unsustainable.

As Grober (2012) writes in Sustainability: A Cultural History, the science of ecology, the concept of sustainability and the practice of sustainable development was emerging. In Europe and America, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed a growing concern that economic growth, development consumerism and related lifestyle demands were undermining the ecological balance, economic stability and security of the planet. 

At that time, the scientist like Dubos highlighted the impact of the environment on human health and was an influential critic of unreflective technological development and unrestrained urbanization continuously stressing the necessary connectivity between human well-being and a protected natural world.

In 1972, the publication of the landmark study Limits to Growth by a global think tank known as the Club of Rome and the first serious international discussion of global environmental issues at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. 

The report attempted to transcend environmental and demographic problems with a well-evidenced warning that if contemporary trends continued, there would be dire economic and ecological consequences.Their global model was built specifically to investigate five major trends – accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of non-renewable resources and a deteriorating environment. 

In 1980, the IUCN(The International Union for Conservation of Nature) published its World Conservation Strategy and so launched into the global public sphere the seemingly new concept, and potential future practice, of sustainable development.

Humanity’s relationship with the biosphere, the Strategy states, will continue to deteriorate until a new international economic order and a new environmental ethic is established. The IUCN carefully defined “development”:

“Development is defined here as: the modification of the biosphere and the application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life.”

“For development to be sustainable it must take account of social and ecological factors, as well as economic ones; of the living and non-living resource base; and of the long term as well as the short term advantages and disadvantages of alternative actions.”

In 1983, work started on a major study by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) that would firmly establish sustainable development as the most significant concept and practice of our time.

In 1987, the results were published as Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report).

More than half of the Commission were representatives from developing countries, ensuring that global environmental concerns would not overwhelm the desire to eradicate  problems of human need and poverty. 

Brundtland offered a definition of sustainable development: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987).

This contributed to the understanding that sustainable development encompasses a number of areas and highlights sustainability as the idea of environmental, economic and social progress and justice, all within the limits of the world’s natural resources.

Sustainable development contains within it two key concepts:

1. The concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given.

2. The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs. (WCED, 1987)

Although acknowledging that its analysis and recommendations were specifically rooted in the 1980s, Our Common Future concluded its outline of sustainable development by stating that its realization also required:

• a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making;

• an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis;

• a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development;

• a production system that respects the obligations to preserve the ecological base for development;

• a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions;

• an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance;

• an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.(WCED, 1987: 65) 

1.2 The 1992 Rio Earth Summit and after

In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development, the follow-up to Stockholm, was held in Rio. This meeting, known as the Earth Summit, produced a number of agreements, including the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, a Statement on Forest Principles, and the hugely cumbersome but nonetheless important agreement known as Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 offered an action plan for sustainable development, integrating environmental with social and economic concerns, and articulating a participatory, community-based approach to a variety of issues, including population control, transparency, partnership working, equity and justice, and placing market principles within a regulatory framework.

Ten years after Rio, in 2002, the Johannesburg Summit reviewed the decade’s progress. The tensions apparent in 1992 remained, with the ideas and values of market liberals and institutionalists still dominating.

Although the 2002 Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development noted that global disparities in wealth and environmental degradation now risk becoming entrenched and that, unless the world acts in a manner that fundamentally changes the lives of the poor, these people may lose confidence in democratic systems of government.

In December 2009, a major climate conferenuj7ce was convened in Copenhagen, but no legally binding treaty emerged from the tortuous negotiations that were frequently deadlocked. However，Delegates did agree that global warming should not exceed 2°C, but set no actual targets for cutting emissions.

However, over the next few years talks continued at Cancun, Durban, Bangkok, Bonn and in November–December 2012 in Doha.  

A number of documents were produced at Doha, collectively known as the Doha Climate Gateway, which extended the Kyoto Protocol to 2020 but limited the scope of global carbon emissions to 15 percent.

Although progress since the first Earth Summit in 1992 was carefully evaluated, commemorated and celebrated, there were no new agreements or targets in 2012 but plenty of ‘reaffirmations’ and ‘recognitions’ in the final published document The Future We Want.

The UNEP （the United Nations Environment Programme）, for example, clearly advocated a series of policy prescriptions characterized by the key principles of ecological modernization, the low-carbon economy and eco-efficiency. 

 “In this regard, we consider green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication as one of the important tools available for achieving sustainable development and that it could provide options for policy making but should not be a rigid set of rules. ”

“We emphasize that it should contribute to eradicating poverty as well as sustained economic growth, enhancing social inclusion, improving human welfare and creating opportunities for employment and decent work for all, while maintaining the healthy functioning of the Earth’s ecosystems.” (United Nations, 2012)

Thus, it was decided that an immediate task for the future was to fashion a set of sustainable development goals, which in effect would supersede the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) formulated at the turn of the century.

These goals would be action orientated, concise, easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries.

In January 2013, a thirty-member working group of the UN was tasked to devise a proposal on the SDGs, which would then be integrated into the UN’s post-2015 development agenda. An IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) Policy Paper, published in March 2013, outlined a number of possible principles and approaches to help the process move forward.

 1.3 Millennium Development Goals

Another important environmental summit took place in New York under the support of the UN General Assembly. Held in 2000, it was called the Millennium Summit.

At this conference, the UN delegates had set certain international development goals and targets, called the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs. The MDGs mainly included:

• halving extreme poverty and hunger;

• achieving universal primary education;

• empowering women and achieving gender equality;

• reducing mortality for the under-fives by two-thirds;

• reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters;

• reversing the spread of major diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria;

• ensuring environmental sustainability;

• creating global partnerships for development with targets for trade, aid and debt relief. 

1.4 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, together with integrated 169 targets and 304 indicators, eventually emerged from the intergovernmental dialogic process that involved 194 member states of the United Nations and a significant number of global civil society organizations.

These goals were published as an essential element of the UN’s 2015 Development Agenda which was formally adapted in New York at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015 and published as Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goals came into effect on 1 January 2016 with the intention of guiding decision making across the world until 2030.

The UN’s 2015 Development Agenda explicitly recognizes national differences, capacities and priorities in conserving the world’s oceans, addressing climate change, etc.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is one of the leading organizations working to fulfill the SDGs by the year 2030. Present in nearly 170 countries and territories, the UNDP helps nations make the Goals a reality.

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals:

Goal 1   End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2   End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6    Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7  Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Goal 8  Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9  Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10  Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11  Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16 Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17   Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Core Principles Underpinning the Agenda

The 2030 Agenda embodies the following core principles:

1. Universality

The 2030 Agenda is universal in scope and commits all countries, irrespective of their income levels and development status, to contribute towards a comprehensive effort towards sustainable development. The Agenda is applicable in all countries, in all contexts, and at all times.

2. Leaving no one behind

The 2030 Agenda seeks to benefit all people and commits to leave no one behind by reaching out to all people in need and deprivation.

3. Interconnectedness and Indivisibility

The 2030 Agenda rests on the interconnected and indivisible nature of its 17 SDGs. It is crucial that all entities responsible for the implementation of SDGs treat them in their entirety.

4. Inclusiveness

The 2030 Agenda calls for the participation of all segments of society—irrespective of their race, gender, ethnicity, and identity—to contribute to its implementation.

5. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships

The 2030 Agenda calls for establishing multi-stakeholder partnerships for mobilising and sharing knowledge, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of SDGs in all countries.

Dimensions of the New Agenda

At the heart of the 2030 Agenda are five critical dimensions: people, prosperity, planet, partnership and peace, also known as the 5P’s.

Traditionally viewed through the lens of three core elements—social inclusion, economic growth, and environmental protection—the concept of sustainable development has taken on a richer meaning with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, which builds upon this traditional approach by adding two critical components: partnership and peace. Genuine sustainability sits at the core of these five dimensions.

The five dimensions inform development policy decisions.

This means that for a development to be sustainable, it must take into account the social, economic, and environmental consequences it generates. Additionally, policy makers need to ensure that any intervention is developed and carried forward with the relevant partnerships and leverages the appropriate means of implementation.

In this way, the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs together represent a holistic approach to understanding and tackling problems, by guiding us to ask the right questions at the right time.

Regarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, President Xi Jinping has made the following remarks:

It is important for all countries to pursue inclusive development for the benefit of all. As a Chinese saying goes, “All flowers in full blossom make a beautiful spring.”

To lead a happy life is the common aspiration of people all over the world. The progress of human society requires a continued effort from all countries to further opening up, cooperation and win-win development, and reject isolation, confrontation and monopoly.

In a world of deeper economic globalization, the pursuit of “the law of the jungle” and “winner-takes-all” leads nowhere. Inclusive growth for all is surely the right way forward. Countries need to rise above differences and leverage their respective strengths to pursue inclusive growth in the face of common risks and challenges.

We need to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, reduce imbalances in global development, and make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all. This way, people of all countries will be able to share the benefits of economic globalization and global growth.

1.6 Capital and the ‘capitalization’ of sustainable development

The discipline of economics has had a profound influence on the conceptualization of sustainable development, sustainability and development, and much of this is due to the application and extension of the notion of ‘capital’ beyond the spheres of economics, business and finance.

In the eighteenth century, the Scottish economist Adam Smith recognized that the accumulation of fixed and reproducible capital, understood largely as productive machinery, combined with the increasing division or specialization of labour, were keys to economic growth and development.

Since Smith’s time, economists and other theorists have extended the capital metaphor to include human capital, social capital and natural capital, which in turn may be divided into renewable resource capital and non-renewable resource capital.

A further concept, critical natural capital, has also been developed. This refers to those aspects of the global ecosystem upon which our lives and cultures ultimately depend. Human activity consumes this natural capital relying on the ecosystem services to support our standard and quality of life.Our productive activities have frequently impaired the functioning of these environmental services.

We have polluted rivers, destroyed natural habitats, released green-house gases into the atmosphere, and consumed energy resources that cannot be renewed or regenerated. To compensate for the loss, or contamination, of this critical natural capital, substitutes may be sought in the form of new renewable energy technologies, in human ingenuity and future technological advances.

Arguments focus on the extent to which one capital stock may be substituted for another in order to maintain a constant stock of global wealth, ensuring that future generations do not have a depleted inheritance.

In the words of Pearce (1989), sustainable development refers to ‘non-declining natural wealth’ and the maintenance of a constant stock of natural capital. Problems then arise over:

• Non-substitutability  – what can fill the holes in the ozone layer?

• Uncertainty – what can replace the oceans’ role as a climate regulator?

• Irreversibility – human-made capital cannot replace an extinct species.

• Equity – the poor are more often disproportionately affected by environmental degradation than the wealthy.

Related to these concerns, ecological economics has explored the relationship between the scale of human productive activity and the natural environment, biosphere and ‘services’ the ecosystem provides.

If the human productive economy grows too big with the biosphere being unable to support it, then development is literally unsustainable.The ideal condition for development is therefore ‘sustainable development’ which is a relational concept, series of practices and processes that stay within the ‘carrying capacity’ of the planet.

Sometimes known as the ‘strong sustainability condition’, this idea insists that over time there should be no decline in natural capital, that future generations must inherit the same amount of natural resource stocks as previous ones. Namely, the loss of natural capital must not be more than the increase in human capital and human-made capital.

For Norton (2005), the real problems arise when communities and professionals of various descriptions speak different languages of sustainability. He argues the need for a radical shift in attitudes, that environmental policies should be derived from long-term adaptive plans based on the values embedded in each community.

Too often disputes, and policy conflicts arise between those who wish to place a financial price on the value of nature and those who do not see nature as being intrinsically valuable.

An approach that reconciles these positions needs to encompass short-term goals, which may be primarily economic or employment related, medium-term goals that may need to encompass local and regional imperatives like water or land conservation, and more long-term goals that must encompass planetary survival, the health and well-being of future generations and the regulation of population increase. 

1.6 Sustainable development as a ‘dialogue of values’

There has been no shortage of academic critiques of sustainable development. Banerjee (2003) offers a trenchant analysis of the sustainable discourse, powerfully arguing that the concept of sustainable development is subsumed under, and largely defined by, the dominant economic paradigm and is informed by colonial thought, which has resulted in the disempowerment of a majority of the rural populations in the developing world.

Banerjee (2003)writes: Current development patterns (even those touted as ‘sustainable’) disrupt social system and ecosystem relations rather than ensuring that natural resource use by local communities meets their basic needs at a level of comfort that is satisfactory as assessed by those same communities. What is needed is not a common future but the future as commons.

Much of this is echoed in Adams (2001) who, in his analysis of the environment and sustainability in the Third World, argues there is ‘no magic formula for sustainable development’, no easy reformist solution to poverty and that, contrary to dominant practice, development ‘ought to be what human communities do to themselves’ rather than what is done to them by states, bankers, experts, agencies and others.

Sachs’s (1999) concern with social sustainability is a reaction to the dominance of the economic discourse in many international organizations’ approach to sustainable development. Social sustainability encompasses the absence of war or serious violence, state oppression of its citizenry.

For Amartya Sen (1999), realizing human capabilities in a sustainable society means equity, democracy, human and civil rights, and a continuing enhancement of people’s ability to do what they have good reason to value.

It means being able to conceive of alternatives, and to act and think differently, and having the capacity and opportunity to do so. It means protecting biodiversity because society is closely interwoven in a co-evolutionary relationship with the biosphere. It means conceiving and practicing development holistically and systematically, not one-dimensionally, not simply economically or socially, politically or anthropocentrically.

Development must be synonymous with substantive and instrumental freedoms, including those relating to:

l political expression, dialogue and organization;

l economics and income sufficiency;

l social opportunity such as health and education;

l transparency and openness in government and social interaction;

l security understood in terms of welfare, food sufficiency and employment.

For Norgaard (1994), Western science, the environment and material resources are connected within mutually interactive co-evolving systems where one does not control any of the others.

He argued that “correcting the unsustainability of development is not simply a matter of choosing different technologies for intervening in the environment. The mechanisms of perceiving, choosing, and using technologies are embedded in social structures which are themselves products of modern technologies.”

Additionally, Norgaard identifies five lessons from this understanding:

1．Experimentation should always be undertaken cautiously and on a small scale.

2．Experiments whose effects might be long lasting – e.g. disposal of nuclear waste – should be avoided.

3. Without cultural and biological diversity co-evolution is prone to stagnate.

4. All things are interconnected so change tends to be evolutionary rather than abrupt or revolutionary.

5. The significant exploitation of hydrocarbons has disconnected cultural evolution from the ecosystems so that the main priority of sustainable development must be to restore this connective relationship.

Working from a similar perspective, Cairns (2004) sees sustainability as being too complex to allow scientific uncertainties to be reduced to a level that many decision makers and managers would prefer.

Strategies for sustainability need to be both top down and bottom up, ethically grounded in a language and literacy comprehensible to whatever the organizational level or geographical locality people find themselves living and working in.

This will enable effective communication, social learning and leadership to emerge, hopefully effecting the paradigm shift in thought and action required.

Cairns writes:“The complex interactions of biology/ecology, economics, and technological and social factors must be understood and coped with in an ethical, sustainable way to save both natural systems and humankind.

Ethical views must not alienate humankind from the natural world. Science has documented much of what is at risk and some of the actions needed to reduce risk.

Instead of denigrating the knowledge (e.g. global warming) and placing undue emphasis on the uncertainties (which always exist in science), leaders and citizens should give attention to those areas upon which mainstream science has reached a consensus.

Unsustainable practices can be halted, but, even though remedies are known, they are not acted upon. It is not too late for a paradigm shift to occur.”

For Sachs, development is akin to liberation and transformation, particularly if understood as a self-organizing and intentional process freeing people from poverty and exploitation.

Sachs, like the World Bank, recognizes that trade-offs will occur but some are totally, ethically, unacceptable. He writes:“Thus, for example, whole development is incompatible with economic growth achieved through increased social inequality, and/or violation of democracy, even if its environmental impacts are kept under control.

Environmental prudence, commendable as it is cannot act as a substitute for social equity. Concern for the environment should not become a diversion from the paramount imperatives of social justice and full democracy, the two basic values of whole development.”

Sustainable development is therefore multidimensional, encompassing social, ecological and economic goals and perspectives, and this breadth has led some critics to view the concept as vague, self-contradictory and incoherent, incapable of being put into practice.

Perhaps it is the sociologist, Blake Ratner’s notion of sustainability as a“dialogue of values” which constitutes the most fruitful way of engaging with, and understanding, the theories, values, perspectives and practices of sustainable development.

He identifies three basic tendencies in sustainable development practice – namely, the technical, ethical and dialogic. He writes:

“The sustainability concept is meaningful, therefore, not because it provides an encompassing solution to different notions of what is good, but for the way it brings such differences into a common field of dispute, dialogue, and potential agreement as the basis of collective action.”(2004)

Sustainable development and sustainability are dynamic concepts and processes. Meanings and practices change as the world changes, as our skills, knowledge and capabilities develop, and as communication and dialogue improve.

Different countries and people exhibit different levels of development, have different values, cultures and traditions, are endowed with differing amounts of natural resources and so have, certainly according to Brundtland, differentiating responsibilities in promoting and realizing sustainable development goals.

The concept of sustainable development, then, is multifaceted because the challenges and problems we confront are complex and various.

At every spatial scale, from the neighbourhood to the global level, different interests will come together and sometimes collide, but it is only through discussion, debate, critical reflection, learning and dialogue that agreement and action can and will emerge.