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World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our
Common Future; OUP
In 1987 the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development ( the Bruntland
Commission) drew attention to the fact that economic development often leads to a
deterioration, not an improvement, in the quality of people's lives. Just because it is
new does not mean that it is better - or at least not for everybody!
The Commission therefore called for
a form of sustainable development
which meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
There are two key issues as part of this:
 | Development is not just about bigger profits and higher standards of living for a
minority. It should be about making life better for everyone and |
| this should not involve destroying or recklessly using up our natural resources, nor
should it involve polluting the environment. |
In 1992 the United Nations held a Conference on Environment and Development (The Earth
Summit) in Rio de Janeiro where the nations of the world agreed on an action plan for the
next century - AGENDA 21 which recognises that
| humans depend on the Earth to sustain life |
| there are linkages between human activity and environmental issues |
| global concerns require local actions |
| people have to be involved in planning developments for their own communities if such
developments are to be sustainable. |
Dover S R & Hadmen J (1992) Uncertainty, Sustainability
and Change; Global Environmental Change Vol 2 No 4 Dec 1992
The following checklist of issues in sustainability relates to the Bruntland Report's
definition of sustainable development:
Development which meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Resource Depletion and Degradation
| Loss of biological diversity |
| Land resources (especially soil) |
| Water resources |
| Fisheries |
| Forests and timber |
| Energy resources |
| Mineral resources |
Pollution and wastes
| Atmospheric and climate change |
| Air pollution |
| Marine pollution |
| Pollution of inland waterways |
| Land and soil pollution |
Society and the Human Condition
| Population growth |
| Food security and hunger |
| Shelter |
| Rapid urbanisation |
| Health and disease |
The list usefully points out the two sides of what we are doing to the physical
environment -
| we are living off our natural capital of non-renewable resources, and, in the process, |
| creating wastes and pollutants which are poisoning what still remains. |
It might be argued that the list relating to society and the human condition is
incomplete in that it does not include local issues such as drinking water, employment,
housing or energy or the bigger issues such as 'globalisation' and 'international
governance' in relation to the international economic and political orders which tend to
largely control local actions.
Based on Allen T & Thomas A (1992) Poverty and Development
in the 1990s; OU/OUP
The sustainability issue has two main dimensions:
| the continued production of raw materials for primary commodity production, and |
| dealing adequately with the pollutants and wastes resulting from the industrialised
processing of materials and their subsequent use. |
Bruntland Commission on Sustainable Development:
Development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The following set of views must be interpreted in relation to the interests of those
concerned (local, national and international) and the manner in which they participate in
the development process.
Neo-liberal View (Environmental
Accounting)
|
| The environment is seen as 'natural capital': services derived from air,
water, soil and so on depend on keeping those environmental 'assets' intact, or being able
to renew them. If this is not done natural capital will decline. |
Limitations: while considerable
interest has been generated among economists over the possibility of incorporating
environmental valuations in accounting procedures, there appear to be unresolved
difficulties in providing evaluations of 'natural capital', particularly since they would
need to take into account value of resources to future generations with unknowable
livelihoods and consumption patterns. By making the environment a 'commodity' there is
the possibility of 'Debt-Equity Swaps' and thus a new form of colonialism. |
| By assigning values to this natural capital, and using classical economic
criteria, the income from a particular course of development can be measured against
depletion of natural capital and sustainable development can be assured. |
| Such measures have been applied to waste discharge and
proposals to regulate atmospheric pollution. |
Populist View (Sustainable communities)
|
| Sustainable development involves production and trade for local needs, and
is often profoundly opposed to models of large-scale urban and industrial development, and
the national governments with which these models are associated. |
Difficulties: it remains to be seen how far
such 'sustainable' exploitation of local resources can survive integration into the world
economy, and how far local people can retain control of trade with world markets. |
Interventionist View (International
Agreements)
|
| This view emphasises international cooperation. The Bruntland Commission,
for example, envisaged the establishment of international environmental treaties, to be
enforced by international agencies. The first such treaty was the Montreal Protocol to
eliminate the use of CFC compounds. |
Difficulties: industrialised countries have been able
to influence international agreements to their advantage ie they use the issue as another
way of extracting surplus from the LDCs |
Basiago A D (1995) Methods of defining 'Sustainability''
Sustainable Development Vol 3 109-119 (1995)
Basiago (1995) reckons that sustainability can be "regarded as tantamount to a new
philosophy, in which principles of futurity, equity, global environmentalism and
biodiversity must guide decision making." It is a far reaching concept and has
particular meanings in different disciplinary settings:
| In biology, sustainability has come to be associated with the
protection of biodiversity. It concerns itself with the need to save natural capital on
behalf of future generations.
|
| In economics it is advanced by those who favour accounting for
natural resources. It examines how markets, as conventionally conceived, fail to protect
the environment.
|
| In sociology it involves the advance of environmental justice
in situations where some groups make decisions over the use of natural resources and other
groups are affected in their daily lives.
|
| In planning it is the process of urban revitalization where
there is a pursuit of a design science that will integrate urbanization and nature
preservation.
|
| In environmental ethics it means alternatively preservation,
conservation or ‘sustainable use’ of natural resources. This probes the domain
where humans ponder whether they are part of, or apart from, nature, and how this should
guide moral choice.
|
"These ‘sustainability’ criteria act as constraints on untoward forms of
development. They are premised on the belief that humanity will only succeed in a cosmic
sense if it finds a way to meet human needs, while at the same time maintaining the
integrity of biological systems, accounting for the loss of natural resources from the
economy, working social equity, regenerating human settlements and conserving natural
capital."
"The very breadth of objectives to which ‘sustainability’ is put ...
suggests that in ‘sustainability’ humanity has found a method to govern
universal functioning about the Earth ‘island’."
| Are these issues with which Africans should be concerned or are they more of concern to
the industrialized peoples in the North? |
| To what extent are you, in your own thinking, able to go along with any or all of these
points of view? |
| To what extent are these sorts of issues raised in the school curriculum? Might there be
a need to make them more prominent? |
|
based on Pretty J & Sandbrook R (1991) Operationalising
Sustainable Development at Community Level: Primary Environmental Care. Paper
presented to DAC Working Party on Dev. Assist. and the Env.
Sustainable development at the community or neighbourhood level has been referred to as
Primary Environmental Care (PEC),
a process by which local groups or communities organize
themselves with varying degrees of outside support so as to apply their skills and
knowledge for the case of their natural resources and environment whilst satisfying
livelihood needs.
The basic idea is not new; the novelty is in devising means whereby development and
environment are integrated by focusing on the promotion of sustainable livelihoods for
everyone.
Success is fostered and influenced by the degree to which:
local groups and communities
| are permitted to organize, participate in and influence development priorities, and |
| have access to both natural and financial resources, and |
| participate in the generation and extension of productive and environmentally sensitive
technologies and practices |
local, national and international institutions
| give political, educational and technical support and translate this into enabling
frameworks |
planning and implementing agencies
| are able to take an adaptive and flexible approach which builds upon local knowledge and
skills over long time frames |
|
