Sustainable Development

Susan Baker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781136325977
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

The current focus on sustainable development opens up debates surrounding our relationship with the natural world, about what constitutes social progress and about the character of development, both in the Global North and the Global South. The promotion of sustainable futures is taking on a new urgency in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss.

This concise and accessible text explores how the international community is responding to the challenge of sustainable development. It also investigates the prospect for, and barriers to, the promotion of sustainable development in high-consumption societies of the industrialised world, from the USA and the EU to the economies of transition in Eastern and Southern Asia. In Sustainable Development Baker considers the global impact of China's industrial boom as well as how Chinese investments are shaping the prospects for sustainable development on the African continent. This global coverage is balanced by investigating how local action, ranging from the transition towns movement in the UK to the Green Belt movement in Kenya, can contribute to the pursuit of sustainable development.

The second edition has been extensively revised and updated and benefits from the addition of three new chapters: sustainable development in China; the governance of sustainable development; and sustainable production and consumption. Climate change and biodiversity management have also been expanded into full chapters.

Providing an up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of the issues surrounding the promotion of sustainable development, this unique, internationally-focused book combines a strong conceptual analysis with wide ranging empirical focus and a wealth of case material. Including summary points and suggestions for further reading, as well as web resources and an extensive bibliography, it is ideal for students, scholars and researchers in the fields of environmental sciences, politics, geography, sociology and development studies.

1
Introduction

The environment and sustainable development

Key issues

• Re-conceptualising development
• Ultimate limits to growth
• The common good
• Promoting sustainable development: sustainability
• Three pillars of sustainable development.

Promoting sustainable development opens up debates about our relationship with the natural world, about what constitutes social progress and about the character of development, both in the North and the South, in the present and into the future. These interrelated issues form the main themes of this book. The book explores the prospects for, and barriers to, the promotion of sustainable development as presented in the classic Brundtland formulation and promoted by the United Nations (UN). It looks at policy developments and actions in different socio-economic contexts: the high consumption societies of the industrialised world, including in Europe and North America; the Third World; the economies in transition in East and Central Europe; and the emerging economies, especially that of China. The exploration is international in its focus, because it recognises that promoting sustainable development is a quintessentially global task. At the same time, it takes account of the fact that policy implementation, and its related actions, take place at lower scales, including at the regional, national and sub-national levels.

Challenging the dominant model of development

Sustainable development represents a direct challenge to the conventional form of economic development. Conventional approaches see development as simply modernisation of the globe along Western lines. Modernisation theory holds that the more structurally specialised and differentiated a society is, the more modern and progressive it is (Pepper, 1996). To be modernised, a society has to become more technically sophisticated and urbanised and to make increased use of markets for the distribution of economic goods and services. Modernisation also brings social changes, including the development of representative democracy, increased mobility and the weakening of traditional kinship groups and communities. Modernisation is closely tied to the promotion of individual self-advancement. The transformation of nature, such as taming wilderness into natural parks, harnessing wild rivers to make energy and clearing forests for agricultural production, is one of the hallmarks of modernisation.

In the conventional model, society is understood to go through different ‘stages of economic growth’ (Rostow, 1960). Traditional societies develop to a stage of economic ‘take-off’. This sees new industries and entrepreneurial classes emerge, as they did in Britain in the nineteenth century. In ‘maturity’, steady economic growth outstrips population growth. A ‘final stage’ is reached when high mass consumption allows the emergence of social welfare (Pepper, 1996). This model of development assumes a linear progression, in which it becomes necessary for Third World societies to ‘catch up’ with the Western style of development. This means opening up their economies to Western values, influences, investment and trade, thereby becoming more integrated into the global market system.

Modern environmentalism has emerged as a critique of this Western-centric development model, although it takes different forms and has different expressions (Barry, 2006). Environmentalism points to the failure of a model of development that results in ecological destruction, and at a global scale. Social exclusion, economic alienation and rising levels of stress and ill health in OECD countries are accompanied by socially disruptive, politically unstable and at times violent transitions in the countries of the former Soviet Union, ecologically disastrous industrialisation in emerging economies, while the human tragedies of the failed development strategies continue to mar life for many in the Third World. Environmentalism challenges many of the basic assumptions that the Western model of development makes about the use of nature and natural resources, the meaning of progress and the ways in which society is governed, including both the traditional patterns of authority within society and how public policy is made and implemented.

Several other social and political movements, such as Marxism and the dependencia theories of Third World under-development have made similar critiques. However, while environmentalism may find common cause with these arguments, it can be distinguished by its focus on the economic, social and ecological dimensions and repercussions of development. Seven key arguments form the backbone of the environmentalist challenge. First, environmentalism takes issue with the understanding of progress found in the Western model. Progress is understood in a limited way, primarily in terms of increased domination over nature and the use of her resources solely for the benefits of humankind. In this model, the domination of nature has become a key indicator of human progress (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998). Progress is seen, for example, in the clearance of forested land for agricultural production or in the use of natural resources, such as coal, oil and gas, to produce energy in the form of electricity that, in turn, drives production and its related consumption. This, in turn, results in pollution and related climate change. This path of development is bolstered by public policies or practices that induce behaviour that is harmful to the environment. Known as ‘perverse incentives’, such policy failures include government grants, subsidies or tax incentives that fail to take into account the creation of environmental externalities.

Underlying this domination is a reduction of nature merely to a natural resource base, a reduction that values nature only in terms of the use that these resources have for human beings. This gives nature only ‘instrumental value’, ignoring the ‘intrinsic value’ of the natural world, that is, the value that nature has over and above its usefulness to humans. Viewing nature instrumentally also leads to neglect of the needs of other, non-human species and life forms.

Second, the Western development model prioritises economic growth, even though the heightened consumption patterns that it stimulates now threaten the very resource base upon which future development depends. This model assumes environmental deterioration to be an inevitable consequence of development. Although Western society has seen enhanced legal and technical efforts to address environmental pollution, its model of development is nonetheless premised on the acceptance of a ‘trade-off’ or unequal exchange between economic development and the environment, where the environment is relinquished for the sake of development. Third, the model assumes that consumption is the most important contributor to human welfare. Here, it is common practice to measure welfare by means of the ‘standard of living’, that is, the amount of disposable income that an individual has to purchase goods and services. A development model based on individualistic consumption, rather than fostering social cohesion, leads to increased inequality, especially in an economic system subject to cyclical recession (Ekins, 2000). It prioritises individual self-attainment at the expense of consideration of the common good (Baker, 2012). In contrast, environmentalism focuses not on the ‘standard of living’ but on the ‘quality of life’. Quality of life refers to the collective, not the individual, level and to enhancing the quality of the public domain, such as through the provision of public education, health care and environmental protection.

Fourth, the model ignores that fact that social stability requires the maintance of natural resources. The deterioration of the natural environment causes social disruptions, insecurity, and damage to human health. For example, loss of wild biodiversity in agricultural systems increases the vulnerability of local communities, especially with respect to food supply, which in turn, leads to social unrest that can undermine social and political institutions (Gowdy, 1999).

Fifth, the traditional understanding of development ignores the fact that Western development was, and continues to be, based upon the exploitation not only of their own natural resource base but that of many Third World societies, including their plant and animal genetic resources, land, timber and mineral ore. The human resources of the Third World have also been exploited, including but not limited to the practice of slavery. Exploitation has caused under-development in the Third World, not least by creating resource poverty and a culture of dependency. In this view, poverty is caused by the penetration of Western, environmentally destructive development models into Third World societies, not alleviated by it. This condemns Third World societies to ‘backwardness’, while ignoring their long traditions of community resource management. These traditions have built a body of indigenous knowledge, which has enabled many traditional societies to live in harmony with their natural surroundings, although of course not all traditional societies have managed to live in this way.

Sixth, the model is blind to the fact that is not possible to achieve a global replication of the resource-intensive, affluent lifestyle of the high consumption economies of the North. The planet’s ecosystem cannot absorb the resultant pollution, as witnessed by global environmental change, that is climate change and biodiversity loss. Furthermore, there are not enough natural resources, including water, to support such development. In other words, the model of development pursued by Western industrial society cannot be carried into the future, either in its present forms or at its present pace.

Finally, and closely related to the previous point, is that the environmental critique points to the failure of the Western development model to acknowledge that there are limits to economic growth. Limits to growth are imposed by the carrying capacity of the planet, especially the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities, and the fact that the amount of resources that the planet contains, including water and minerals, is finite and that ecosystem services are reduced or eliminated through overuse. Technological advancement, while it may enable society to produce goods with more resource efficiency, will not overcome this limitation. There are thus ultimate limits to growth. This means that development has to be structured around the need to adopt lifestyles within the planet’s ecological means. Several recent assessments, including by the United Nations, warn of serious consequences for human societies as ecosystems become incapable of providing the goods and services on which hundreds of millions of people depend (Rockström et al., 2009). Such thresholds have already been passed in certain coastal areas where ‘dead zones’ now exist, including a range of coral reefs and lakes that are no longer able to sustain aquatic species; and some dryland areas that have been effectively transformed into deserts. Similarly thresholds have been passed for some fish stocks. The expansion of the Western, consumerist model of development, coupled with population growth, sees human demands on ecosystems increase at the risk of further weakening the natural infrastructure on which all societies depend. The relationship between population growth and resource use is not, however, straightforward, as discussed in this book.

What is significant about this multiple environmental critique of the traditional model of development is that it has shown that the post-World War II experience of economic growth and prosperity was both exceptional and contingent (Redclift and Woodgate, 1997). It was exceptional in that it cannot be replicated across space (from the West to the global level) or across time (into the future). It was contingent upon a short-term perspective, the prioritisation of one region of the globe over another, and upon giving preference to one species (humans) over the system as a whole. Environmentalism has also undermined the assumption of a progressive view of society’s evolution (Redclift and Woodgate, 1997). The environmental critique of development shows that there is no continuous linear development guaranteed for modern society, nor is this development necessarily harmonious (Barry, 2006).

Protecting and improving our future well-being requires wiser and less destructive use of natural assets. This in turn involves major changes in the way we make and implement decisions. We must learn to recognize the true value of nature – both in an economic sense and in the richness it provides to our lives … Above all, protection of these assets can no longer be seen as an optional extra, to be considered once more pressing concerns such as wealth creation or national security have been dealt with.

(MEA, 2005)

It is in this critical context that the model of sustainable development has gained traction.

Emergence of a new model of development

Many environmental development models have emerged to replace the old development paradigm. These promote forms of social change that are aimed at fulfilling human material and non-material needs, advancing social equity, expanding organisational effectiveness and building human and technical capacity towards sustainability (Roseland, 2000). They share in common the objectives of protecting the natural resource base upon which future development depends. For many, valuing nature and non-human life forms in an intrinsic way is also essential. The environmental development model is not just aimed at protecting nature, but creating an ecological society that lives in harmony with nature. This means reconciling economic activity, social progress and environmental protection. Well-being is promoted, as opposed to a mere focus on measures such as GDP as indicators of progress. In this understanding, the promoting of human well-being and happiness does not have to depend upon the destruction of nature.

The ‘sustainable development’ model represents an important example of the new environmentalist approach. It seeks to reconcile the ecological, social and economic dimensions of development, now and into the future, and adopts a global perspective in this task. It aims at promoting a form of development that is contained within the ecological carrying capacity of the planet, which is socially just and economically inclusive. It focuses not upon individual advancement but upon protecting the common future of humankind. Put this way, sustainable development would appear to be an aspiration that almost everyone thinks is desirable: indeed, it is difficult not to agree with the idea.

Sustainable development is part of new efforts, albeit tentative, to integrate environmental, economic and (more recently) social considerations into a new development paradigm. There are many versions of this new approach. They are united in their belief that there are ultimate, biophysical limits to growth. This challenges industrial societies not only to reduce the resource intensity of production (sustainable production) but to undertake new patterns of consumption that not only reduce the levels of consumption but change what is consumed and by whom (sustainable consumption). This creates the conditions necessary for ecologically legitimate development, particularly in the Third World.

However, there are many versions of the sustainable development model and not all of them are mutually compati...