ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
8.4 Core elements of sustainable developmentSustainable development is a normative
concept used to prescribe and evaluate
changes in living conditions. Such changes are
to be guided by four Brundtland aspirations:- To satisfy basic human needs and
reasonable standards of welfare for all living
beings. (Development) - To achieve more equitable standards of
living both within and among global
populations. (Development)
3. To be pursued with great caution as to their
actual or potential disruption of biodiversity
and the regenerative capacity of nature,
both locally and globally. (Sustainability)
4. To be achieved without undermining the
possibility for future generations to attain
similar standards of living and similar or
improved standards of equity.
(Sustainability)
From Lafferty ( 1996 : 189).development must also adhere to the physical constraints imposed by ecosys-
tems, so that environmental considerations have to be embedded in all
sectors and policy areas. Brundtland’s unapologetic anthropocentrism, dis-
played in its concern for human welfare and the exploitation of nature, in
preference to an ecocentric interest in protecting nature for its own sake,
has opened up environmental politics to a wider audience.^1 The promise of
sustainable development is that it seems to offer a way out of the economy
versus environment impasse; no longer need there be a trade-off between
growthand environmental protection. Far from it: growth is seen as a ‘good
thing’ because it enables less developed countries to develop and so improve
thestandard of living of their impoverished citizens, while the material qual-
ity of life in the affluent North can be maintained. All these benefits...
and environmental protection too!
Sustainable development, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; it
promises something for everyone. As Lele has put it, with just a hint of irony,
‘Sustainable development is a ‘‘metafix” that will unite everybody from the
profit-minded industrialist and risk-minimising subsistence farmer to the
equity-seeking social worker, the pollution-concerned or wildlife-loving First
Worlder, the growth-maximising policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat,
and, therefore, the vote-counting politician’ (Lele 1991 :613). This universal
appeal is enhanced by the apparent ideological neutrality of sustainable
development. It offers no clear vision of an ideal end state, whether green
utopia or otherwise, and no set of political or economic arrangements is
specifically promoted. Instead, sustainable development involves aprocess of
changein which core components of society – resource use, investment, tech-
nologies, institutions, consumption patterns – come to operate in greater
harmony with ecosystems.
These chameleon characteristics attract a wide array of supporters, but
they alsomake sustainable development a highly contestable concept. Some
aims appear radical: the elimination of poverty, the pursuit of global equity,
reductions in military expenditure, wider use of appropriate technologies,