ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Critical question 1
Is sustainable development too vague to be helpful to policymakers?◗ Core principles of sustainable development
Equity
Our inability to promote the common interest in sustainable development is
often a product of the relative neglect of economic and social justice within
and amongst nations. (WCED 1987 : 49)Equity is a central feature of environmental policy. Governments always con-
sider the distributional implications of any measure to prevent or alleviate
environmental degradation. Will a tax on domestic energy consumption fall
disproportionately on the poor, or a petrol tax unfairly harm people depen-
dent on cars such as rural dwellers? Will tough emission standards requiring
companies to invest heavily in cleaner technology reduce their competitive-
ness and lead to job losses? In short, most environmental measures generate
winners and losers.
When environmentalism emerged onto the international stage in the
1970s, its main focus was on intergenerational equity, with its emphasis
on theLimits to Growthdiscourse and the need to protect fragile ecosys-
tems for future generations. The ascendancy of sustainable development has
deflected some of the criticisms of 1970s environmentalism that it was an
elitist doctrine which placed the concerns of nature and the environment
above the immediate basic needs of the world’s poorest people. The Brundt-
land Report emphasised two key features of the poverty–environment nexus.
First, environmental damage from global consumption falls most severely on
thepoorest countries and the poorest people, who are least able to protect
themselves. Secondly, the growing number of poverty-stricken and landless
people in the South generates a struggle to survive that places huge pressure
on the natural resource base. The resulting resource depletion – desertifica-
tion, deforestation, overfishing, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity – contin-
ues the downward spiral of impoverishment by forcing more people onto
marginal, ecologically fragile, lands. By underlining the interdependence
between environmental and developmental issues, the Brundtland Report
drew attention to the environmental impact of key North–South issues such
as trade relations, aid, debt and industrialisation. It concluded that sus-
tainable development is impossible while poverty and massive social injus-
tices persist; hence the importance attributed to intragenerational equity
alongside the more straightforwardly environmental principle of intergen-
erational equity.
However, putting intragenerational equity into practice can generate enor-
mous political conflict, particularly along North–South lines. The principle
of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, which was written into the