Sustainable development

DEFINITION: Development that meets the consumption needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to increase their economic production to meet future needs

When the principles of sustainable development are followed, environmental benefits arise as a consequence of changes in human attitudes and behaviors, resource utilization, and applications of technology.

According to the 1987 report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission, humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that the current generation meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development involves a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. The Brundtland Commission envisioned the possibility of continued economic growth, stabilization, improvements in global economic equity among all nations, and environmental improvement, all occurring simultaneously and in harmony. Since publication of the commission’s report, titled Our Common Future, the goal of sustainable development—both environmental and economic development—has become the dominant global position.

At the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, the United Nations issued the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The Rio Declaration outlined what scholars term the “third generation of human rights,” which include group and collective rights, the right of self-determination, the right to economic and social development, the right to a healthy environment, the right to natural resources, the right to information and communication, the right to participation in cultural heritage, and the right to intergenerational equity and sustainability. The 2012 United Nations' Rio+20 conference's The Future We Want report reiterated the members' goal of eradicating poverty, invoked the Rio Declaration human rights, and affirmed the need for broad representation of civilians (particularly women, youth, and Indigenous peoples), governments, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses in policymaking for sustainable development. It also established an intergovernmental forum to replace the Brundtland Commission and outlined a "framework for action" for global concerns such as poverty eradication, food security and agriculture, water and sanitation, energy, housing and urban development, maternal health and health infrastructure, marine ecosystems and fisheries, disaster mitigation, climate change, forest management, and development in small island states, African nations, and landlocked countries.

The United Nations General Assembly began a working group in 2013 focusing on creating a proposal of sustainable guidelines that should be globally implemented. In 2015, all members of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlined sustainability in development, protecting the earth, and partnerships among developed and developing nations using seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition to this agenda, several agreements were adopted in 2015, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. In 2022, a discussion of the United Nation’s Decade of Action was held by leaders of environmental concern.

Advocates of sustainable development hold a normative philosophy, or value system, concerned with equal distribution of the earth’s natural capital among current and future generations of humans. They promote three core values. First, current and future generations should have equal access to the planet’s life-support systems—including the earth’s gaseous atmosphere, biodiversity, stocks of exhaustible resources, and stocks of renewable resources—and should maintain the earth’s atmosphere, land, and for future generations. Exhaustible resources, such as minerals and fossil fuels, should be used sparingly and conserved for use by future generations. Renewable resources, such as forests and fertile soil, should be renewed as they are used to ensure that stocks are maintained at or above current levels and are never exhausted.

Second, all future generations should have the opportunity to enjoy a material standard of living equivalent to that of the current generation. In addition, the descendants of the current generation in underdeveloped regions should be permitted to increase their economic development to match that available to descendants of the current generation in the industrialized regions. Future development and growth in both developed and underdeveloped regions must be sustainable.

Finally, future development must no longer follow the growth path taken by the currently industrialized countries but should utilize appropriate technology. Development should also limit use of renewable resources to each resource’s maximum sustained yield—that is, the rate of harvest of natural resources such as fisheries and timber that can be maintained indefinitely through active human management of those resources.

Weak sustainability requires that depletions in natural capital be compensated for by increases in human-made capital of equal value. For example, the requirements for weak sustainability are met when a tree (natural capital) is cut for the construction of a frame house (human-made capital). However, if the tree is cut and cast aside in a land-clearing project, the requirements for weak sustainability are not met. Strong sustainability requires that depletions of one sort of natural capital be compensated for by increases in the same or similar natural capital. For example, the requirements for strong sustainability may be met when a tree is cut and a new tree is planted to replace it, or when loss of land in equatorial rain forests in Brazil is compensated for by an increase in the area of temperate rain forests on the Pacific coast of North America.

Research has unveiled some problems with the weak versus strong sustainability paradigm, however. A 2013 Contemporary Politics study by Stefan Wurster on sustainability measures undertaken by democracies and autocracies indicates that democracies perform well in the area of weak sustainability but not strong sustainability; autocracies do poorly in both areas. Wurster attributes these findings to the democracies' political structure, with short political cycles leading to responsiveness and adaptability as well as to short-term problem solving. In a 2012 Bioscience article, Frederic Ang and Steven van Passel critique the substitution framework of "human capital for natural capital" as dangerously reductive, especially in light of research showing that human well-being has increased while benefits from the natural environment have degraded, contrary to theory and expectation. They also point out that human use is implicit in the very concept of "natural capital."

Sustainable development is promoted through a combination of public policies. First, to the extent possible, policymakers assign monetary values to elements in the earth’s support system so that they can make the economic and financial calculations necessary to ensure that the requirements of weak sustainability are met. Second, economic development in the underdeveloped world is shifted away from high-resource-using, high-polluting patterns that have been seen in the developed nations and toward more sustainable or “appropriate” patterns. Suggested appropriate technologies and techniques for sustainability include solar energy, resource recycling, cottage industry, and microenterprises (factories built on a small scale). Third, objective and measurable quality standards for air, water, and other resources are established and enforced to ensure that a continuing minimum quality and quantity of natural capital is maintained and that certain stocks of natural capital are protected through the establishment of wilderness areas, oil and gas reserves, and other reserves. Finally, each individual human is encouraged to make a minimal personal impact on the earth’s natural capital by adopting a commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

Environmental improvement results from the changes in resource utilization that are part of sustainable development. For example, reductions in the use and of natural capital reduce the environmental impacts of resource extraction techniques such as strip mining and waste disposal methods such as incineration. The setting of environmental quality standards and policies requiring the maintenance of biodiversity has led to the implementation of antipollution efforts and restoration projects.

Following the 2015 adoption of the UN's Sustainability Development Goals, the UN continued to review its goals and assess progress at an annual meeting called the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Additionally, the UN secretary general published a SDG progress report each year detailing the implementation of the seventeen goals. In 2023, that report highlighted the challenges the world had faced meeting the SDGs and the lack of progress that had been made. Among other roadblocks, the report noted that the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had all contributed to a failure to meet the goals, and the report pushed for world leaders to recommit to the SDGs in order to meet the 2030 deadline.

Many countries worked to pass new legislation to meet growing environmental issues. Some governments implemented green taxes on harmful environmental activities. For instance, Mexico enacted a tax on the sale and import of gasoline and other fossil fuels, and Spain imposed taxes on plastic packaging and waste disposal. Likewise, governments granted tax rebates for meeting stricter environmental standards. Such measures helped increase demand for sustainable products like electric vehicles and solar panels. In the US, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022, which provided tax credits and incentives to help companies combat climate change and other concerns.

On a more granular level, the concept of sustainable development had taken hold in many facets of everyday life by the early 2020s, from new "green" products on the market and commitments by corporations to act more responsibly to efforts by state and local governments to increase energy efficiency in homes and businesses. Efforts by corporations and nongovernmental organizations also highlighted the importance of work at all levels of society when trying to meet sustainability goals and tackle environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.

Bibliography

Ang, Frederic, and Steven van Passel. "Beyond the Environmentalist's Paradox and the Debate on Weak versus Strong Sustainability." Bioscience, vol. 62, no. 3, Mar. 2012, pp. 251–59. doi.org/10.1525/bio.2012.62.3.6. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.

Baker, Susan. Sustainable Development. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2016.

Bowers, John. Sustainability and Environmental Economics: An Alternative Text. Longman, 1997.

Dryzek, John S. “Environmentally Benign Growth: Sustainable Development.” The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, 2nd editor. Oxford UP, 2005.

Landon, Megan. Environment, Health, and Sustainable Development. Open UP, 2006.

Lee, Kai N. Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment. Island P, 1993.

Reid, David. Sustainable Development: An Introductory Guide. Routledge, 2013.

Rogers, Peter P., Kazi F. Jalal, and John A. Boyd. An Introduction to Sustainable Development. Earthscan, 2008.

“The 17 Goals.” United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 3 Apr. 2024.

Sitarz, Daniel, ed. Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet. Earth Press, 1993.

"The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023: Special Edition." Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, 10 July 2023, unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

"United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20.” Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Welford, Richard. Hijacking Environmentalism: Corporate Responses to Sustainable Development. Routledge, 2013.

Wurster, Stefan. "Comparing Ecological Sustainability in Autocracies and Democracies." Contemporary Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, Mar. 2013, pp. 76–93. doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2013.773204. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.