Sustainable Development in Discussion

Achieving sustainable development represents a challenge for everyone, whether it be individuals or groups. Because sustainable development is defined not by a single ideal situation but rather describes a state of equilibrium between the three social, economical and ecological components, the concrete form it will take can be vary greatly from one place to the next. There is no single recipe that can be applied automatically everywhere at any time to attain sustainable development. Instead, it has to be continuously negotiated and re-negotiated

• locally (for instance in Local Agenda 21 processes) or
• globally (for instance at an Earth summit).

It is for this reason that achieving sustainability is strongly linked to the participation of all actors in a process that can define what sustainability is in each setting. Both the Agenda 21 (in the preamble) and the Rio Declaration (Article 10) refer directly to the need to involve all actors (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992).

The concept of sustainable development has been criticised for its somewhat fuzzy content, which has brought some people to call it a catchword or a shallow concept (Luke 2005). Indeed, critics towards sustainable development come from various backgrounds.

There was initially criticism from the corporate sector, especially industrial producers who claimed that sustainable development was a threat to their competitiveness. These criticisms have lowered at the beginning of the 21^st century as corporations have more and more endorsed sustainable development at least in their public discourse.

The concept of sustainable development is also being criticised by environmentalists who claim that it does not give enough priority to the protection of nature. By balancing environmental aspects with social and economical, it is especially lowering support for strategies of environmental conservation. Others state that sustainable development does not challenge the idea of development, which represents the real threat to the Earth's resources (Latouche 1999). According to them, the expression sustainable development is an oxymoron and it is only by turning away from the idea of development that a sustainable use of earth resources can be achieved.

Some also criticise the fact that, because of the importance given to negotiations, more powerful actors such as corporations are able to redefine sustainable development and what it means in line with their own interests.

There are also ethical and practical problems associated with the implementation of sustainable development. The arguments for sustainable development claim that it is necessary because if the current trends of development are maintained, earth resources will be insufficient for all humanity and negative consequences such as the greenhouse effect associated with C0₂ emissions will increase. What has led to this situation is mainly the fast industrialisation of developed countries within the 20^th century. Developing countries claim that sustainable development puts constraints on their ability to develop and offer their population the same standards of living than more developed countries have reached. The Brundtland Report foresaw special conditions for developing countries by indicating that they had a right to development. These specific conditions have been taken in account for instance in the Kyoto Protocol on the mandatory reduction of greenhouse gasses which states that "The share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs" (UN (United Nations) 1998). Countries such as China and India are considered as developing countries and must therefore exonerated of the mandatory reduction although they are currently undergoing fast economic growth and are accountable for about 22% of the world's CO₂ emissions in 2003 (UNDP (United Nations Development Program) 2006).

Despite these criticisms, other authors affirm the notion of sustainability is interesting precisely because of its openness and lack of rigid definition. No single actor or group of actors can claim to have found the "true" definition of sustainability, even though some do try to. This limits the room for top-down expert-based decision-making. Decisions must be the outcome of a process involving all actors (Stengers 1999).
This openness in decision-making has become unavoidable because of the complexity of the matters. When reasoning in terms of sustainable development, all aspects of life are intertwined and even the most mundane action are linked to global matters such as ozone depletion:

"Press the most innocent aerosol button and you'll be heading for the Antarctic, and from there to the University of California at Irvine, the mountain ranges of Lyon, the chemistry of inert gases, and then maybe to the United Nations, but this fragile thread will be broken into as many segments as there are pure disciplines. By all means, they seem to say, let us not mix up knowledge, interest, justice and power." (Latour 1993, p. 2)

As it is shown with this example, many of the global problems with which humanity is confronted cannot be classified as purely natural or social. They are what authors such as Bruno Latour have labelled hybrids, which mix social and natural aspects regardless of human defined categories. Neither can they fully be grasped by only one array of activity usually used to found a decision such as science, the economy, the law or polity.

Sustainable development, because it takes into account environmental, economical and social aspects and also focuses on the relationships between these aspects offer possibilities to cope with those hybrid matters.

Reading the texts by Hopwood et al. (2005) and Sneddon et al. (2006) you will learn about other approaches to sustainable development. Both texts give you an overview of this discussion.