Sustainable Development

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  • Created by: sikemi__
  • Created on: 27-05-21 15:12

What is sustainable development?

  • Idea that a response to human impacts on nature can be made part of normal ways of life
  • Looks at ways to negate impacts of human on nature
  • A politics, economy and way of doing business
  • 'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)
  • Key elements...
    • Inter-generational equity in human access to nature and natural resources
    • Intra-generational equity in human access to nature and natural resources
    • The need to sustain the natural world
    • An idea about how things should be
  • Three key pillars: social, environmental and economic
    • Underpin the governance and conceptual frameworks of sustainable development
    • In reality, equity between the pillars is often disputed, meaning we should picture the pillars as interlocking (only when all three are taken into account can sustainability occur)
    • In reality, this is not the case and environmental needs to be expanded. Alternatively, maybe we need to think critically about the way that human society needs to be fully contained within the biosphere and not expanding beyond its limits
  • Sustainability trade-offs
      • Trade-offs between different pillars of sustainability
      • Trade offs in space (exporting unsustainable activities e.g. E-waste is sent to Accra, Ghana)
      • Trade offs in time (between losses or gains now and those coming in the future)
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Is sustainable development a new idea?

  • 1960s - Environment and Development
    • 1968 Conservation Foundation conference on ecological aspects of international development
    • Farvar & Milton (1973) made the case that ecology and the notion of its preservation and resources are integral when thinking about international development aims and the idea that development that is sought in 3rd world nations will probably come at an ecological cost to them
    • Dasmann et al (1973) stated that if development in the 3rd world is going to have a large ecological cost, it needed to be at least somehow accounted for
  • 1970s - UN Stockholm Conference
    • Discussed poverty as being problematic contributor to env degradation
      • Fears in non industrialised countries about economic effects of env protection policies e.g. anti pollution barriers
      • Conference identified the need to resolve conflicts between env and dev without demonstrating how
  • 1980s - World Commission on Environment and Development:The Bruntland Report (1987)
    • Important for laying a tactful framework for how we should think about the environment and development
    • 'The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions and needs' (Bruntland, 1987)
    • Idea that sust dev can work as a particular conduit for greater collaboration
  • 1990s - UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992)
    • Agenda 21 was created here - spoke about economic growth being central, the fact that technology was the 'essential means; to achieve sustainability through more efficient use of the environment and multilateralism (common interest of industrialised and non-industrialised countries of present and future generations.
    • But no political analysis of power
  • 2000s - World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002)
    • Focused on biological diversity, poverty, energy, fishing, sanitation, globalisation, women, aid etc
  • 2010s - Rio + 20 (2012)
    • Expected that a focused political document that could shape global env policy would be created here
    • 20 years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and Agenda 21
    • 'A blueprint to rethink economic growth, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection'
    • Two themes: 1. a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradications 2. the institutional framework for sustainable development
  • 2015 - creation of the Sustainable Development Goals, incorporating a wide range of the three pillars
    • A few key global leaders of the G20 didn't attend including David Cameron, suggesting sustainability wasn't a priority for global cohesion
    • UK had created a govt strategy for sustainable development in 2005 - Securing the Future
    • In 2011, they created a vision for measures to support sustainable development - Mainstreaming Sustainable Development: Government commitment to SD
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Mainstreaming sustainability

  • Dominant from the mid 1980s following Bruntland, Rio and Agenda 21
  • Idea that we shouldn't try to replace or slow capitalism and industrialisation but instead reform them
    • 'A reformist perspective which, while recognising the ecological dangers posed by unfettered markets, believes in the self-corrective potential of capitalist modernisation' (Low & Gleeson, 1998)
  • Transforming production
    • Decarbonising production by reducing fossil fuel consumption during it, delinking energy generation from carbon production and economic growth
    • Dematerialise production by reducing material throughput (waste)
    • Idea of ciircular economy where we keep resources for use as long as possible, extracting maximum value from them and then recovering and regenerating products and materials at the end of each life service
  • Eco-innovation
    • Depends on advanced technology, stringent regulation, innovation in lead markets, individual pioneer countries and internationally active companies
  • Transforming consumption
    • Reducing consumption to rreduce the overall human demands on the biosphere to levels that can be sustained
    • Redirecting consumption to less destructive forms
    • Redistributing consumption to the less well off
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Eco-modernisation: tech, measurement, regulation

1. Technology

  • Digital environmentalism in which we see certain technologes developed in order to produce environmental outcomes
    • E.g. drones (used to monitor endangered fauna in global south e.g. rhinos), automated data capture/analysis, GIS based analysis, crowd sourced data
  • Synthetic biology which looks to new developments in biotech to produce better ecological outcomes
    • E.g. restoring extinct species (de-extinction), tackling existential threats (food security, disease), restoring degraded or polluted ecosystems and addressing human impacts on the biosphere (climate change)
  • Planetary engineering
    • E.g. stratospheric aerosol injection in order to reflect sun rays, cloud brightening, space mirrors or reflecting crops and mirrors on Earth's surface

2. Measurement

  • Powerful in helping us understand what kind of development or sustainability should occur
  • Idea of a global footprint network - notion that measurements of this should give an inclination around sustainability and a moral obligation to act
  • UK Sustainable Development Indications (2001-2015) - progress towards a sustainable economy, society and environment
    • Economic prosperity, long term unemployment, poverty, knowledge and skills, GHG emissions, wildlife etc
    • Cessation of the SDIs with the introduction of SDGs

3. Regulation

  • Rules to operate by - the role of the state
    • E.g. lead in petrol banned in 2000 iin the UK
  • Also internattional agreements
    • E.g. Monteal Protocol (1989) for the ozone, temporary ban of neonicitinoid pesticides by the EU in 2013
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Sustainable development as a concept

  • Not a clear concept
    • No clear theoretical framework - 'rhetorical and slightly vague' (Lele, 1991)
    • A truism
    • An oxymoron
    • A 'jargon phrase in the development business' (Conroy, 1988)
    • 'Attractive like apple pie precisely because most people are unable to enunciate a technically precise definition' (Terborgh, 1999)
  • The success of the term derives from the lack of clear definition, whilst appearing transparent
  • A language for rhetorical exchange between different interests
  • Links environmentalists and business leaders
  • Sustainability is an idea about the future
    • 'Essentially ethico-political objectives, more like 'social justice' and 'democracy' than economic growth. And as such, their purpose or use is mainly to express key ideas about how society - including the economy- should be governed' (Jacobs, 1995)
  • Useful concept in political debate but poor basis for research analysis
    • 'not a concept that at ths point can be used as a basis for either theory or action' (Wilbanks, 1994)
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