Compiled by Wong Meng Chuo
Contemporary discussions
of sustainability are mainly concerned with ecological sustainability and
sustainable economic development. With the publication of what is usually
called the Brundtland Report, the discussions were
especially on the context of sustainable economic development.
Economist Kennth Boulding in his work, ‘The
economics of the coming spaceship earth’ states a concern for future
generations that requires us to think more of the world as a ‘closed’ system
than an ‘open’ system with unlimited sources of energy and waste-sinks.
The two main concepts:
A. Sustainable development is understood as an economic and social
development that maintains a certain level of human welfare.
This concept rests upon
prior moral judgements about the levels of welfare that
we ought to try to maintain.
B. Ecological sustainability is
understood as human interaction with the environment that permits essential
ecological states to be maintained.
The idea of ecological
sustainability does not strictly involve a mention of human interaction.
However, we are especially concerned with the case where the possible
disturbance comes from human activities.
We may look at these two
conceptions of sustainability as follows:
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A. Sustainable development
The definition in Brundtland’s Report of the World Commission on Environment
and Development (1987) is quoted as:
Sustainable
development is development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The report points out
that the overriding priority should be given to the essential needs of the
world’s poor. It holds the view it is only fair that each successive generation
should have a good quality of life as other generations. The fairness argument was
a general comparison on the quality of life of different generations, but it
does not deeply question how goods were to be distributed amongst the members
of particular generations.
In considering the
future generation, we have to take into account of both the people’s needs and
the quality of their lives. Each of these requires certain economic activities
and social arrangements to be sustainable. It is a consideration of
inter-generational justice.
If we consider the needs
of the poor, or taking in the fairness view that we ought to try securing a
certain level of quality of life, it would appear that economics is not enough
by itself.
Questions of
distribution within the societies and between countries (intra-generation) have
to be taken into account; and the question of what level of quality of life
should be aimed at must be answered. These are moral and political, not
economic, questions. It would be difficult to reach an agreement on what are
the needs of people today as well as of future generation and what are the
needs of the poor. Further, what is agreed upon today may not be accepted at
times in the future. The same is true on what should be considered fair in
maintaining the quality of life. Is it the standard of living of the
Western/developed countries? That includes modern domestic comforts, absence of
drudgery, cheap travel and communication, etc.
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Quality of life could
also include political freedom, tolerance, absence of gross economic inequality
and other things worth having. It may cover cultural characteristics such as
systems of agriculture, land-holding and associated social organisation.
Economic development can damage such cultural phenomena such as in the case of
indigenous community.
Some economists (Wilfred
Beckerman) argue that the introduction of sustainable development into the
discussion of economic development is unnecessary and unhelpful. The concept is
criticised for confusing the technical characteristic
of a particular development path with a moral injunction to pursue it. It is
ridiculous to require each project to be sustainable.
Beckerman argues that
the concept of sustainable development has now become redundant, since the
sustainability criterion for development has been replaced by the criterion of maximising welfare. If one is seeking to maximise welfare over time, the best course of action may
be one that includes a decrease in welfare at some stage. This raises the issue
of future generation’s value of ‘discounting’ (valuation changes over time).
Thus the requirement of the level of welfare should always be sustained, is
wrong.
Beckerman suggests that
the economist, seeking to maximise, can include the
distributional considerations and social justice, freedom, etc. as elements of
welfare This makes it difficult to define exactly what
is meant by the maximisation operation.
Sustainability requires
the coordination of economic, moral and political activities, activities
studied and facilitated by the social sciences. The possibility of catastrophes
and other damaging incursions that interrupt the smooth running of economics
and societies assumed by the social scientists’ model would mean we must also optimise the findings of the environmental sciences in
order to achieve the aim of sustainability. The concept of
inter-substitutability of resources is developed with the notion that science
and technology advancement would find substitutes to replace the exhausted or
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destroyed resources.
However, Bryan Norton
argues that there may be limits set by the shortages of resources that
technology cannot overcome. He is critical of the assumption that substitutes will
be found when needed but has irresponsible attitudes towards the present
environment. He further argues that purely social scientific ‘human welfare’
considerations have to be put in a context of environmental constraints, so
that policies for future development will not arrive through welfare-maximising procedures, but through processes that include
the estimation of various possible environmental changes. He proposed that, “We
can therefore express the moral obligation to act sustainably
as an culture, emphasising
those large biotic and abiotic systems essential to
human life, health, and flourishing culture. Ecosystems,
which are understood as dynamic, self-organising systems that humans have
evolved with, must remain healthy if humans are to thrive.” (Norton
1992, Environmental Values 1, p.97-111)
Traditional culture threatened
Both Norton and Shiva
agree that we should be guided by considerations of human welfare; neither is
committed to the view that certain natural phenomena is independent of the
value they have for humanity.
B.
Ecological sustainability
This is a technical
concept of ecology. We may distinguish on the one hand,
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reasons that are concerned with human
welfare, and on the other hand, a purely environmental consideration.
The shallow
environmentalists regard the human good as the only consideration which we need
be concerned when making decisions that affect the environment.
Those environmentalists
holding positions that are ‘deeper’ than the above will not be able to accept
the concepts of sustainability as discussed above. The deep views consider land
as a community, that ecosystems have a good of their own. Therefore, it is
important to understand sustainability in terms of maintaining the good of
these entities. From this point of view, there will be occasions when the
interests of humans will have to take second place to the interests of the
larger systems of which they are a part.
Sustainability and natural capital
The issue of
sustainability is sometimes discussed in terms of the specific question whether
the stock of natural capital should be maintained. In this discussion, natural
capital is taken to include not only non-renewable resources such as coal and
oil, and renewable resource such as timber, but also the ecological systems,
land and water biomass.
For some economists,
sustainable development is defined as non-declining natural wealth. They hold
the principle of infinite inter-substitutability that means human-made and
natural capitals are substitutable. That is, so long as the overall aggregate
of natural and human-made capital does not decline between one generation and
the next, the stock of natural assets can decline because the growth of
human-made capital will compensate for it. (a trade
off picture)
However, Pearce and
others believe that there are many important environmental assets that are not substitutes.
Environmental assets such as ozone layer, the climate-regulating functions of
ocean phytoplankton, the watershed protection functions of tropical forests,
and the pollution-cleaning and
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nutrient-trap functions of wetlands, have no
ready substitutes. Further technological advances could not advance the degree
of substitution between the two types of capital. There is also the concern of
the uncertainty, irreversibility and inter-generational equity. Therefore,
development policy in resource use should be carried out with moral caution.
The alternative approach
is to focus on natural capital assets and that they should not decline through
time. Each generation should inherit at least a similar natural environment. However, in treating it as a precise quantitative concept as a
measurement and monetary valuation of environmental assets, are not possible
and vary over time.
We have seen that the
sustainable development approach has been criticised
from a number of viewpoints
-
that
it is redundant
-
that
it neglects the importance of environmental science for estimating risks
-
that
it encourages irreversible damage to lifestyle and ecology
The deep environmental
view of sustainability was briefly considered. In all of the argument of
economists either against or in favour of the
conservation of natural capital, the views of substitutability and
irreversibility are frequently debated.
As a consequence, prudent thoughts have been generated more or less on
the loss and destruction of natural capital.
Note: These discussion materials are taken largely from the
Environmental Ethics module of the External Programme of Wye
College