CHAPTER 1

Sustainable Development: a personal and societal aspiration

Keywords

Development Sustainability

Sustainable development has become a leading guiding principle for many people, governments and organizations in the world. It is in essence about quality of (human) life here-and-now and elsewhere-and-later.

  • Development is in first instance oriented towards biological survival, with in later stages the drives and acts of mind (science), skills (technology) and organization. Additional layers are personal or spiritual growth of the individual and institutional arrangements of the collective. (The ideal of) development has ethical components in its aspects of justice and (in)equality;
  • Sustainability emphasizes the quest for preservation and continuation. The background to it are the increasing awareness that human expansion leaves no room for other living beings and is also a threat for long-term survival of humans themselves, as science reveals ever more convincingly. (The ideal of) sustainability is thus also connected to the view of Nature and to ethics in Modernity;
  • Needs, wants and desires and alternative actions and capabilities to satisfy them are a kernel of sustainable development. Some are material, individual and universal: basic needs. Others are immaterial and collective. Many are socially constructed and positional.

Test your understanding of this chapter by reviewing the study questions below.

Answer:

The biological approach emphasizes the physical survival of (human) life and what is needed for it (food, shelter etc.). In the sociological and political-economic approach, the focus is on the interactions between and organization of people in society, including technical skills and cultural expressions. The psychological approach is primarily interested in mental and spiritual well-being and growth of the individual person(s).

Answer:

[see Figure 1.1b] It is important to consider human needs from an objective and a subjective perspective. Some of our needs have clear physical, quantifiable objective characteristics (e.g. basic food and health), but many others can only be understood and evaluated if one considers the individual’s subjective experience too.

Answer:

The first one is reference drift: needs of an individual influence and are influenced by needs of others. The second one is preference drift: needs and their satisfaction change over time as a consequence of habituation, new experiences and knowledge and novel goods and services.

Answer:

Positional goods are goods that are inherently scarce, think of high-ranking positions in organizations, good teachers or medical doctors or the first row in a theatre. The satisfaction of these ‘needs’ depends on one’s position and related means and privileges in the competitive hierarchy of society. Reductions in productions costs and prices do not affect their relative scarcity (although  more organization, schools or theatres reduces absolute scarcity). Positional goods overlap with public goods such as clean air or non-congested traffic. For instance, a quiet place or safe water are (becoming) inherently scarce in some places (§8.4).

Answer:

The Capability Approach connects the subjective experience of a good quality of life: freedom to choose ends, with the objective resource-oriented aspects: means to realize ends. Capabilities are the options available to people and functionings are the the actual choices of people to operationalize them. Lack of capabilities is intricately connected to structural lack of freedom and injustice. The concept is part of Sen’s playdoyer for a broader notion of quality of life, with more attention to the qualitative aspects and diversity of well-being and for dialogue on the public-private (im)balances. Development is in this view seen as freedom of individuals  ‘to do things one has reason to value’, a more positive form of liberty (§7.2).

Readings

  • Clark, W., and N. Dickson. Sustainability science: The emerging research program. PNAS 100 (2003): 8059–8061. Suggestions for a research program from a Global Change perspective.
  • Clark, W., ed. Sustainability Science: A room of its own. Special Issue PNAS 104 (2007):1737. A sequel to the outline started in Kates et al. (2001).
  • Kates, R., et al. Sustainability Science. Science 292 (2001): 641–642. A first outline of what sustainability science should address. Since then, quite a few papers have been published on this topic
  • Perrings, C. Future challenges. PNAS 104 (39) (2007):15179–15180. The journal PNAS now has a special section on sustainability (see websites list).
  • Turner, G. A comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global Environmental Change 18 (2008): 397–411. An evaluation of the 1972 Limits to Growth report on the basis of historical data since then.

Related websites

  • International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) [http://www.igbp.net/]. At http://www.igbp.net/documents/resources/science-4.pdf one can download the report Global Change and the Earth System (Steffen et al. 2003).
  • The website of the Sustainability Science section of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), with special issues on a series of topics (land change, health, food, climate change, poverty and others) [http://www.pnas.org.proxy.library.uu.nl/site/misc/sustainability.shtml]
  • Awakening Earth, the site of Duane Elgin, who discusses sustainable development in the perspective of the evolution of human consciousness. [http://www.awakeningearth.org/]
  • ISDRS is the site of the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS), a global network of sustainable development professionals that links researchers in academia and implementation practice from all continents to each other. [http://www.isdrs.org/]

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