Sustainable Development as a Meaningful Course of Action - Essay Example

?Critically explore the extent to which ‘sustainable development’ is a meaningful of action or a case of ‘business as usual’. The concept of sustainable development and its relationship to environmental conservation have become a fascinating topic. Various descriptions were given by people in regard to its purpose, but no firm definition has been identified since then. To organizations, it is one type of corporate social responsibility, and to some individuals it is a responsibility that one has to fulfill for the future of the society and the sake of mother earth. This paper will critically explore the extent to which sustainable development is a meaningful course of action. It will begin by analyzing the term sustainable development, provide some background around the concept, and make progression towards finding gaps and flaws in the development of the term, its implementation, and theoretical framework. The term sustainable development appears to be so widely used that almost anything or anyone can jump on this bandwagon and use this term. Sustainable development is a term that is used by individuals, governments, and the different industries in the business sector. The idea of sustainable development is not new and has been around for much of humankind’s history (Redcliff, 1987). The application of this concept can be evidenced way back three centuries ago, in the work of Malthus during the 1700s, which has centered around population growth and on the demand that it causes on resources and natural environment. The use of the term in the modern era has become so wide that, in fact, an ordinary Google search returns over fifty million results. Allen and Hoekstra (1992) have gone as far as saying that most people are of the opinion that the term is advantageous. However, Fortune and Hughes (1997) view this concept as a meaningless notion, which centers to a western ethnocentric view with essence deficiency and is simply a paternalistic ideology. There are other schools of thought that describe the term as a paradigm (Daly and Townsend, 1992). However, in this sense it is though useful as it forms the basis of a methodology or theory that forms a conceptual framework for further development. According to Hopwood et al. (2005), there is a valuable potential shift in understanding humanity’s relationship with the environment. Sustainable development is a testament of humanity’s growing awareness of environmental, social, and economic problems that can affect the future of all humankind. The growing awareness has been particularly prominent during the last one hundred years by growth oriented demand in economic terms, and the consequences that such an approach has on the environment and resource depletion (Dresner, 2002). The concerns became more prominent, following the publication of The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), highlighting that with the current trends in population growth and development, the earth’s carrying capacity would be exceeded within 100 years from the time of the report. In spite of the many given descriptions of sustainable development, the term has remained a variable concept that has been subject to a variety of interpretations and definitions. The publication of the Word Conservation Strategy (IUCN) in the 1980's was one of the reports known to have provided the first definition of sustainable development. The publication caught the interest of many people including critics who have considered the definition as limited. According to them, the given definition only pertains to a limited focus of ecological resource conservation, instead of involving the environment in conjunction with socio-economic issues. However, another prominent report seven years later by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) that is entitled "Our Common Future," appears to have addressed this and specifically made a direct relationship between environmental, social, and economic dimensions. According to Lafferty and Meadowcroft (2000), the report is regarded as authoritative in the mainstream thinking in environment, economic, and social development issues. This report defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 8). This definition is termed the Brundtland definition. Given a world of limited resources, continues trends in population growth, continuous economic growth based on resource depletion, and the inability of the future generations to access current markets in a world of exhaustible resources, it makes the whole idea of sustainability ineffective for addressing the inter-generational equity (Kirkby et al., 1995). Although the report provides a strong conceptual framework, sustainable development has been seen as an elusive, ill-defined concept that has been subject to a vast array of interpretations and contentions. Others have seen the concept as multifaceted that aims to meet the needs of intra and inter-generational equity; a concept that understands and identifies limits on the resources and biological and physical capacity of the natural system, as well as an interdisciplinary concept involving political, social justice, economic, and environmental issues (Welford, 1997). Redcliff (1987) makes specific reference to these differences in views that sustainable development can mean one thing to one and a different thing to another. It appears that the idea of sustainable development has arisen due to the recognition that addressing environmental issues without taking into consideration the impact of interactions with the environment to the society and the economy is never an appropriate practice. These dimensions of sustainable development are thought to promote the concept, which has also been put into a theoretical framework by various authors such as Elkinton (1997) as new objective for business development. The triple-bottom-line is potentially a significant contributing factor to the area of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. In the last two decades, the concept seems to have been extensively debated and subjected to various theoretical frameworks, definitions, and analysis, which appears to have received significant recognition and criticisms. Arguments made in relation to the definition of sustainability are being rooted from the various complications that confront humankind's relationship with the environment and in meeting the challenges of this century and future generations. This whole phenomenon appears to have received a broad recognition during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It was recognized that sustainable development is the way forward, and a change in the current pattern of practice is required at various levels and sectors, ranging from business, local, regional, national, and international level to meet the challenges of the 21st century (Keating, 1993) and in handling potential crises in all aspects of sustainable development (O’Riordan & Fairbrass, 2008). The summit has established the Commission on Sustainable Development that was then tasked to implement the new agenda in meeting the challenges of the 21st century, otherwise known as the Agenda 21. On the other hand, according to Meadowcraft (2000), richer nations have already lost their interest in equity issues, which was one of the main visions of the Brundtland report. Sustainable development is a multifaceted concept that expands to various sub-components but is mainly encapsulated by simultaneous realization of the so called three dimensions of Elkington’s (1997) triple bottom line. Hence, it is the right time to examine the concept as a meaningful course of action at various levels as in the sector of business, or in the local, national, and international level. Furthermore, since sustainable development is practiced in different regions of the world, no particular standard is set to be followed in its application to the society. The inappropriate practice of people places the environment and its whole entity at risk. The potential serious risks that it brings to the earth’s biosphere are global warming and climate change. Therefore, it challenges the 21st century society to keep consumption of the ecological resources within the carrying capacity of the earth for it to regenerate. While leaders of the world are facing the tough challenge of stabilizing their economy, another challenge is faced by these people in dealing with the various environmental issues that also affect the economy. As resource depletion carries on, and resource scarcity becomes more challenging, it will further come back to impact on the economy and as well cause social economic and environmental problems. This scenario leads to an assumption that with this on-going trend in the society, there are real possibilities of entering the cyclical downward spiral with no capacity to come back to the status quo. In line with these issues, the WCED (1987) in their Common Future report has stressed that the future economic and social security depends on people’s maintenance of the environment whether living in industrialized or developing nations or rural environments. Thus, people in every nation must put effort in conserving the environment because, in the end, the outcome of this act will not only benefit their own nation but also the entire planet earth. The issues are inextricably linked, with a global reach requiring a global solution and international coordinated action. This is an era of globalisation; therefore, action requires thinking and acting at a global level (Young 1993; Escobar, 1995). However, this has been increasingly challenging as the international environmental governance agenda has been seen by the southern countries as being led by interests of the northern countries to broaden their economic, political, and resource control of the south and rebrand the business as usual approach to sustainable development. These were the criticisms made during the Brundtland report. According to the said report, developed industrial nations were carrying a visionary concept to restrict growth and use of resources, and the developing nations were resistant to commit to any such policy that prevent them from achieving the same level of development. In reality, many businesses have contributed to the worsening of pollution problems. These businesses claim that they are actively pursuing sustainable development, but they are actually doing it for corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility is somehow related to sustainable development but, unfortunately, most organizations practice it for their own benefit and for publicity. They seem to ignore other valuable aspects of sustainable development and tend to focus only on one aspect that is convenient for them to practice (Welford, 1998). Indeed, many argue that business has not made much change in to distance itself from the hegemonic power, adopting a prevailing attitude of green rhetoric claiming to adopt a business strategy that incorporates sustainable development but rarely considers this as a fundamental concern (Fineman, 2000). Even businesses that adopt an approach to incorporate sustainability in their CSR agenda are driven by their own interests. They hope to improve profit margins in a highly competitive market through the implementation of this strategy. This practice has been criticized by Welford (1997), saying that businesses that are adopting a sustainable development strategy is by far not comprehensive. According to Elkington (1997), sustainable development requires simultaneous performance in all aspects, but this concept has become a subject of criticism. Many critics argue that the concept of sustainable development has been high-jacked for generating economic profit giving corporations the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. Secondly, it is a complex concept that one cannot apprehend using a single perspective. Thus, addressing all three dimensions in such a manner will not be effectively manageable based on the multi-criteria decision theory (a theory that deals with multi-disciplinary and multidimensional decision making). Furthermore, since sustainable development has multidimensional criteria, there is a need to compromise the three dimensions (Munda, 2004). Third, sustainable development is seen by some quarters to lean more towards environmental or economic issues while neglecting the needs of those deprived communities most adversely affected by the environmental impacts and criticism. More attention is paid to the social aspects and focus on people per se rather than huge infrastructural projects. Indeed, whether all three aspects of sustainable development can be optimised has been much debated in literature; some quarters have described the concept as oxymoron, and the term itself is considered contradictory where sustainable is about preserving and development is understood with consumption in a world of fine resources and high population growth. Sustainable development has been criticised on the bases that it is a concept developed by the northern countries that have contributed mostly to many of the environmental problems. They have been blaming the south for environmental degradation, when, in fact, their fossil fuel habits have also contributed to the problem. The northern countries have requested the south to preserve rain forests to capture northern CO2 emissions while the north has already deforested their actual forestry CO2 capturing resources. The developing countries have been cautionary about embracing such a northern idea and claim that it is another imposition by the north and prevention to providing aid and investment and control their resources and developmental process. While the north is concerned with future generations or the intergenerational equity, the south presents concern that intra-generational equity is being overlooked by the northern countries that are not assisting in economic development and blaming the south for unsustainable behavior; “those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive” (WCED, 1987, p. 28). According to Escobar (1995), the intervention of the north in globalizing control over southern development and its resources in connection with sustainable development have provided them a wide, global resource base and control. It has led them to continue with their business as usual agenda under the shadow of sustainable development (Shiva, 1993). In addition, Shiva (1994) has contended that sustainable development is understood by the north from a capitalist market consumption economy, and this perspective will only protect or destroy the environment if it becomes profitable. Therefore, the concept is seen by the north as a panacea, but for the south, it is a concept that drives inequitable imbalance of power and wealth, and a perpetrator of inequality creating a clear division of the north-south. The concept of sustainable development has been derived from the mainstream thinking developed during the 1980's. However, even if the concept is no longer considered new, complexities are still present in modern times that cause difficulties in delivering legitimate policy solution that will address the current problems in modern, sustainable development. These complexities or issues require cross-border solutions that pose a challenge to environmental, global governance. Sustainable development vision has also been criticised as being too anthropocentric, regarding humans as the universe’s most salient entity. Also, while some developed nations grapple with sustainability in many regions of some developing countries, native tribes live in reasonably good social and environmental harmony, and their sustainability is rather threatened by the global development (Zimmerman, 1994). It presents a direct challenge to the statement of the WCED (1987, p. 28) that “those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive.” As inferred by many people, the environment is considered to belong to all the community, thus, requiring elected governments to protect the environment for the public good. This is normally a duty vested on national governments that have been increasingly operating within international structures in a globalised environment, society, and economy. In order to address the issues relating to sustainable development, it has been argued that international coordinated action is the best approach to bring the vision into realisation with the states working all towards their common commitment (Vogel, 2001). Given this common national goal, governments were expected to rise above their national interest, work towards the interest of all global community, and move towards a vision that gains the promotion of common environmental values and reduction of stress in the natural system. However, without change of the consumption pattern of the developed world, this vision is not realizable, and Meadows et al. (1972) have recognised that there are limits to industrial growth given the stress that it puts the environmental system under. The US National Academy report (2002) also recognises that human action has exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity, and many have called for system redesign stating that economic growth in the long term is not viable with the continuous exhaustion of the natural resources. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol has aimed to address the issues through international collective action, an act that targets to follow the success that such action had achieved ten years earlier in Montreal regarding ozone depletion. At the time, US was one of the leading proponents of such action as it regarded the issue as a national threat. However, in the Kyoto process US withdrew in 2001, claiming that it gave other countries an unfair advantage and did not consider such action to be for the interest of the nation, but assessing it as likely to hamper economic development, ultimately putting national interest before global environmental protection. Kyoto’s aim was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent by the new millennium. This commitment was vested on developed nations while it did gain the not commitment of emerging industrial countries like India and China. This agreement has also not been adhered to by many of the countries who remained in the agreement, and even if they honoured the agreement, the impact is considered minimal in terms of the large scale CO2 levels being released in the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001) also acknowledges greenhouse emission related to human activity, which is backed by strong evidence as a contributory factor. It has led to some calling for stronger global authority; however, this is unlikely to be realised given that US, China, and India appear to set on a national interest and competitive path for political power and economic development as well as geo-political rivalry (Cohen & Egelston, 2003). The vision of sustainable development calls for co-operation rather than completion and driven financial capital that threaten sustainability and the health of all social and natural structures. It was hoped another summit would bring the issues into a more focused perspective. The World Summit on Sustainable Development, which was held in 2002, in Johannesburg despite endorsing the implementation plan for the Agenda 21, falls short of any meaningful action, and “sustainable development remained very much a discourse rather a plan of action…richer states pushing the benefits of development that could be achieved through globalisation and free trade” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 149). One of the benefits that did arise from this summit was Russia’s commitment to the protocol given their 17 per cent contribution to the overall CO2 levels. However, Russia’s motivation is thought to be financially driven by the emission trading mechanism given their collapse in industrial production and, therefore, no longer requiring their granted level of emission (Baker, 2006). Kyoto’s mechanism of emission trading has also been criticised on the basis that it does not help in solving the dilemma. It is a mere business as usual approach for the developed nations charging developing ones and is not in the spirit of sustainable development for the global good, but it is a tradable commodity and rewarding past polluters (Young, 2003). Another recent climate change summit on the 11th of December 2011, held in Durban, South Africa, reached a global deal to commit all countries including biggest polluters China, US, and India to a new global treaty by 2020 to limit greenhouse gases and is thought to have a legal force, although that is not defined. Also, there is no defined scale of cuts and who should make them, and by when, which will still have to be decided, and previous promises leading to road maps and new agreements have been delayed and broken. They have agreed a pathway to cut global emissions, but there is not much a sense of urgency about it (BBC, 2011). It leaves one to wonder and doubt whether the vision of sustainable development can ever be realised and realised in time given in such wide difference in views and interests. Lack of definitive scientific knowledge has contributed to discrepancies and to the case of business as usual. Sustainable development is the new model of development incorporating environmental, economic, and social dimensions that work to promote intra and inter-generational equity, across time and space, and given value for all life form. Until such time as the natural environment is valued as the ultimate commodity, the case of business as usual approach is likely to continue. However, whether it will be too late by the time people will realise this, that is one thing that only time can tell. Here, is a valuable quote that one can ponder upon. According to Shiva, “The real meaning of sustainability needs to be based on the insight of the native American elder who indicated that money is not convertible to life: Only when you have felled the last tree, caught the last fish, and polluted the last river, you realize that you can’t eat money” (1992, p. 193). Greed is being driven by the desire to obtain more than what is required. It compels one to seek for things that excessively satisfy a want, and not a need. Sustainable development is a need that has to be fulfilled as soon as possible. However, some organizations make it a want that satisfies their only intention and that is to earn a profit at the expense of the environment. The earth's natural resources are not unlimited; thus, its depletion can lead to scarcity. To prevent the further damaging of the earth's biosphere, all people must act and do things that can help in saving it. Most importantly, organizations should make sustainable development an advocacy and not an instrument for profitability. The idea of sustainable development is no longer new; however, instead of working toward its proper implementation people have reversed the cycle, and again, the real aim of sustainable development has been forgotten. Concerned non-profit organizations are again spending time in spreading the awareness of sustainable development while the others consider it a case of business as usual. People must not wait for the time when the environment can no longer provide their basic needs. The things that money cannot buy are the things that give us life. There is only one planet earth, and if it gets to be ruined then all that is left for us is nothing. Read More