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"Sustainable development" is an idea of only recent origin but is already being reduced to a slick cliche due to overuse, misuse and abuse by policy makers and politicians. This, despite the fact that the issues involved are profound and long-standing.
The term was first popularized in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission -- named for its chairwoman, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway. The commission was one of several unofficial international entities which prepared the way for the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In one of the essays in the commission's report, Our Common Future, this passage became an accepted definition of sustainable development: "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable -- to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
In the few years since the Rio Conference, sustainable development has become a centerpiece of, and the lingua franca for, scores of international meetings of government officials, think-tank analysts, advocacy groups and private-sector representatives. But despite its occasional elevation to the lofty status of such concepts as peace, democracy and justice, there is considerable uncertainty, indeed confusion, as to just what sustainable development means or entails.
The notion that the natural environment and resources we have inherited should be dealt with gingerly and wisely has ancient roots. Contrary to popular belief, this concern was not spawned a mere two centuries ago on the dark side of the Industrial Revolution; Thomas Malthus was but a recent recruit to a long line of prophets and sages who trumpeted their anxieties about the integrity of our Earth's bounty in the face of mankind's abuse and neglect. Indeed, with a dollop of poetic license, one could make the claim that the first reference to the concept of sustainable development was there in the Book of Genesis: "And God took the Human and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to watch over it."
A more credible progenitor, however, was one Tertullian, an early Christian who lived during the chaos of 3rd-century Rome. His dolorous opinion sounds strangely familiar:
"What most frequently meets our view is our teeming population; our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen and our complaints more bitter in all mouths whilst nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence and famine and wars and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nature, as a means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race."
Solicitude for tomorrow's well-being in the face of today's imprudence is by no means new. What is new, however, is the scale and impact of human activity driven by exploding populations and seemingly insatiable appetites not merely for food but also for an astonishing variety of things. Not only local communities and national societies are hard pressed to satisfy these needs and wants; the effects have reached global proportions. What is also new is a growing recognition that, for the sake of us in our time, and of our grandchildren in theirs, a widespread stewardship ethic and a deep sensitivity with regard to beggaring one's neighbors comprise the standards of an enlightened world community.
The ethic and practice of stewardship is the essence of the Brundtland approach to sustainable development -- to meet "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It is also writ large in the credo that formed the basis of the Rio Conference. And no wonder: The image of stewardship rolls easily off the tongues of environmental advocates and entrepreneurs alike. It conveys an exalted sense of responsibility, nobility, prudence, altruism. And finally, it fits well with the long-standing traditions and practices whereby legacies -- land, cattle, seed, gold, insurance policies, trust funds -- are left behind to ease the way of surviving families.
While acts of individual stewardship have long been common in societies across the globe, the practice of social stewardship -- the notion that a society should forgo its current collective consumption to preserve and nurture the global commons for tomorrow or for the sake of distant and less fortunate neighbors -- is another matter, one that is easier to advocate than achieve. And yet, concern for them as well as us, which is expressed not simply in ringing rhetoric, but in innovative economic, environmental and social policies, is what sustainability is all about. But this involves difficult choices, hard trade-offs.
One such trade-off involves the tensions between the forces of independence and interdependence -- not-in-my-backyard versus the common good, exploitation versus conservation, self versus community, national sovereignty versus global cooperation. Obviously, the two forces are not mutually exclusive. The concept of one's home being one's castle is not inconsistent with being a citizen of the world; political independence or national security is not inconsistent with universal human rights or free trade. Nonetheless, a sustainable-development strategy and its handmaiden, a stewardship ethic, will inevitably confront and must ultimately reconcile the pulls and tugs of these two deep-seated forces.
In rich societies such as our own, the concept of stewardship takes on a different cast, of course, than in the poor societies of Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Too many, but still relatively few, Americans are hungry; our environment is relatively benign. Thus, if we cannot quite measure up to the claim of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss that we live "in the best of all possible worlds," most Americans are still doing reasonably well much of the time. It is the quality of life, the standard of living, that will be available to our children and theirs that preoccupies us. For Americans, then, stewardship involves entrusting tomorrow's legacies to the probity of today's guardians; for us, stewardship concerns some meaningful time in the future, rather than the here-and-now.
For the poverty-cursed people of many developing countries, however, "tomorrow" is not a poetic allusion to a time many decades hence. Nor is "tomorrow" a shining beacon of hope, as in "Tomorrow is a new day" (Cervantes, Don Quixote). For millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America -- and for too many in Europe and even in our own nation's capital -- tomorrow is just the day after today. Their challenge is to sow, make, sell, trade or beg enough to get through a day at a time.
To the planners and politicians of poor, developing countries, sustainable development involves not preserving resources and maintaining options for generations yet unborn but rather negotiating consequential transfers of wealth as rapidly as possible from the rich, industrialized Northern Hemisphere to their own struggling societies. This, to put it mildly, is no small task. But, unless the industrialized nations now choose to ignore the frustrations and aspirations of the developing world -- which they would do at their peril -- they must acknowledge that the concept and practice of sustainability demands that we embrace our neighbors as well as our own descendants. Moreover, if the OECD participants at the Rio Summit truly intend to embark on the challenging task of sustainable global development, economic growth must not only be vigorously promoted (which developing nations would be eager to adopt) but also must be channelled along paths that are sensitive to environmental considerations (which developing countries are less anxious to embrace).
A strategy of sustainable development carries with it a consequential political price and non-trivial institutional constraints. Once the concept of sustainability is translated from broad generalizations into concrete programs, there will inevitably be little agreement among policy makers and stakeholders as to goals and the means of attaining them. It will obviously be difficult to persuade Americans -- or French or Japanese -- to accept a significant decrease in their living standards to improve the lot of Guatemalans, Bangladeshis or Ugandans whether or not the sacrifice is made in the name of intergenerational stewardship.
Even if the resistance to present sacrifice for future benefit could be overcome, the dynamics of tastes, needs and wants give justifiable reason for pause: Values, resources and goals viewed as central to our own time and place might well be regarded as quaint or superfluous by our descendants. Our generation could expend enormous effort and large sums in trying to preserve what we, ourselves, value highly. Yet, two or three generations hence, our selfless and heroic sacrifices could prove to be feckless, even counterproductive, because we are simply unable to predict with confidence the needs, values, technologies and problems of our grandchildren. This is further compounded if sustainability tends to be defined in terms of a particular value system; what, in fact, are we trying to "sustain"? Professor Harvey Brooks of Harvard University offers this view:
"What is sustainable and preferred from a strictly environmental point of view may not be sustainable from a broader sociotechnical perspective that considers factors other than environment. On the other hand, what is sustainable from the broadest perspective, including one that assigns high priority to environmental values, may nevertheless still not satisfy the criteria for environmental "soundness" preferred by groups which favor minimum alteration of the "pristine" environment as a kind of moral imperative."
It should be apparent that the notion of sustainable development is flabby rather than crisp, elusive rather than explicit; straining for a precise definition or a priori solutions would be frustrating and futile. Nonetheless, the cost of inaction is high and, in any case, enough is known to embark on the enterprise. Thus, we know that a strategy of sustainability should at least incorporate a policy of economic growth which is sensitive to environmental risks. We also know that the goal of sustainable development requires that the tools of a wide range of intellectual disciplines be employed -- economics, ethics, engineering and a host of others. And we know that sustainability involves economic, technological, social and political considerations which move forward and back through time and cut across geographic boundaries. Finally, we know that a sustainable development strategy involves two time-scales: long-term, focusing on intergenerational considerations with concern for the resource and ecological legacy we pass on; and short-term, addressing the sustainability of today's economy, social order and political institutions and involving such elusive matters as economic equity and social justice.
Superimposed on these considerations are trends which will profoundly influence the sustainability of an expanding, technology-based world economy. These trends are already evident and are not likely to change perceptibly over the next several decades:
--World population will continue to grow, reaching at least 9 billion by 2050. Much of this increase will further threaten the social and political stability of the urban sectors in poor, developing countries.
--Expectations for a higher standard of living, in both the industrialized and developing worlds, will remain high. In the industrialized world, a rising standard of living has long been regarded as part of the social contract between the people and their governments. In the developing world, popular demands for a higher standard of living have, justifiably, become more insistent and more impatient; indeed political stability will be at hazard unless these demands are met.
--Although industrialized countries have traditionally depended on the agricultural and mineral resources of developing countries, they are now also relying on overall growth in global economic development. In fact, many developing countries now are producers as well as consumers of internationally traded manufactures and high-technology products and services. While this growing economic interdependence has many positive aspects, it also raises the specter of worldwide economic chaos as a consequence of increasing strains on fragile, interdependent elements of the global economy.
--Higher living standards by societies everywhere, regardless of the obvious merits, will place additional stress on the world's natural-resource base and the global environment. Little thought has been given to the implications of higher consumption by a substantially larger global population -- as in Tertullian's lament. There is all the more reason to be uneasy as we learn more about the nonlinear, chaotic behavior of the physical, chemical and biological systems that make up the biosphere. Although these natural systems appear to be stable, we have only a limited ability to predict the onset of rapid transitions and their ultimate outcome.
Many experts maintain that the level of human activity may have already reached a point where the global environment is at hazard. Extrapolating historic patterns of population growth and economic activity and the effluents associated with them should give pause to experts and laymen alike. Should society attempt to bring human activities into balance with the capacity for their accommodation in the environment, or should nature be permitted to take its course? The erosion of the ozone layer, the already evident exhaustion of the world's fisheries and the risk of global climate change provide ample reason to pursue the former course -- in essence, a strategy of sustainable global development. We cannot, in short, regard the ravaging of the world's resource-base and the inexorable narrowing of the options available to future generations as a spectator sport.
Having said this, it should also be acknowledged that, in most societies, threats to the sustainability of the institutions of governance, rather than the likelihood of ecological Armageddon, are matters of deeper and more immediate concern. Urban congestion, desperate poverty, ethnic strife, religious and ideological fanaticism, drug abuse, political terrorism, violent crime, galloping population growth and virtual entropy in the delivery of public services are already threatening fragile political, social and economic institutions in many societies. Add this to the need to cope with growing environmental stresses, and the need to devise a sustainable-development strategy becomes all too clear.
Consider, for example, the impact of expanding populations on the civic and social institutions of large urban areas. Of the world's 20 "mega-cities -- cities with populations approaching 10 million people -- 14 are in the developing world. In many of these cities, educational facilities, health-delivery systems and such critical services as water supply, sewage and garbage disposal are already under enormous pressure. And it is in these, in the already-reeling urban centers of developing countries, where much of the world's population increase will occur over the next several decades!
The U.S., together with scores of other governments and most of the international institutions comprising the U.N., has adopted sustainable development as a high-priority mission. But it is fair to say that the Clinton administration's commitment to a national program of sustainable development is at least as much rhetorical as it is concrete. The President's Council on Sustainable Development is a direct descendant of former President Bush's President's Commission on Environmental Quality. Like Bush's commission, Clinton's council is an earnest but frail mini-agency with a minuscule budget, a tiny staff and a limited life span. To be sure, President Clinton and, especially, Vice President Gore have made sincere genuflections in the direction of sustainable development at the community, national and international levels. And administration officials have rarely neglected an appropriate occasion to advocate the need for global sustainability. Nonetheless, the administration has yet to launch a government-wide action program; nor is there any sign that such a program will take form during the remaining tenure of this administration. In any case, it is unlikely that the new Congress would be inclined to award the time of day to an enterprise of this sort.
Of all the agencies that have attempted to translate the lofty notion of sustainability into hard programs, the Department of Energy has taken the lead -- although, even here, there is uncertainty: how much, what and where? For her part, Secretary Hazel O'Leary regards a strategy of sustainability as worthy, politically prudent and a vehicle for realizing U.S. policy goals, many of which bear little similarity to either the Brundtland Commission's or the Rio Conference's notion of sustainable development. Chief among these are the enhancement of U.S. economic competitiveness and the promotion of U.S. exports and jobs. Although O'Leary is well in front of many other high government officials with regard to concern for sustainable development, she, no less than her fellow cabinet officials, confronts the intractable dilemma posed by the long-term nature of sustainable development programs and the short-term need to provide Congress with quick concrete results.
In the last analysis, sustainable development is a philosophy of design, an on-going process of experimentation and social learning. Whether a strategy of sustainable development emphasizes national independence along the lines of Secretary O'Leary's version, or global interdependence as evoked by Prime Minister Brundtland's concept, whether its focus is on institutional or ecological sustainability, a long-term perspective will be a necessary if not sufficient condition for success.
Sustainable development, whatever form it ultimately takes, will involve the commitment of effort and resources over a period of years, even decades, and a readiness to tolerate glacier-like progress; persistence and patience must be part and parcel of every program. This must be accompanied by an awareness that today's choices among paths of development and growth will have a profound influence, for good or ill, on tomorrow's options. Such an enterprise is hardly likely to raise adrenalin levels and enthusiasm on Capitol Hill, in the Oval Office or on Main Street; official and public support in the form of rhetoric, let alone funding, traditionally has depended on the early delivery of demonstrable accomplishments. Under these circumstances, tension between researchers, planners and practitioners on the one hand, and legislators and government officials on the other, will be inevitable.
The perils of a professional career as a "sustainable developer" and the tribulations in store for any national program bearing the label "sustainable development" over the next several years are plain to see. But even under the most congenial political circumstances, one would also have to reckon with the fickleness of Washington's policy community. The landscape between 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill is scarred with the detritus of abandoned deals, covenants, declarations, contracts and "high-priority" national programs.
There is a cautionary tale here: Today's politicians, public servants and policy planners, if they are serious about the nation's (and the globe's) well-being, should resist their 15 minutes of fame and eschew currently chic and highly visible but superficial sustainable development projects which promise to be of only ephemeral interest. Rather, they should focus their attention on four criteria:
--A new enterprise, at the very least, should not increase environmental problems, institutional stresses or resource constraints over and above those already existing before the project had been undertaken;
--The enterprise should increase the resilience to environmental and other stresses of social, political and economic institutions and infrastructure;
--The enterprise should result in at least maintaining, if not increasing, the range of options -- economic, technological, environmental and social -- available to future generations; --The enterprise should have intrinsic merit, all considerations of sustainable development aside.
When all is said, a useful guide to those directing the quest for sustainability -- local, national or global -- may be found in the advice of an anonymous sage: "Small things done are better than great things planned."
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