Sustainable Development

Environment and economy depend on each other. Development that ignores its effects on the environment ends up destroying the very natural base that supports all life. The answer is sustainable development — growth pursued in a way that lets every future generation enjoy a potential average quality of life at least as high as the one the present generation enjoys.

How it has been defined

The idea was highlighted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which described sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Two phrases in this definition carry the weight — 'needs' and 'future generations'. The word 'needs' ties the idea to the distribution of resources: the report Our Common Future, which gave this definition, explained sustainable development as meeting the basic needs of all and giving everyone the chance to pursue a better life. Because meeting everyone's needs requires redistributing resources, sustainable development is at heart a moral issue. The economist Edward Barbier defined it as development directly concerned with raising the material standard of living of the poor at the grass-root level — measurable through higher real income, education, healthcare, sanitation and water supply — with the specific aim of reducing the absolute poverty of the poor by providing lasting, secure livelihoods that keep resource depletion, environmental degradation, cultural disruption and social instability to a minimum. In this sense sustainable development is development that meets the basic needs of all, especially the poor majority, for employment, food, energy, water and housing, while ensuring the growth of agriculture, manufacturing, power and services needed to satisfy them.

The moral obligation to the future

The Brundtland Commission stressed protecting future generations, echoing environmentalists who argue that we have a moral duty to pass on the planet in good order — that the present generation should leave behind a better environment, and at the very least a stock of 'quality of life' assets no less than what it inherited. The present generation can pursue development that enhances the natural and built environment provided it is compatible with three things: conserving natural assets; preserving the regenerative capacity of the world's natural ecological systems; and avoiding imposing added costs or risks on future generations.

Herman Daly's conditions

According to the environmental economist Herman Daly, achieving sustainable development requires:

1. Limiting human population to a level within the environment's carrying capacity. He compares this carrying capacity to the 'plimsoll line' on a ship — its load-limit mark. When the economy has no such line, the human scale grows beyond the earth's carrying capacity and strays from sustainability. …