sustainable development

In 1993 Bramwell predicted: “the next hundred years will be the century of the global ecologist” (454). Other predictions from Bramwell: “in the process of rationalizing environmentalism, of costing it, of playing trade wars with it, our concern for the intangible beauties of the natural world, our entirely specieist love for the most intelligent animals, may go by the board. (455) In other words, this social movement is a chameleon temporarily lounging on a leaf. Atmospheric controversies will soon cloud over. Similarly: “the cultural criticism dimension of Green ideology is not likely to go away, but is likely to be further marginalized possibly dissolving into disparate occultist, matriarchal feminist and other similar groups.” (456)In addition, the movement’s future is in the UN and other transnational organizations.

The growth of the UN as an environmentalist resource is tracked by the growth of its use of the term “sustainable development”. The phrase “the sustainable use of the environmental” circulated in the 1970s until the IUCN abbreviated it to “sustainable development” and led the charge to plant SD into the UN. By the 1990s “the commitment to a sustainable economy, has attracted a remarkable degree of consensus among the great and the good.” (457)Even though SD is a widely-used phrase there is no consensus on its meaning. To the Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future (1987) SD was a directive that the world’s government: “shall maintain eco-systems and ecological processes for the functioning of the biosphere, shall preserve biological diversity, and shall observe the principle of optimum sustainable yield in the use of living natural resources and eco-systems.” Environmental economists twisted SD toward meaning the “valuing qualitative aspects of the environment in aesthetic and spiritual terms.” A 1989 OECD study revealed dozens of different SD definitions. A World Bank paper complained SD remained operationally undefined thus confounding Bank enviro-economists who encountered problems in “costing” sustainability. Other phrases such as “carrying capacity” or “generational equity” also lack operational definitions. The vagueness of these slogans has not prevented governments and businesses from dedicating departments to promoting them. (458)

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