SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable Development



Strategic Information Management

Introduction

The term development has been used in diverse meanings that have given rise to heated controversy. At its center lies the idea of improving something in a planned approach along a predetermined timeline. In a socioeconomic context, many have come to regard development as simply quantitative growth of anything that is considered good. More specifically, it often describes the deliberate modification of a local piece of natural environment to facilitate its use as a means of production, for example, as a parking lot. At the international level, development often refers to the deliberate modification of existing social, cultural, and economic structures to render a country more economically productive and accessible to the global market. These notions formed the basis of traditional concepts of international development, of economic growth, and of progress in general under the modern paradigm. In its most dogmatic form, this notion of progress relies on the assumption, referred to as cornucopianism (Kushf, 2004, 124-49), that there are no real limits to the growth of economies, populations, industries, and capital. Of course, this assumption clashes head-on with the concept of sustainability, not to mention the Laws of Thermodynamics and all our scientific understanding of nature. Hence, the term sustainable growth represents an oxymoron, at least in the sense in which it tends to be used. Needless to say, notions of sustainability are not part of the ideology of growth, which is also referred to as the Dominant Social Paradigm.

In response to increasing criticism of the growth ideology and its pervasive influence, alternative economic models were proposed during the past three decades, along with the umbrella concept of sustainable development. To what extent development can be sustainable depends, of course, on one's definition of development. Evidently, it cannot mean quantitative growth, but qualitative improvement seems perfectly sustainable if one puts up with the effect of diminishing returns. In fact, no obvious limits exist to personal development in the sense of increasing one's maturity, knowledge, skills, moral responsibility, and judgment, or any kind of professional competence. Although it is now widely used, the term sustainable development is of little conceptual use unless it is accompanied by clear definitions of development and sustainability, which is rarely the case in the popular literature (Macmillan & Tampoe, 2000, 15-27).

The idea of sustainable development has had a particularly strong influence on the policies of the United Nations and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which gave rise to the vision of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unfortunately, they, too, do not take into account limits of growth, nor do they even acknowledge our overshoot. As noted above, without such precise specifications, any proposition or undertaking that is advocated under the banner of sustainable development remains less than ethical, lacking moral justification (United Nations Millennium Project, 2005, 25-31).

The concept of ethical development seems to be less encumbered by such difficulties. Because it includes by definition a moral justification, it can neither deviate from the goal of sustainability, nor ...