Exploring Sustainable Development

Geographical Perspectives

Martin Purvis, Alan Grainger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136566028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Économie du développement

Sustainable development is capturing the attention of planners, politicians and business leaders. Within the academic sphere its study is increasingly breaching disciplinary boundaries to become a focus of attention for natural and social scientists alike. But in studying such a key concept, it is vital that there is a clear definition of what it means, how it is applied on the ground, and the influence it exerts upon people's perceptions of change in the physical environment, economic activity and society.

Exploring Sustainable Development is a major new text which provides a multifaceted introduction to key areas of study in this field, examining sustainability at the full range of spatial scales from the local to the global. Building on existing theory it demonstrates the unique contributions that thinking geographically about space, place and human-environment relationships can bring to the analysis of sustainable development. This book explores different interpretations of sustainable development in both theory and practice, in developed and developing countries, and in rural and urban areas. It pays particular attention to the local, national and international politics of implementation, the future of climate and energy, the role of business, and different conceptions of agricultural sustainability.

This wide-ranging text is ideal for undergraduates and postgraduates in geography, environmental science, development studies, and related social and political sciences.

1

Introduction

Alan Grainger

Introduction

Sustainable development, which meets the needs of the present generation without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, was widely adopted as a policy goal in the 1990s by many international agencies, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It was also translated into a theoretical concept that has become a major focus for academic research. Yet the speed and breadth of its adoption were surprising to many people, who regarded it, at best, as nothing more than a vague concept and, at worst, as a means to perpetuate the exploitation of developing countries. What is the reason for such conflicting attitudes? The answer to this question holds the key to a better understanding of sustainable development, and of the geographical perspectives that are explored in this book.

Sustainable development was originally devised as a compromise between two contradictory aims: on the one hand, the pursuit of environmental conservation and, on the other, the pursuit of economic growth and the development that generally followed as a result. Unfortunately, however, sustainable development has assumed two contradictory meanings among different governments and NGOs around the world. Broadly, from the perspective of developed countries, sustainable development is primarily about conserving the environment; while, as viewed from the developing world, it means the continued pursuit of development with the aim of reducing poverty and attaining the status of modern societies.

A similar disparity of views is found among academics. In response to the apparent vagueness of early definitions, economists devised theories of sustainable development and conditions for achieving it. Viewed in this way sustainable development holds the key to understanding the historical development of human civilization and predicting its long-term prospects. However, the two leading economic theories differ in significant respects, and neither of them takes much account of the spatial dimension. For many other social scientists, who are more concerned with the politics of development, sustainable development has as little currency as the ideal of development that the poorer countries of the world have been persuaded to pursue since the end of World War II. Seen from the standpoint of existing political economy theories, sustainable development, like ‘development’ before it, can never benefit developing countries, but will only continue their long-standing exploitation by developed countries.

These disparate views are perpetuated because there is so little interaction between them. This breeds ever more confusion about the meaning and significance of sustainable development. The subject is discussed by the governments of developed and developing countries at major international conferences – such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, and the recent follow-up conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg in August 2002; but they usually talk past one another and there is seldom a meeting of minds. Academics also tend to stay within the realms of the particular type of theory that they favour, instead of exploring the merits of other theories.

It is in a situation like this that geographers have much to offer. Being concerned with the planet as a whole they are ideally suited to studying sustainable development, a field of truly global dimensions. They are also good at seeing the whole picture by combining its many disparate elements. Their skills of synthesis are needed as never before to grasp the full immensity of sustainable development from the many different viewpoints that currently exist. Another geographical skill is important in this particular context – namely, an ability to see the whole in its diversity, rather than feeling the need to enforce conformity upon different views and circumstances. As we shall see in this chapter, this is one of the greatest challenges facing those who study sustainable development. Geographers also apply this skill within their own discipline. As this book shows, different geographers look at sustainable development from different perspectives. Finally, geographers tend to look at a topic from a spatial point of view and cannot understand why other people do not do so too. As the spatial dimension of sustainable development has been relatively neglected, this is one important gap that they can help to fill.

This book is only a first step towards portraying geographical perspectives on sustainable development. It attempts to grapple with the diversity both of political views on the subject and theoretical approaches, and to show how thinking geographically can enhance our understanding of them. The variety of geographical perspectives presented is a microcosm of the range of approaches already taken by other geographers. We are not the first geographers to explore sustainable development, but we hope that this book will demonstrate to both geographers and non-geographers alike that there is more to the subject than they realize, and encourage them to pay greater attention to sustainable development in the future.

This chapter provides a conceptual foundation for the book as a whole by reviewing the current range of views on sustainable development, and by showing how they differ and what they have in common. It begins by introducing the political conflicts that are at the heart of sustainable development. The chapter then outlines some key theoretical concepts and reviews the two leading economic theories in this field. After suggesting how these various disparities might be reconciled, the chapter ends by identifying the key questions that are tackled in the remaining chapters in the book and outlining the principal themes that emerge from this discussion.

Conflicting Political Ideals

The environmentalist ideal: bridging the gap between conservation and economic growth

The idea of sustainable development was first specifically identified in 1980 in an attempt to overcome two fundamental conflicts that became increasingly apparent during the last half of the 20th century. The first of these is the seeming incompatibility between maintaining a healthy environment and the economic growth needed for development. The second is the continuing gap between the quality of life in developed countries (the global ‘North’) and developing countries (the ‘South’). These concerns have given rise to the two conflicting ideals of sustainable development that continue to this day.

Mounting and widespread disquiet about the environmental impacts of unfettered human population growth and industrialization sparked off an ‘environmental revolution’ during the 1960s. What began as a critique of relatively localized pollution had, by the end of the decade, developed into a conviction among environmentalists that the entire planet was under severe threat from resource depletion and pollution driven by population growth and capitalist greed. During the 1970s these emergent concerns led to environmental protection being accepted as a minor, but significant, goal by the governments of the leading developed countries. However, they still tended to regard a healthy environment as rather a luxury and as something separate from economic activity. This attitude did not begin to change until the 1980s, when there was a realization that the environmental impacts of economic activity could rebound on the whole of humanity, through stratospheric ozone depletion and global climate change.

The rise of environmentalism as a political force was paralleled by increasing efforts on the part of conservationists to protect as many of the planet’s remaining pristine natural ecosystems as possible. Yet they encountered major obstacles, particularly in developing countries in the tropics where a significant proportion of the Earth’s surviving biological diversity is located. Setting aside large areas for conservation was incompatible with the demand by the peoples of these countries for more space to accommodate their rising populations and for the right to exploit their natural resources in order to achieve more development. National parks whose boundaries had been designated on maps to give maximum protection to a country’s natural wealth therefore often remained mere ‘paper parks’, as it was not feasible to protect them against expanding human numbers. Poor people would not relinquish their hopes for development simply to safeguard the beauty of nature, primarily for the enjoyment of rich people in their own countries and abroad.

Hitherto, many conservationists had retained the idealistic, not to say naive, belief that something as important as conservation must automatically receive widespread popular support. They gave a lower priority to development and saw no reason why others should not do the same. Eventually, however, they realized that they could no longer ignore the reality and inevitability of development. If they were to achieve their goals of conservation, they would have to recognize that others, particularly in developing countries, held equally legitimate goals of development. This led to the launch of new integrated conservation and development projects, such as those in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Man and Biosphere Programme, which combined the establishment of protected areas with initiatives to improve the lives of local people.

It was a short step from integrating conservation and development to conceiving the ideal of sustainable development. This first emerged, rather tentatively, in the World Conservation Strategy published in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), now the World Conservation Union:

Humanity’s relationship with the biosphere . . . will continue to deteriorate until a new international order is achieved, a new environmental ethic is adopted, human populations stabilized, and sustainable modes of development become the rule rather than the exception . . . For development to be sustainable it must take account of social and ecological factors, as well as economic ones; of the living and non-living resource base; and of the long-term as well as short-term advantages and disadvantages of alternative actions.

Sustainable development was recommended, in particular, to developing countries as a development path that would not replicate the environmental degradation that had been incurred in the industrialized countries. However, at this stage it was expressed in rather general terms, and lacked both proper definition and any accompanying guidance as to how it might be achieved in practice (Adams, 2001).

The developmentalist ideal: a new beginning for development

Political leaders in developing countries, on the other hand, had a different agenda during the 1980s. The last major political ideal that the governments of the developed countries had persuaded them to adopt was the notion of ‘development’, by which they would replicate the success of developed countries. From the perspective of the developed countries, this was intended as a well-meaning attempt to reduce the gap that separated them from the poorer countries of the world and thereby increase intra-generational equity. The developed world also backed up its advice with financial aid. However, with a few notable exceptions such as South Korea and Taiwan, most developing countries failed to realize the development ideal. They still suffered from poverty, famine and ill health, and so were in no mood to adopt the new environmental goal that had become popular in developed countries or the supposedly more realistic ideal of sustainable development. Developed countries had become wealthy by despoiling their environments and those of developing countries too. So it was seen as hypocritical of the former now to ask developing countries to protect their environments and control population growth at the expense of the chance of economic development. Indeed, in some countries, such as Malaysia, governments saw population growth as vital if they were to achieve the kind of development that they wanted.

Development planners had already responded to slow rates of development by rethinking the strategies they employed. The initial ‘top-down’ modernization strategies of the 1950s and 1960s, which equated economic development with economic growth and relied on the centrally directed expansion of industry and commerce to generate more income for the whole country, had not been generally successful. Where they had succeeded, the benefits had often accrued disproportionately to foreign investors and already powerful and affluent indigenous elites. So during the 1970s new ‘bottom-up’ participatory strategies were introduced that addressed the requirements of the poorest people first, by attempting to meet the basic needs of specific local populations for water and sanitation, shelter, food, fuel, income and employment. However, the benefits of this new approach were not immediately visible to the rich elite and government leaders. The growth in income that stemmed from the increase in commodity prices in the 1970s had been short lived, and many developing countries now faced a debt crisis because they could not repay the massive development loans they had taken out in the 1970s.

The governments of developing countries, therefore, also wanted a new development ideal. But their priority was for a type of development that could be sustained over a long period of time, rather than brief periods of economic growth, as experienced in the 1970s, followed by periods of stagnation. This would allow them to rid their countries of the scourges of poverty, famine and ill health, and to replicate the modern societies they could see in developed countries.

Some of the more astute government leaders had been influenced by new political economy theories, such as that proposed by Frank (1969). These argued that developing countries were in an inevitable state of economic dependency on developed countries, since the very structure of the world economy put them at a severe disadvantage. A fundamental duality had been created between a politically powerful and economically wealthy Core – originally centred in Europe, but later extending to North America and East Asia – and a dependent Periphery. Within this Periphery local economic and social systems were vulnerable to disruption and destruction to meet the roles allotted to them within the global system, chiefly as suppliers of raw materials to the industrial Core. So changing from top-down to bottom-up strategies would have little impact on poverty because it would only treat the symptoms of uneven global development and not its causes.

The most strident critics even claimed that development was a ‘cruel hoax’ (Esteva, 1992) imposed on developing countries by their developed counterparts, whose sole aim was to extract their economic surplus and leave them in poverty. Any attempt by the poorer countries of the world to follow the path of economic modernization undertaken by developed countries, and to participate in the world trading system, could only, in their view, lead to further underdevelopment because the structure of the world economic system was biased against them. This would divert the bulk of any income they generated to the developed countries, making it unavailable to fund their own development. The ideal of ‘development as progress’ was therefore an illusion promoted by developed countries to perpetuate a pattern of exploitation that was only transformed, not replaced, when developing countries gained political independence from the industrialized countries that had colonized them.

If correct, such thinking would indicate that only a fundamental change in the economic and political relationships between North and South could ensure real and lasting improvement in the social and economic fortunes of the world’s poor. This was the basic argument of the Brandt Commission (1980) report, North-South: A Programme for Survival. The report called for more development in developing countries, and for a new spirit of global togetherness to bridge the North–South divide, thus ensuring greater equity in world development, finance and trade. But these idealistic proposals came to nothing. In response, leading politicians in developing countries became more assertive. They believed that a necessary precondition for sustained future development was that developed countries should offer greater compensation for the exploitation suffered during the colonial era. This would require hard cash in the form of more official aid and the removal of trade barriers. The latter would allow them to supply manufactured goods to the markets of the industrialized world, thereby reducing their dependence on exporting primary commodities of low and variable value.

Sustainable Development as an Ambiguous Compromise

The Brundtland Report

In an attempt to reconcile these two different perceptions of development, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly established the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway. The solution proposed in the report of the ‘Brundtland Commission’ (WCED, 1987), as it became known, was to aim for sustainable development, which it defined as:

[Development that] meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs . . . It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given, and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.

This gave a new meaning to the term ‘sustainable development’ from that identified by IUCN seven years earlier. It recognized the need to ensure inter-generational equity by minimizing the harmful environmental impacts of human activities, in deference to the concerns of the developed countries. However, its primary aim was to meet the needs of the developing countries by reducing poverty. This should have happened already, of course, if these countries had become more economically developed. However, for the reasons given above, many of them had not, and in calling for poverty reduction, the Brundtland Commission added an important new intragenerational equity element to sustainable development. It argued that environmental degradation would continue unless poverty and inequality in developing countries were addressed urgently. Poor people who are desperate for food, fuel or income cannot always afford to have regard for the future environmental consequences of their actions. Consequently, economic growth must continue in order to alleviate poverty and maintain development. T...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction Alan Grainger
• 2 Geography and Sustainable Development Martin Purvis
• 3 The Role of Spatial Scale and Spatial Interactions in Sustainable Development Alan Grainger
• 4 Linking the Local to the Global: Can Sustainable Development Work in Practice? John Soussan
• 5 Forecasting Urban Futures: A Systems Analytical Perspective on the Development of Sustainable Urban Regions Gordon Mitchell
• 6 Making Cities More Sustainable: People, Plans and Participation Rachael Unsworth
• 7 Business, Capital and Sustainable Economic Development Martin Purvis
• 8 Sustainable Agriculture for the 21st Century Martin Purvis and Richard Smith
• 9 Sustaining the Flow: Japanese Waterways and New Paradigms of Development Paul Waley and Martin Purvis
• 10 Sustainable Futures for the Arctic North Ken Atkinson
• 11 Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development Martin Purvis
• 12 Sustainable Development and International Relations Alan Grainger
• 13 Future Perspectives: Developing Sustainable Development Martin Purvis and Alan Grainger
• References
• Index