Economics and Sustainability

Social-Ecological Perspectives

Karl Bruckmeier

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030566272
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política medioambiental y energética

This textbook provides an overview of economic perspectives on sustainability. It synthesises economic, ecological and interdisciplinary sustainability research and by applying an integrated social-ecological and economic framework, demonstrates how this research can be improved and implemented in practice.
Split into three parts, the book begins by introducing a range of topics forming the basis of knowledge needed to understand the varying sustainability discourses in economics, ecology and interdisciplinary sustainability research. Chapters cover the political context of sustainability; the history of sustainability in European environmental discourses dating back to the seventeenth century; as well as various problems and forms of interdisciplinary knowledge integration and synthesis in the sustainability process. Part II reviews the core economic themes relevant to sustainable development including natural resource management, environmentaleconomics and ecological economics. Also highlighted are often neglected issues such as conflicts, disasters and interrelated crises on the way towards sustainability. The chapters in Part III discuss the future of the sustainability process. They argue for the necessity of overhauling the relationship between science and practice; explore failures and the unforeseen difficulties of sustainability transformation; and discuss how to enable a long term sustainability process that reaches into the distant future.
An innovative resource for a broad range of interdisciplinary programmes on sustainability. The book will be an invaluable reference for master and PhD students, instructors, researchers and practitioners in sustainability governance.

Part IThe Sustainability Process: Context and Scope

© The Author(s) 2020

K. BruckmeierEconomics and Sustainabilityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56627-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Policy Context of the Sustainability Discourse

Karl Bruckmeier¹

(1)

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

End Abstract

The political framing of sustainability is reviewed in this chapter in four stages: (a) the genesis of the political and public sustainability discourse; (b) the description of global sustainability problems in the seminal document, the Brundtland Report (UN 1987); (c) the national and international sustainability policies developing after the Brundtland Report; and (d) the use of economic knowledge in the sustainability discourse (i.e. in the policy perspective that frames the discourse). The key concept of sustainability cannot be clarified with a single and simple definition, but only through discussion of variants from three complementary perspectives: the policy context, the historical context, and the knowledge context in which the terminology of sustainability and sustainable development (see Glossary) unfolds.

Chapter 2 reviews the history of the sustainability discourse within modern European society since the seventeenth century. Chapter 3 analyses the interdisciplinary knowledge contexts and the problems of knowledge integration in the sustainability discourse and policy process. These chapters provide a foundation for the detailed discussion of economic knowledge in the second part of the book, where the discourses of natural resource management, environmental and ecological economics are reviewed to show how economic knowledge can be integrated with other types of knowledge in the sustainability process.

The global sustainability discourse (Fig. 1.1) is multifaceted and complex; it faces myriad problems and has been developed through controversy, using knowledge from many disciplines, by many actors and stakeholders with conflicting interests, based on asymmetrical power relations, and facing many obstacles. Since the late 1980s few of the problems addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations have been overcome. The majority of the problems will need to be dealt with in the future as part of a long process of transforming society and the economy.

Fig. 1.1

The policy cycles of the sustainability process

The terminological problems associated with the discussion of sustainability cannot be resolved with a simple definition of sustainability as provided in the Brundtland Report (UN 1987). Several connected concepts need to be clarified: there are multiple definitions and interpretations of sustainable development and the concepts for describing modern society and the economy; no consensus about the terminology can be found in academic and political debates (Bruckmeier 2016: 130ff). To deal pragmatically with the abstract and inexact nature of terms such as sustainability and the nature of today’s society and economy, global change and globalisation are used in all chapters as general terms without exact definitions. Short definitions of the terms are found in the glossary that follows Chap. 10. In each chapter the concepts are defined according to the theories and approaches that are discussed. The sustainability discourse cannot work with singular and simple definitions; open and pluralistic concepts are necessary, as with that of sustainability itself (see Box 1.1), or that of modern society, which in the social scientific and economic literature includes manifold descriptive facets: agricultural, industrial, capitalist society, post-industrial and post-capitalist society, civil society, world society and world system (see Glossary), knowledge or information society; the modern economy can be described with similar terms.

Box 1.1 “Sustainability”: The Terminology

The notions of sustainability and sustainable development are used in different ways. In this book the discourse of sustainability is reviewed and discussed with the guiding concepts of intra- and intergenerational solidarity in resource use (Brundtland Report: UN 1987) and the three-dimensional concept of social, economic and environmental sustainability (the mainstream variant in use since the Johannesburg Summit of 2002). The concepts were created in the policy process for the purposes of initiating and guiding changes in economic resource use practices. Other definitions and scientific interpretations are discussed in the following chapters. The competing and changing interpretations of the abstract terms demonstrate the need for continuous reflection, discussion and review of the terms in the scientific and political sustainability discourses.

To structure the analysis of the multilayered sustainability theme, the concepts of discourse, policy (or governance) and process are used: discourse means the knowledge process in the scientific and public political debates of sustainable development; policy refers to the political decisions, programmes and regulations that direct the transitions to sustainability; process implies the broader social process of sustainable development, beyond policies, including activities of cultural, economic and environmental movements and organisations in the transition to sustainability, and the everyday processes and changes of the routines in social life.

The sustainability discourse proceeds without a single, specific, scientifically defined concept. Sustainable development is a bridging concept: of discursive and pluralistic nature, open to different interpretations and strategies of action. From an epistemological perspective sustainable development is an “essentially contested concept”; continuous controversies over the interpretation of the term arise depending on the scientific or political views and interests of the discourse participants. In the interdisciplinary sustainability discourse the process-quality of sustainable development as social, economic and ecological transition or transformation is highlighted. Sustainability is not a static state that can be achieved once and forever: a sustainable economy and society is continually developing and changing without exceeding its natural resource base.

To deal with essentially contested concepts such as sustainability, see the first learning exercise described at the end of the chapter.

Sources: Own text

Interdisciplinary knowledge practices create difficulties in the sustainability discourse when natural and social scientific concepts are used by scientists, decision-makers and stakeholders with different specialisations and interests. Within the scientific disciplines terminologies are not always standardised, and theoretical concepts and explanations often compete with those of other theories. Sustainability and sustainable development are examples of “essentially contested concepts” (Gallie 1956): abstract terms which can be interpreted in many ways by different people with different values and worldviews; they develop through collective learning and continuous improvement of arguments (see learning exercise one, described in the appendix of the chapter). As in everyday communication in the social lifeworld, the terms are not always clearly defined, as has been shown in ethnomethodological studies of language use in sociology (Garfinkel 1967). Nevertheless, communication and mutual understanding are possible when rules of communication are constructed spontaneously by participants, as part of their communication, not through explicit or scientific definition. The sustainability process is connected with the social lifeworld of the participants; it eventually becomes a process of changing ways of living and consumption—moving away from the imperial mode of living in industrialised countries: a mode of living where a minority of the global population consumes the largest part of global resources; this is possible through their unequal wealth and the asymmetric power relations between the industrialised Western countries and the non-industrialised countries (Brand and Wissen 2013).

1.1 Genesis of the Political and Public Sustainability Discourse

The global sustainability discourse began with the report “Our Common Future” of the World Commission on Environment and Development (UN 1987), known as the Brundtland Report. The notion of sustainable development came into use earlier, in the 1970s, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), held in Stockholm in 1972 and organised by the United Nations. Earlier global reports had set the framework for the sustainability discourse. The report “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al. 1972; updated: Meadows et al. 1992) mandated by the Club of Rome introduced the issues of economic growth, population growth, overuse of natural resources and pollution into public and political debates. In the Cocoyoc Declaration of 1974 (Ward 1975), scientists called for reform of the economic order, critically discussing global natural resource use, environmental degradation and unequal development. The Report “What Now?” (Dag Hammarskjöld Report 1975) reviewed global development and international cooperation, arguing for global sharing and redistribution of resources. The report of the North–South Commission (Brandt 1980) “Securing the Survival” analysed the great chasm between the North (industrialised countries) and the South (developing countries) and argued for a transfer of resources from the North to the South. The diagnosis of problems found here anticipates ideas later developed in the Brundtland Report: global environmental problems are caused mainly by the growth of industrial economies, but also by global population growth; growth threatens the wellbeing and survival of future generations; global cooperation is necessary to protect the earth’s atmosphere and other global commons and to prevent irreversible ecological damage. The report initiated a debate about the future global economy in terms of a sharing economy, relaunched in 2012 with the report “Financing the Global Sharing Economy” (STWR 2012). None of the global reports that preceded it were as influential as the Brundtland Report. The earlier reports were more critical in their analyses, their messages were often perceived as dystopian and they did not take the type of “soft diplomacy” approach seen in “Our Common Future”. Its formulation of sustainable development, an idea that many could support, seemed to exude optimism, pushing the negative messages into the background.

The Brundtland Report initiated a global North–South policy to respond to problems of the uneven use, distribution and overuse of natural resources and global environmental pollution. The uneven development in the global economy (see Box 1.2) became the guiding theme in the sustainability discourse. Whereas the idea of sustainable development found global consensus among governmental and non-governmental organisations, the policy process became complicated, mainly because of the difficulties of changing the political and economic power relations in the modern world system.

Box 1.2 Genesis of the Political Sustainability Discourse: Global Reports About Environment and Development

1. 1.
   “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al. 1972): economic growth is connected with population growth, growth of natural resource use and of environmental pollution; global growth processes have become exponential, excee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I. The Sustainability Process: Context and Scope
• Part II. Economic and Ecological Knowledge in the Sustainability Process
• Part III. The Future: Sustainability Transformation
• Back Matter