Saving Sustainability

• Date: 01 February 2016

2-2016 NEWS & ANALYSIS 46 ELR 10151

Saving

Sustainability

by Keith H. Hirokawa

Keith Hirokawa is a Professor of Law at Albany Law School.

Summary

is Article is adapted from Chapter Fourteen of

Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change

Challenge, edited by Jessica Owley and Keith Hiro-

kawa and published by ELI Press. e author responds

to critics of the concept of sustainability, and argues

for its continued relevance by identifying a functional

denition of sustainability as a framework for man-

aging change. Contrary to the critics, sustainability

programs do not rely on static conceptions of current

circumstances or future conditions, but apply eco-

nomic, environmental, and social considerations to a

changing landscape. ey utilize pragmatic, exible

ideas such as ecosystem services valuation to identify

trade os in our interactions with ecosystems. Even if

adaptation is considered as a candidate governance tool

for coping with unpredictable and extreme changes in

the environment, it must face the same uncertainty as

sustainability programs.

Advocates of sustainability are being asked to defend

sustainability against eorts to undermine its cred-

ibility. One article charges, albeit in a slightly apol-

ogetic tone:

is article is not arguing t hat sustain ability is a bad idea,

it is arguing that it is an increasingly futile one at any-

thing but t he largest and most g eneral of sca les. For pur-

poses of day-to-day environmental regulat ion and natura l

resources management, cli mate change requires both that

we replace goals of sustai nability with something else and

that we expand our aw areness of multi-scalar interactions

and consequences.1

is “futility” charge follows decades of criticisms about

the vague and hence impractical character of the term, as

well as the term’s openness to misuse and “greenwash-

ing.” e concept of sustainability is now struggling for

its survival.

is Article considers denitional challenges to current

sustainability programs, with an eye on saving the concept

of sustainability. It accepts the sincerity of the critiques,

at least as to what they purport to show. e critiques are

rigorous and expose signicant problems in many of the

applications of the sustainability concept. Nonetheless,

this Article takes issue with these critiques by identifying a

more functional denition of sustainability— one that sug-

gests but does not adopt ideals, one that manages but does

not dictate policy responses, and one that relies on a specic

but non-reductionist picture of nature. What sustainability

adds to governance is a framework for managing change:

sustainability is “more a means than an end, and human

well-being—rather than prosperity—is the primary goal of

society and public policy.”2

I. Unsustainable Def‌initions: The Case

Against Sustainability in a Climate

Change Era

e Brundtland Report sug gested that governments

adopt a decisionmak ing f ramework in wh ich natural

resource advantages are subject to equitable distribution.

e report states:

1. Robin Kundis Craig & Melinda Harm Benson, Replacing Sustainability, 46

A L. R. 841, 860-61 (2013).

2. Robert Paehlke, Env ironmental Sustainability and Urban Life in Ameri ca,

in E  P: N D    T-F

C 58 (Michael E. Kraft & Norman J. Vig eds., 2003 ); see also

T P’ C  S D , T 

S A: A P , O,  

H E   21 C  (1999) (“A sustainable

United States will have a growing economy t hat provides equitable op-

portunities for satisfying livelihoods and a sa fe, healthy, high quality of

life for current and future generations.”).

Copyright © 2016 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.