Saving Sustainability

AuthorKeith H. Hirokawa
Pages261-275
261
Chapter 14:
Saving Sustainability
Keith H. Hirokawa
I. Introduction
Advocates of sustainability are being asked to defend sustainability against
eorts to undermine its credibility. One ar ticle cha rges, albeit in a slightly
apologetic tone:
is ar ticle is not argu ing that sustai nability is a bad idea, it is ar guing that
it is an increasingly futile one at anything but the la rgest and most general
of sca les. For pur poses of day-to-d ay environmental regulation and natural
resources mana gement, climate change requires both t hat we replace goals of
sustainabil ity with something else and that we expand our awareness of multi-
scalar interac tions 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 “greenwashing.” e concept of sustainability is now struggling
for its survival.
is chapter considers den itional challenges to current sustainability
programs, with an eye on saving the concept of sustainability. is chapter
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 chapter takes
issue with these critiques by identifying a more functional denition of sus-
tainability— one that suggests 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. W hat sustainability adds to governance
is a framework for managing change: susta inability is “more a means than an
end, and human well-being—rather tha n prosperity—is the primary goal of
society and public policy.”2
1. Robin Kundis Craig & Melinda Harm Benson, Replacing Sustainability, 46 A L. R. 841,
860–61 (2013).
2. Robert Paehlke, Environmental Sustainability and Urban Life i n America, in E
P: N D    T-F C 58 (Michael E. Kra ft & Norman J.
Vig eds., 2003); see also T P ’ C  S D, T 

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