Saving Sustainability

• Author: Keith H. Hirokawa
• Pages: 261-275

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 