Sustainability in development policy formation.

• Author: Guimaraes, Roberto P.
• Position: THE POLITICS AND ETHICS OF "SUSTAINABILITY" AS A NEW PARADIGM FOR PUBLIC POLICY FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

Basic dimensions of sustainable development policies

Despite the fact that the true ecological transition began more than nine thousand years ago, and that ecopolitics has been with us since the beginnings of time--after all, if "before it was chaos" (not to be confused with a biblical reference to the existence of economists before the creation ... we simply point out to the extreme entropy of the Big Bang), it is also a fact that Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden ostensibly due to an ecological act ...--only recently have we awakened to the need to reckon with sustainability. It is true that the concern with the deterioration of natural systems is almost so old as modern human being presence in the planet. Plato (1945), for example, already warned his contemporaries for the serious consequences of the deforestation and of overgrazing more than 2300 years ago.

The "modern" notion of sustainability, however, has its origin in the international debate which begun in 1972 in Stockholm and consolidated twenty years later in Rio de Janeiro. Notwithstanding the variety of interpretations found in the literature and in political speech, the great majority of conceptions represent variations on the definition suggested by the World Commission on Environment and Development, presided by then Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland (1987). Sustainable development is that which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the possibilities of future generations to satisfy their own needs.

The often repeated statement that human beings constitute the center and the raison d'etre of development calls for a new development style that is environmentally sustainable in the access and use of natural resources and in the preservation of biodiversity; that is socially sustainable in the reduction of poverty and inequality and in promoting social justice; that is culturally sustainable in the conservation of the system of values, practices and symbols of identity that, in spite of their permanent evolution, determine national integration through time; and that it is politically sustainable by deepening democracy and guaranteeing access and participation of all sectors of society in public decision-making. This new development style must be guided by a new development ethics, one in which the economic objectives of growth are subordinated to the laws governing the operation of natural systems, subordinated as well to the criteria of human dignity and of improvement in the quality of people's life.

Let us briefly specify this definition in order to unveil the basic components of the new development paradigm, and to glimpse at their implications for the formulation of public policies. Certainly, the interpretation introduced here refers to a development paradigm and not of growth. This seems justified for two key reasons. First of all, to allow for a clear intergenerational and ecological limit to the process of economic growth. Contradicting the commonly accepted notion that sustainable development cannot be attained without growth--a conceptual trap that not even the Brundtland Report itself was able to avoid (see for example, Goodland et al., 1992)--the paradigm of sustainability assumes that growth, defined mostly as monetary increments of the product, and as we have been experiencing it, constitutes an intrinsic component of the insustainability of the current style. In the words of Roefie Hueting, "the less we need is an increment in national income" (Hueting, 1990).

This new paradigm emphasizes that development must produce qualitative changes in the quality of life of human beings. More than the mercantile goods and services exchanged in the market, these aspects include the social, cultural and aesthetic dimensions of meeting material and spiritual needs. It seems warranted to reproduce here the wise observations of Herman Daly (1991) with respect to the displacement of growth as the ultimate goal of development by a process of qualitative changes:

"The recognition of the impossible is the foundation of science. It is impossible to travel at more speed than that of light, to create or to destroy matter energy to build a machine of perpetual movement, etc. Respecting the theorems of the impossible avoids wasting resources in projects doomed to fail. This is the reason why economists should have a great interest in the theorems of the impossible, particularly the one that demonstrates that its is impossible for the world to grow free of poverty and environmental degradation. In other words, sustainable growth is impossible. In its physical dimensions, the economy is not an open subsystem of the Earth's ecosystem, which is finite, not expanding and materially closed. When the economic subsystem grows, it incorporates a greater proportion of the total ecosystem, having as its limits one hundred percent, if not before. Therefore, growth is not sustainable. The term sustainable growth, applied to the economy, is a bad oxymoron; self contradictory in prose and not evocative at all as poetry" (cited, in Spanish in Elizalde, 1996). Secondly, in addition to what has just been said, the sustainability of development will be assured inasmuch as this process is able to preserve the integrity of the natural processes that guarantee energy and material flows in the biosphere, while at the same time preserving the biodiversity of the planet. This last aspect is of utmost importance because it means that, to be sustainable, development has to move from the current anthropocentrism to biopluralism, granting other species the same onthologic right to life. In short, the environmental sustainability of development refers as much to the physical basis of growth, i.e., the conservation of natural resources incorporated into the production, as it refers to the carrying capacity of ecosystems--the ability of nature to absorb waste and to recover from the human interventions.

Thirdly, it is clearly not enough for development to promote qualitative changes in human well being and to guarantee ecosystemic integrity of the planet to be sustainable. One should keep in mind that "in situations of extreme poverty, the impoverished individual, marginalized or excluded from society and from the national economy, does not have any commitment to avoid environmental degradation if society is not able to thwart his or her own deterioration as a human being" (Guimaraes, 1991b:24). Particularly in developing countries, with serious problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion, the social foundations of sustainability suppose as basic...