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An Introduction To Sustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot

An Introduction To Sustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot An Introduction To Sustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot An Introduction To Sustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot

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An Introduction to Sustainable Development ‘This well-written and accessible text provides students with an up-to-date comprehensive guide to sustainable development. It is particularly effective in highlighting the tensions and challenges between development theory, policy and practice.’ Dr Samantha Punch, University of Stirling ‘An Introduction to Sustainable Development is an eminently readable and wide-ranging text, ideal for undergraduate students or anyone else interested in the current issues and debates surrounding sustainable development.’ Thomas Perreault, Syracuse University Sustainable development continues to be the key idea around which environment and development are structured. In addition, sustainable development is now stated as a principal policy goal of many more institutions in development than at any previous time. But the last decade has also witnessed development reversals and accelerated environmental degradation in particular places. This extensively revised third edition continues to provide an accessible introduction to the principal ideas behind and practices flowing from the notion of sustainable development with a particular focus on the developing world. The new edition encompasses greater critical reflection on the motives underpinning and changes seen in the pursuit of sustainable development. The inherently political and conflicting nature of sustainable development and the difficult challenges it thereby presents for local communities through to multilateral institutions are highlighted. Explicit attention is given to the significance of place and difference in shaping the prospects of sustainability including within the context of a globalising world economy. Progress in the arena of developing indicators of sustainable development is also incorporated. Containing many new boxed case studies, discussion questions, chapter summaries and guides for further reading, this text provides an invaluable introduction to the characteristics, challenges and opportunities of sustainable development. Jennifer A. Elliott is Principal Lecturer in Geography at the University of Brighton.
Routledge Perspectives on Development Series Editor: Professor Tony Binns, University of Otago The Perspectives on Development series will provide an invaluable, up-to-date and refreshing approach to key development issues for academics and students working in the field of development, in disciplines such as anthropology, economics, geography, international relations, politics and sociology. The series will also be of particular interest to those working in interdisciplinary fields, such as area studies (African, Asian and Latin American Studies), development studies, rural and urban studies, travel and tourism. If you would like to submit a book proposal for the series, please contact Tony Binns on j.a.binns@geography.otago.ac.nz Published: An Introduction to Sustainable Development, 3rd edition Jennifer A. Elliott HB 0415–335582, PB 0415–335590 Children, Youth and Development Nicola Ansell HB 0415–287685, PB 0415–287693 Environmental Management and Development Chris Barrow HB 0415–280834, PB 0415–280842 Gender and Development Janet Henshall Momsen HB 0415–266890, PB 0415–266904 Rural–Urban Interactions in the Developing World Kenneth Lynch HB 0415–258707, PB 0415–258715 Theories and Practices of Development Katie Willis HB 0415–300525, PB 0415–300533 Third World Cities, 2nd edition David W. Drakakis-Smith HB 0415–19881X, PB 0415–198828 Forthcoming: Cities and Development Jo Beall Health and Development Hazel Barrett Population and Development W.T.S. Gould Tourism and Development Richard Sharpley and David J. Telfer Local Knowledge, Environment and Development Tony Binns, Christo Fabricius and Etienne Nel Participation and Development Andrea Cornwall
Routledge Perspectives on Development Series An Introduction to Sustainable Development Third edition Jennifer A. Elliott
First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Jennifer A. Elliott All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Elliott, Jennifer A., 1962– An introduction to sustainable development / Jennifer A. Elliott.– 3rd ed. p. cm. -- (Routledge perspectives on development) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–415–33558–2 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 0–415–33559–0 (papercover : alk. paper) 1. Sustainable development – Developing countries. 2. Environmental policy – Developing countries. I Title. II Series. HC59.72.E5E43 2005 338.9′27′091724–dc22 2005004404 ISBN10: 0–415–33558–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–33559–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–33558–4 (hbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–33559–1 (pbk) This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
In memory of my Dad
Contents List of plates viii List of figures x List of tables xiii List of boxes xv Acknowledgements xvi Introduction 1 1 What is sustainable development? 7 2 The challenges of sustainable development 44 3 Actors and actions in sustainable development 90 4 Sustainable rural livelihoods 140 5 Sustainable urban livelihoods 189 6 Sustainable development in the developing world: an assessment 235 References 262 Index 279
Plates 1.1 Promoting the messages of sustainable development 12 a. Sign on entry to Kang, Botswana b. VOYCE (Views of Young Concerned Environmentalists) Four Seasons Mural, Brighton, England 1.2 The inevitable consequences of development? Industrial air pollution 20 1.3 The pollution of poverty 21 a. Hazardous housing on a Calcutta roadside b. Washing in the Jakarta floods 2.1 The challenges of aridity to human settlement 62 a. Northern Nigeria b. Southern Tunisia 2.2 Delivering basic urban needs 65 a. Water in Jakarta, Indonesia b. Fuel in Kairouan, Tunisia 3.1 Generating awareness of HIV/Aids in Africa 124 a. Zambia b. South Africa 3.2 NGO–state collaboration in slum upgrading, Delhi, India 135 4.1 Income opportunities in rural areas outside agriculture 147 a. Wage employment in brick-making, India b. Packing flowers, Kenya c. Desert tourism, Tunisia 4.2 Cash crops for export 154 a. Large-scale tea production, Indonesia b. Tobacco production, Zimbabwe 4.3 Harnessing scarce water resources for agricultural production in Tunisia 167 a. Tabia and jessour irrigation b. Water control in the El Guettar oasis
4.4 Women in environmental management 178 a. Fuelwood collection, Zimbabwe b. Organising the community: a Lampungese wedding c. Preparing fields for agriculture, The Gambia 5.1 Urban informal income opportunities 198 a. Door-to-door welding, Harare, Zimbabwe b. Garment production, Kairouan, Tunisia c. Food trading/transport, Calcutta, India 5.2 Low-income housing 202 a. Bangkok squatter settlement b. Public housing, Harare c. Tenement blocks, Calcutta 5.3 Making a living through waste, Indonesia 210 5.4 Vehicular pollution, Calcutta 220 List of Plates • ix
Figures 1.1 Defining and interpreting the contested concept of sustainable development 10 1.2 Critical objectives and necessary conditions for sustainable development as identified by the WCED 13 1.3 The objectives of sustainable development 13 1.4 The stages of economic development as modelled by Rostow 17 1.5 The Frank model of underdevelopment 19 1.6 Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services, by world region 23 1.7 The global reach of the World Bank 26 1.8 The principal instruments of structural adjustment 27 1.9 Internet users per 1,000 population, 2001 28 1.10 The World Conservation Strategy objectives of conservation 34 1.11 The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development: the challenges we face 38 1.12 The Millennium Development Goals and Targets 40 2.1 Total global water use, 1940–2000 46 2.2 Per capita global water use, 1940–2000 47 2.3 Municipal waste management in the European Union 49 2.4 Resource dependence and development 51 2.5 Share of world population and fossil fuel consumption 55 2.6 The changing distribution of poverty in the developing world 58 2.7 Well-being as revealed through participatory poverty assessments 59 2.8 The poverty and environment connection 60 2.9 Children caught in conflict 67 2.10 Infant mortality in England and Wales 68 2.11 Fire and floods worldwide 73
2.12 Carbon dioxide emissions: share of world total 78 2.13 Responsibility for net emissions of greenhouse gases 79 a. as calculated by the World Resources Institute b. as calculated by the Centre for Science and Environment 2.14 The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) 81 2.15 The progress of the Chernobyl plume 81 2.16 Capacities of influence in trade negotiations 83 3.1 Forces and actors in environmental outcomes 92 3.2 Questioning the UK government’s commitment to fighting poverty 102 3.3 The Environmental and Natural Resources Management lending at the World Bank 104 3.4 The Oxfam ‘Making Trade Fair’ campaign 107 3.5 Options and environmental issues in raising trade and foreign exchange 108 3.6 Corporate influence in global affairs 114 3.7 Business tools for environmental accountability 117 3.8 The costs and benefits of borrowing 119 3.9 The relationship between economic growth and adjustment lending 120 3.10 Pressures of adjustment on the environment 121 3.11 Examples of environmental taxes 130 3.12 Civil society participation in environmental summits 133 4.1 The multifunctional role of agriculture 141 4.2 Sources of rural livelihood 146 4.3 Concepts of endowment and entitlement 149 4.4 The hierarchy of agro-ecosystems 150 4.5 The major forms of incorporation of agriculture into the world economy 152 4.6 The concerns over GMOs 161 4.7 Aspects of the backlash against industrialised agriculture: the growth of organic farming and Fair Trade products 162 4.8 Responses to food deficit 164 4.9 Agricultural technologies with high potential sustainability 166 4.10 Lessons for the achievement of sustainable rural livelihoods 168 4.11 The contrasting ‘blueprint’ and ‘learning process’ approaches to rural development 169 4.12 Where farmers’ priorities might diverge from those of scientists 170 List of Figures • xi
4.13 The major components of participatory learning and action 173 4.14 Women’s substantial interest in the environment 176 4.15 Women organising to manage environmental resources 177 4.16 Social capital formation in natural resource management 183 5.1 Levels of urbanisation and predicted change 190 5.2 The Green and Brown urban environmental agendas 192 5.3 The world’s largest urban agglomerations in 2000 196 5.4 Informal sector activities 200 5.5 Opportunities and challenges of informal sector employment 201 5.6 The deprivations associated with urban poverty 204 5.7 The health status of waste pickers in Bangalore in relation to non-pickers 207 5.8 The different kinds of rental and ‘owner occupation’ housing for low-income groups in cities of the developing world 209 5.9 The meaning of sustainable development as applied to urban centres 223 5.10 Common characteristics of sustainable urban development 228 5.11 Means for ensuring better access to environmental services by low-income groups 232 6.1 The headline indicators in the UK sustainable development strategy 239 6.2 The intentions of the national core set of indicators 240 6.3 Indicators for measuring sustainability 240 6.4 The Bellagio Principles for Assessment 241 6.5 The visions for trade in the future 252 6.6 Comparing the characteristics of community-based and donor initiatives 258 xii • List of Figures
Tables 1.1 Income ratios between rich and poor nations 22 1.2 Inward foreign direct investment, by major world region, 2000 29 2.1 International gaps in access to safe water supply and sanitation 55 2.2 Rural–urban gaps in access to improved drinking water 56 2.3 Access to basic water services in poor, middle-class and wealthy neighbourhoods of Accra, Ghana, 1991–2 56 2.4 Regional distribution of people living on fragile land 61 2.5 Child mortality, selected countries 67 2.6 The state and corporate power 75 2.7 Carbon dioxide emissions: per capita 78 3.1 Selected Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) 93 3.2 Resource flows to and from developing countries 100 3.3 Destination of current GEF monies by thematic area 105 3.4 Cow power 113 3.5 Low incomes and high indebtedness 118 3.6 Government spending: education and debt servicing compared 120 3.7 The number of municipalities involved in Local Agenda 21 128 3.8 Increasing collaboration between the World Bank and NGOs 137 4.1 Aspects of the reality of rural living 142 4.2 Leading crop protection and biotechnology companies 155 5.1 Actual and predicted distribution of the world’s urban population, by region 195 5.2 Historical distribution of the world’s 100 largest cities 195 5.3 Industrialisation and employment in selected Latin American countries, 1963–9 197
5.4 Urban deaths from indoor air pollution 212 5.5 Proportion of urban population with improved water sources and sanitation facilities 213 5.6 Questioning environmental improvement 214 a. the adequacy of service b. the consistency of household supply xiv • List of Tables
Boxes A The unevenness of globalisation 28 B Modes of thought concerning humanity and nature 30 C The unexpected environmental impacts of development 47 D India’s missing millions 70 E Responsibility for global warming under debate 78 F The export of hazardous waste 84 G European Union Action Programmes and the environment 99 H Agenda 21 planning 128 I The impact of free trade on maize production in Mexico 150 J The deterioration of rural livelihoods 158 K Coping with drought: improved security or increased vulnerability? 163 L The value of indigenous technologies 172 M Building women’s rights in sustainable water management 180 N Community conservation in Lake Mburu National Park, Uganda 185 O Green and Brown environmental agendas 192 P Poverty and the environment within informal waste management activities 206 Q The Cochabamba water wars, Bolivia 215 R Maquila developments on the Mexico–US border 219 S The Society for the Promotion of Area Resources Centre (SPARC) in Mumbai 231
Acknowledgements I was pleased to be asked to write this third edition of this text. Most importantly, I am pleased that it is proving to be a useful introduction for students and others interested in this challenge of sustainable development in the developing world. I wrote the first edition whilst employed as a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare; the bulk of it completed whilst the university was closed by the government as students engaged in demonstrations over resources for their study. The materials on which I drew to compile that original edition (and indeed those of the students with whom I was working in the early 1990s) were very limited; sustainable development was a relatively new idea for everyone and the impact of two successive years of drought were bigger concerns amongst my colleagues and for the people of Zimbabwe than the recently negotiated ‘Economic and Structural Adjustment Programme’. There was certainly no electronic access to academic journals nor online materials emanating from major institutions like the World Bank. Writing this third edition from Brighton in 2004, I think regularly on whether the aspirations of those students of geography in Zimbabwe whom I came to know are being realised now; whether the proliferation of writings and experiences on sustainable development, the structural reforms that their country has gone through, and the advances in information technology that I have access to, have made a positive difference in their lives. I am sure that many people could answer in the negative (without even reading this book). However, that is another book. I hope that this edition will continue to provide a useful introduction to some of the principal ideas, debates, changes seen, lessons being learnt and future challenges and opportunities underpinning the notion and practice of sustainable development as understood in relation to developing countries. With each edition the task of writing
has become harder as the literature has expanded and fundamentally as the geographies of those components are revealed. In writing this third edition, I continue to be thankful for the supportive environment in which I work at the University of Brighton and particularly the friendship of my colleagues. My biggest thanks are to my family who will be those most pleased that this edition has been completed. The author and publisher would like to thank the following for granting permission to reproduce material in this work: David Simonds for Figure 3.2; Earthscan Publications Ltd for Figure 5.6; the Guardian newspaper for Table 3.4. Acknowledgements • xvii
Introduction This book is concerned with the continued challenges and opportunities of finding sustainable patterns and processes of development within the international community for the future. Since the publication of the first edition of this text in 1994, it is evident that much has been learnt in terms of the principles behind and the characteristics of policies, programmes and projects that appear to be more sustainable than previous such interventions, and certainly in terms of how such trends can be monitored and evaluated. However, whilst the idea of sustainable development may be widely recognised by the public, academics and practitioners in many disciplines and fields, both in the developing and more industrialised countries, there continue to be many patterns of human welfare and the status of environmental resources worldwide that suggest that further scrutiny and efforts are required. Too often, development processes are characterised by the loss or degradation of primary environmental resources. In many countries, ‘development reversals’ are being seen, with rising proportions of people below basic poverty lines and falling life expectancies, for example. The concern continues to be that many of the patterns and processes of development will not be able to supply the needs of the world’s population into the future and cannot deliver the higher standards of living to the rising numbers of people essential to the conservation of the environment. The pursuit of sustainable development is now stated as a principal policy goal of many of the major institutions of the world including the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade
Organisation. This is confirmation of how understanding of the global challenge of sustainable development has moved on to encompass the complex interdependencies of environmental, social and economic development. In addition, the context in which sustainable development is being sought in the twenty-first century is quite different from that of the 1990s. In particular, an increasingly globalised world has brought new challenges as well as opportunities for the environment and for development. New actors (such as transnational corporations and civil society organisations) and new technologies (particularly in communications), for example, now shape outcomes in resource development and management to a much greater extent than previously. Ensuring that processes of globalisation operate to reach the needs of the poor rather than to marginalise particular groups and places further, is central to the challenge of sustainable development currently. The primary focus of the book is the challenges and opportunities for sustainability in the less economically developed regions of the world. Fundamentally, this is because it is here that the majority of the world’s poor reside. This is not to suggest that sustainability is mostly a problem for the poor. Indeed, most pollution, for example, is a result of affluence, not poverty. Furthermore, the prospects of sustainable development in any one location are in part shaped by forces and decision-making which are often situated at great distances away such that it is impossible to consider the developing world in isolation from the wider global community. However, there are also particular and distinct issues of sustainability in the developing world that will be seen to lie in factors of both the natural and the human environment. For example, many countries of what can be termed the developing world are in the tropics where the boundary conditions on development, particularly in agriculture, are often quite different from those of temperate regions. These regions also encompass many of the world’s ‘fragile lands’, such as the major arid and semi-arid zones and forest ecosystems, where bio-physical factors in combination with social characteristics may make them particularly susceptible to degradation and make recovery from disturbance difficult. Large sections of the populations of these countries live in environments in which securing basic needs is extremely problematic and which may even be detrimental to human health. Not only do rising numbers of people in the developing world suffer the multiple deprivations associated with poverty, but they also live in countries that are becoming economically poorer and more indebted, for example. These factors of the human environment further combine 2 • Introduction
to create particular challenges and opportunities for sustainable development. In order to understand the characteristics of resource use or human conditions in the developing world and to allow more sustainable patterns to be supported, it is essential to identify the underlying processes of change. Some of these processes may operate solely at a local level, whilst others may impact across many places and constitute global forces of change. All to some degree, and in combination, shape the interactions between people and the environment (wherever they live) and the relationships between people in different places. It is for these reasons that sustainable development is a common challenge for the global community as a whole. In the course of this book, it will be seen that sustainable development in the future requires actions for change at all levels, addressing both the human and physical environments, through interventions in physical, political-economic and social processes. One of the primary aims of the book is to highlight the progress that has been made towards establishing new patterns and processes of development which are more sustainable in terms of the demands they make on the physical, ecological and cultural resources of the globe, and the characteristics of technology, societal organisation and economic production which underpin them. Understanding the characteristics of successful sustainable development projects will be essential for meeting the worldwide ongoing and evolving challenges of balancing present needs against those of the future. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, a lot has been learnt from ‘practice on the ground’ concerning the principles for actions that are more sustainable and the nature of the continued challenges. As the term ‘sustainable development’ reaches further into popular consciences worldwide and more institutions are stating sustainability as a major policy goal, there is a need to reflect critically on what is trying to be achieved and the inherently political nature of interventions in resource management towards these ends. The meaning and origins of the notion of sustainable development is traced in Chapter 1 within an analysis of thinking and practice in development theory and in environmentalism. Whilst the interdependence of future environment and development ends is recognised in both literatures, it is seen that substantial debate and contestation characterise both the theory and practice of sustainable development. The historical overview presented also confirms that the context within which environment and development are being pursued is changing rapidly, requiring continuous re-evaluation of Introduction • 3
the meaning of sustainable development as presented within particular schools of thinking and major international summits, for example. The chapter reveals some of the divergences as well as the commonalities within the global agenda of sustainable development. In Chapter 2, the impacts of past development processes on both people and the environments of the world are discussed in detail, providing a fuller insight into the nature of the challenges of sustainable development for individual actors and the various institutions of development. It is seen that development continues to depend heavily on natural resources for an increasing number of functions but that inequality in access to resources has also been a persistent and entrenched feature of past development patterns and processes. Such inequality is seen to underpin substantial human insecurity, conflict and premature deaths (as well as resource degradation) which confirm that development is not meeting the needs of current generations. In addition, the increasing global-scale impacts of human activities through, for example, climate warming raise very starkly the question of compromising the development opportunities of future generations. The inherently political nature of sustainable development is confirmed through consideration of a number of future challenges including questions of responsibility for environmental degradation and of sovereignty in the use of natural resources. In Chapter 3, the range of actions which have been taken at a variety of levels on behalf of some of the core institutions in development towards ensuring sustainability in the future are identified. Development is certainly no longer something undertaken principally by governments: the chapter highlights the expanded role of civil society organisations in recent years in delivering environmental improvements and development opportunities. Indeed, a central concern in the chapter is to consider how many institutions of development are changing what they do, but also how they are working in new ways, together, to address the integrated challenges of sustainable development. The chapter also considers a number of ‘cross-cutting’ issues of trade, aid and debt, that illustrate the ways in which people and places across the globe are interconnected but also how these issues operate to shape the capacities of particular actors in development. In Chapters 4 and 5, the particular challenges and opportunities of sustainable development in the developing world are considered in rural and urban contexts. It is quickly seen that the two sectors are not 4 • Introduction
distinct and that the environment and development concerns therein are often interrelated. Indeed, one of the limitations of past development policies has been their tendency to consider rural and urban areas separately and there is now much better understanding of the complex and multi-directional linkages between the two sectors that shape landscapes and livelihoods. However, important differences are also seen in rural and urban areas in terms of the nature of the immediate environmental problems and development concerns, the options for securing income and livelihood, the hazards and sources of instability of living and working in these sectors, and the specific opportunities for action. Yet the principles which are seen to be now guiding more sustainable development interventions in practice are regularly common to both rural and urban settings. For example, addressing the welfare needs of the poorest groups and building responsive and inclusive systems of research and development are identified as being essential to achieving the goals of development and conservation in both sectors. In Chapter 6, a number of core remaining challenges of sustainable development for the global community are highlighted. Data from the substantive chapters of the book are drawn together to assess whether a common future can be identified and whether the finances for poverty alleviation and sustainable development will be realised, for example. Assessing the progress made and the prospects for sustainable development has also been assisted substantially in recent years through the development and improvement of indicators of sustainability and systems for monitoring. These are also overviewed in the chapter. Since the publication of the first edition of this text, there have been many reminders of the very direct relationship between human society and the resources and environmental processes of the globe. Recently, these have included a tsunami (originating in an earthquake under the Indian Ocean) and a war in Iraq (that cannot be divorced entirely from the geography of oil resources). Both have led to the loss of thousands of lives and removed basic development opportunities for many more. Through this book, the challenges of sustainable development will certainly be seen to encompass better understanding of environmental processes, international collaboration in multi- lateral environmental agreements and the conservation of lands and forests, for example. But it will also be seen to include freedom from repression, the accountability of industry to stakeholders and the power of all individuals to participate in the decisions that shape the opportunities for their own development. Introduction • 5
1 What is sustainable development? Summary There are many different definitions of sustainable development coming from various disciplines and with different assumptions about the basic relationship between society and nature. Ideas of sustainable development have a long history in the literatures of both development and environmentalism. There have been a number of important international conferences within which actions towards sustainable development have been debated (and contested) at the highest levels of government. Sustainable development is widely accepted as a desirable policy objective amongst many institutions concerned with the future development of the resources of the globe. Ideas concerning the best way of achieving development have changed over time, but are rarely replaced entirely. Mainstream environmentalism encapsulates the dominant ideas surrounding society–environment relationships, but are not subscribed to by all interests, equally. Sustainable development is currently being pursued in the context of an increasingly globalised world, but one which is also characterised by poverty. The global challenge of sustainable development lies in complex interdependencies of environment, social and economic development. Introduction In 1984, the United Nations established an independent group of 22 people drawn from member states of both the developing and developed worlds, and charged them with identifying the long-term environmental strategies for the international community. In 1987, the World Conference on Environment and Development published their report entitled, ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED, 1987), often known as the ‘Brundtland Report’, after its chair, the then Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report used the term ‘sustainable development’ widely and defined it as ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (p. 43). The report is
said to have put sustainable development firmly into the political arena of international development thinking. Certainly, it has been translated into more than 24 languages (Finger, 1994) and its definition of the term continues to be that which is most widely used. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the ‘Earth Summit’, took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the time, it was the largest ever international conference held, with over 170 governments represented (Adams, 2001) and a further 2,500 NGOs and 8,000 accredited journalists attending (O’Riordan, 2000). The central aim was to identify the principles of an agenda for action towards sustainable development in the future. The challenge was seen to require consensus at the highest level, so that, for the first time, heads of state gathered to consider the environment. By this time, the term ‘sustainable development’ had also ‘gained a currency well beyond the confines of global environmental organisations’ (Adams, 1990: 2). Certainly in the developed world, the substantial media attention given to the serious environmental disturbances surrounding forest fires in Indonesia, flooding in the Americas, China and Bangladesh, and typhoons in South-East Asia, for example, brought questions of conservation and ideas of sustainability into the public vocabulary. In the fields of development and the environment, an evident consensus was emerging that sustainable development was an important rallying point for research and action and a desirable policy objective which should be striven for. However, it was evident through the decade of the 1990s, that there was substantial debate and contestation concerning the meaning and practice of sustainable development. For example, whilst the primary output of the Rio Conference, the huge ‘Agenda 21’ document, carried much political authority and moral force (Mather and Chapman, 1995) important tensions were evident through the proceedings at Rio such as between the environmental concerns of rich and poor countries, between those who wished to exploit resources and those who wished to conserve them, and between the development needs of current generations and those of the future. For some, the term ‘sustainable development’ has subsequently been redefined so many times and used to cover so many aspects of society– environment relationships that there are now ‘doubts on whether anything good can ever be agreed’ (Mawhinney, 2001: 1). For others, sustainable development is an idea that ‘makes a difference’ precisely because it is contested, requires debate and compromise and because it challenges both researchers and policy-makers (McNeill, 2000). 8 • What is sustainable development?
In 2002, 104 heads of state once again met in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The global challenge of sustainability is now understood to lie in the complex interdependencies of environmental, social and economic development (Potter et al., 2004). New understanding has emerged of the linkages between environmental resources and conflict and the threats to environment of globalisation (as well as opportunities) as discussed in more detail here and in Chapter 2. In addition, a much more diverse range of interest groups was engaged in activities at Johannesburg than at Rio. In particular, there were many more non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the developing world representing issues of human rights, social justice and business accountability, for example. These activities suggested new ways of addressing sustainable development at a global level and a ‘more decentralized understanding of where change comes from’ (Bigg, 2004: 5). This chapter identifies in some detail the origins of the concept of sustainable development and its current ‘meaning’ in terms of finding alternative patterns of progress to meet the needs of the global community. Through an analysis of the key debates in the previously separate literatures of development thinking and environmentalism, it is possible to understand the sources of continued conflict regarding sustainable development in theory and practice and the broad political economic context in which sustainable development is being sought into the twenty-first century. The concept of sustainable development Literally, sustainable development refers to maintaining development over time. By the early 1990s, it was suggested that there were more than 70 definitions of sustainable development in circulation (Holmberg and Sandbrook, 1992). Figure 1.1 lists just a small number of such definitions and the varied interpretations of the concept which have flowed from these different ideas. Definitions are important, as they are the basis on which the means for achieving sustainable development in the future are built. Evidently, different disciplines have influenced and contributed to the sustainability debate, ‘each making different assumptions about the relation between environment and the human subject’ (Lee et al., 2000: 9). Differences are even more important when thinking about policy development: how the human and environmental ‘condition’ is What is sustainable development? • 9
thought about, viewed or understood underpins subsequent planning and interventions in the form of development and conservation projects, yet different disciplines and philosophies may assign quite divergent ‘orders of priority’ to these policies and programmes. During the course of this text, it will be apparent that, although there are many signs of progress, there is also much debate and uncertainty as to the most appropriate strategies to foster sustainable change. Indeed, as suggested in the quotations in Figure 1.1, the attractiveness (and the ‘dangers’) of the concept of sustainable development may lie precisely in the varied ways in which it can be interpreted and used to support a whole range of interests or causes. The challenges of understanding what this idea of sustainable development may mean, and how people can work towards it, are Figure 1.1 Defining and interpreting the contested concept of sustainable development ................................................................................................................. Definitions of sustainable development ‘In principle, such an optimal (sustainable growth) policy would seek to maintain an “acceptable” rate of growth in per-capita real incomes without depleting the national capital asset stock or the natural environmental asset stock.’ (Turner, 1988: 12) ‘The net productivity of biomass (positive mass balance per unit area per unit time) maintained over decades to centuries.’ (Conway, 1987: 96) ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 43) Interpretations of sustainable development ‘A creatively ambiguous phrase . . . an intuitively attractive but slippery concept.’ (Mitchell, 1997: 28) ‘Like motherhood, and God, it is difficult not to approve of it. At the same time, the idea of sustainable development is fraught with contradictions.’ (Redclift, 1997: 438) ‘It is indistinguishable from the total development of society.’ (Barbier, 1987: 103) ‘Its very ambiguity enables it to transcend the tensions inherent in its meaning.’ (O’Riordan, 1995: 21) ‘Sustainable development appears to be an over-used, misunderstood phrase.’ (Mawhinney, 2001: 5) ................................................................................................................. 10 • What is sustainable development?
evident in a brief analysis of the definition of sustainable development provided by the WCED. Their apparently simple definition of sustainable development is immediately seen to contain a distinction and a potential conflict between the interests of the present and those of future generations. Further, very challenging notions can be identified such as those of needs and limits. Questions emerge such as: what is it that one generation is passing to another? Is it solely natural capital or does it include assets associated with human ingenuity, language or other aspects of culture? What and how are the limits set – by technology, society or ecology, for example? What of the fact that, currently, needs in one place or amongst particular groups are often fulfilled at the expense of others? Fundamentally, ‘needs’ mean different things to different people and are linked to our ability to satisfy them, i.e. are closely aligned to ‘development’ itself. So, society is able to define and create new ‘needs’ within certain groups (that could be interpreted as ‘wants’), without satisfying even the basic needs of others. These questions highlight the many sources of conflict in the debates over the meaning of sustainable development: conflict between the interests of present generations and those of the future; between human well-being and the protection of nature; between poor and rich; and between local and global. Furthermore, the substantial challenges of operationalising the concept of sustainable development were clear in the report of the WCED, back in 1987. Figure 1.2 displays the critical objectives identified by the Commission and the necessary conditions for sustainable development in the future, evidently encompassing a huge breadth and scale of activity. A more prosperous, more just and more secure global future was seen to depend on new norms of behaviour at all levels and in the interests of all. The conditions for such a future encompass all areas of human activity, in production, trade, technology and politics, for example, and encompass cooperative and mutually supportive actions on behalf of individuals and nations at all levels of economic development. Most definitions of sustainable development encompass the idea that there are three interdependent pillars of sustainable development: environmental, economic and social. In 1987 Barbier presented these as three interlocking circles as seen in Figure 1.3. The objective of sustainable development is to maximise the goals across all three systems and is illustrated by the intersection of these circles. Critically, the model encompasses the understanding that each of the system goals (examples of which are identified in the figure) is socially What is sustainable development? • 11
Plate 1.1 Promoting the messages of sustainable development a. Sign on entry to Kang, Botswana Source: David Nash, University of Brighton. b. VOYCE (Views of Young Concerned Environmentalists) Four Seasons Mural, Brighton, England Source: Kim Jackson, Brighton and Hove City Council. 12 • What is sustainable development?
Figure 1.3 The objectives of sustainable development Source: compiled from Barbier (1987). Figure 1.2 Critical objectives and necessary conditions for sustainable development as identified by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) ................................................................................................................. Critical objectives G Reviving growth G Changing the quality of growth G Meeting essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water and sanitation G Ensuring a sustainable level of population G Conserving and enhancing the resource base G Reorientating technology and managing risk G Merging environment and economics in decision-making Pursuit of sustainable development requires: G A political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making G An economic system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development G A production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development G A technological system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance G An international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance G An administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction ................................................................................................................. Source: WCED (1987). What is sustainable development? • 13
constructed and that achieving sustainable development requires trade-offs; choices have to be made at particular points in time and at particular scales as to what is being pursued and how, and sustainable development requires recognition of the costs involved for particular interests and for groups of people. Whilst many of the early contributions to defining sustainable development came from the disciplines of economics and ecology, it is the third sphere that has accommodated much recent work. For Starkey and Walford (2001), for example, sustainable development is a moral concept that seeks to define a ‘fair and just’ development. They suggest that since the environment is the basis of all economic activity, and of life itself, ‘it is surely only right that the quality and integrity of the environment be maintained for future generations’ (p. xix). Notions of ‘environmental justice’ are now a prominent part of contemporary discussions of the meaning and practice of sustainable development and take the moral concerns further: in addition to environmental protection, the concern is for how environmental bads (such as pollution) and goods (such as access to green space) are distributed across society. Environmental justice also encompasses a concern for the equity of environmental management interventions and the nature of public involvement in decision-making. Understanding is mounting of the political nature of sustainable development in practice; how the solutions proposed (and the choices and trade-offs made) can carry different costs for different groups of people. Clearly, whilst common sense would seem to tell us that our development should not be at the expense of that of future generations, the challenges in practice are substantial. In order to identify the challenges of implementing sustainable development actions and to realise the opportunities for sustainable development, it is necessary to understand the changes in thinking and practice from which the concept has developed. As Adams (2001) suggests, sustainable development cannot be understood in ‘an historical vacuum’ (p. 22). Of particular importance are the changes in thinking about what constitutes ‘development’ and how best to achieve it, and changing ideas about the ‘environment’. Indeed, the current conflicts surrounding sustainable development today could be considered a legacy of the substantially separate nature of these two debates in the past (Lee et al., 2000). Furthermore, it is considered that the debates on sustainable development have been important in reshaping understanding in both these arenas (McNeill, 2000). 14 • What is sustainable development?
Changing perceptions of development Poverty, hunger, disease and debt have been familiar words within the lexicon of development ever since formal development planning began, following the Second World War. In the past decade they have been joined by another, sustainability. (Adams, 2001: 1) Development is often discussed in relation to ‘developing countries’, but is a concept which relates to all parts of the world at every level, from the individual to global transformations (Potter et al., 2004). Development is something to which we all aspire and, certainly in the more developed world, ‘self-development’ has become something that is actively encouraged and an endeavour on which large amounts of money are spent, for example. Ideas about the best means by which to achieve our aspirations and needs are potentially as old as human civilisation. The study of development, however, has a relatively short history, really dating back only as far as the 1950s. Since then, the interdisciplinary field of development studies has seen many changes in thinking regarding the meaning and purpose of development (ideologies) and in development practice in the field (strategies of development). Although these shifts are considered chronologically here, in reality existing theories are rarely totally replaced; rather, new ones find relative favour and contestation over the prescriptions for development flowing from them continue. Optimistic early decades During the 1960s, development thinking (encompassing these aspects of ideology and strategy) prioritised economic growth and the application of modern scientific and technical knowledge as the route to prosperity in the underdeveloped world at that time. In short, the ‘global development problem’ was conceived as one in which less developed nations needed to ‘catch up’ with the West and enter the modern age of capitalism and liberal democracy. Underdevelopment was seen as an initial stage through which western nations had progressed and the gaps in development that existed could be gradually overcome through an ‘imitative process’ (Hettne, 2002: 7), significantly, through a sharing of the experience of West in terms of capital and know-how. In short, development was seen in terms of modernisation and, in turn, modernisation was equated with westernisation (and an associated faith in the rationality of science and technology) during this period. This ‘modernisation thesis’ What is sustainable development? • 15
dominated mainstream theories of economic development from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. It was an optimistic time: it was thought that underdevelopment could be overcome through the spatial diffusion of modernity from the West to less developed countries and from urban centres to rural areas, for example. It was assumed that many development problems of the underdeveloped world would be solved quickly through the transfer of finance, technology and experience from the developed countries. Insights from neo-classical economics as modelled by authors such as Rostow (1960) were very influential in development thinking at this time. Rostow’s model of the linear stages of economic development is shown in Figure 1.4. On the basis largely of the experience and history of the more developed societies (i.e. a Eurocentric stance), it was suggested that, through assistance in reaching a critical ‘take-off’ stage in levels of savings and investment, the benefits of development and characteristics of ‘modernisation’ (including of society, politics and culture) would inevitably and spontaneously flow from the core to less-developed regions. Industrialisation through capitalist growth was seen as the central requirement in order for development to take place and through this strengthening of the material base of society, all countries had an equal chance to develop. Whilst there were differences in emphasis regarding the nature of the strategies to deliver industrial growth, there was an absolute faith within development thinking at this time that there was a linear, unconstrained path to economic development and an ‘unswerving faith in the efficacy of urban-based industrial growth’ (Potter et al., 2004: 94). There was an active role envisaged for the state in creating the conditions needed to achieve ‘take-off’ (such as setting policy to stimulate local demand and savings) and in setting appropriate rates of taxes. Aspects of these ideas, such as the importance of the free market and the priority given to the European experience, found renewed emphasis in the 1990s within structural adjustment programmes as detailed below. The optimism of the theorists of the 1960s, however, was generally not borne out by experience of development on the ground in that decade. By the 1970s, inequality between and within countries had in fact worsened. The empirical evidence concerning economic growth as measured by gross national product (GNP) suggested that, whilst change had been achieved, this ‘development’ was not shared equally amongst the populations of these nations. For example, in Brazil in 1970, the poorest 40 per cent of the population received only 6.5 per cent of the total national income, in contrast to the 66.7 per cent of 16 • What is sustainable development?
the total national income received by the richest 20 per cent of the population (Todaro, 1997). Into the 1980s, rising levels of debt, the oil crisis and the problems for oil-importing countries led to growing dissatisfaction with ideas of modernisation as development. The optimism of a speedy end to underdevelopment faded on the basis of such emerging ‘real-world observations’ (Potter et al., 2004: 97). During the 1970s, development thinking was influenced strongly by the writings of scholars within the developing world itself, particularly from Latin American and the Caribbean (notably those regions most strongly linked to the United States). They considered the socioeconomic structures and economic conditions of their countries in terms of the exploitative/dependent relations with other parts of the world, particularly through colonialism in the past and with the capitalist economy generally. The politics of development came to the fore within such writings. In Europe too at this time, there was a reinvigorated interest in the work of Marx and an emerging ‘New Left’ movement that linked with the struggles of the Third World anti-colonial movements (Potter et al., 2004). Through the 1970s, what became known as the radical or ‘dependency’ school of thought became dominant in development. This school is perhaps most closely associated with the work of Andre Gunder Frank (1967), a European economist trained in America, but who carried out much research in Central and Latin America. Figure 1.4 The stages of economic development as modelled by Rostow Source: Rostow (1960). What is sustainable development? • 17
Fundamentally, the assertion in dependency theory was that underdevelopment was not the result of any inadequacies in economic, social or environmental conditions within those countries themselves, but the direct outcome of development elsewhere and the manner in which those countries were incorporated into the operations of the international capitalist system, i.e. the structural disadvantages of these countries and regions. Rather than seeing the US and Europe as the source of a cure for the ills of the developing world, dependency theorists saw the role of these regions as the source of those ills, i.e. in actively creating the problems of underdevelopment. To use Frank’s terminology, development and underdevelopment were two sides of the same coin. As illustrated in Figure 1.5, peripheral or satellite regions and countries are integrated into the world system through processes of unequal exchange and dependent relations with the metropolitan core. In consequence, the further entrenched they become in such processes, the more they are held back in development, rather than enabled to progress. This ‘development of underdevelopment’ was modelled as applying to processes of unequal exchange operating both internationally and internally within countries, and was used to explain patterns of regional and national underdevelopment in countries like Brazil. The barriers to development as modelled by dependency theorists, therefore, lay in the international division of labour and the terms of trade, rather than a lack of capital or entrepreneurial skills, as within modernisation thinking. One of the principal policy responses to flow from the dependency ideas was import substitution industrialisation (ISI). ISI is a strategy to enable peripheral countries to industrialise through looking inward (setting up domestic industry and supplying markets previously served by imports). It depends on a strong role for the state in protecting new industries via import tariffs and quotas and controlled access to foreign exchange. Many Latin American countries such as Brazil and Argentina had established substantial industrial bases by the 1960s using this strategy towards providing consumer goods such as clothing, cars, food and drinks to sizeable home markets. However, ISI has proven less successful in relation to the production of intermediate and capital goods which are more capital than labour intensive (Hewitt, 2000) and where problems of the lack of domestic capital to invest in such production and a lack of purchasing power on behalf of local, relatively poor, citizens have emerged. Other means towards ‘withdrawal’ from the international capitalist economy such as through the formation of regional trading areas (as a means for expanding domestic markets) have generally not 18 • What is sustainable development?
been sustained over time. In short, dependency theory did much to expose the structural disadvantages of peripheral countries in relation to the capitalist core, and therefore how unlikely it was that they would follow the stages of economic growth mapped out on the basis of early experiences in Europe and North America (as modelled by modernisation theorists). However, the internal problems of local economies were generally underestimated within dependency theory. The lost decade of the 1980s? By the 1980s, dependency theory had to a large extent moved out of fashion within development thinking, criticised in particular for its rather deterministic emphasis on the role of external economic structures in shaping society and development. Many commentators by this time were starting to consider the basic development conditions and needs of people within countries of the developing world, to focus on issues of self-reliance in development and on the internal forces of change. The expression, ‘another development’ is Figure 1.5 The Frank model of underdevelopment Source: Corbridge (1987). What is sustainable development? • 19
often used as an umbrella term to include a broad sweep of changes in thinking regarding development and how best to achieve it from the late 1970s. As a whole, proponents of ‘another’ or ‘alternative’ development make less recourse to theorising social change and are more concerned with how development should occur (Thomas, 2000). Phrases such as ‘growth with equity’ or ‘redistribution with growth’ emerged in the 1970s and encapsulated the recognition that economic growth remains a fundamental ingredient within development thinking and action, but that it was critical to ensure that the benefits do not fall solely to a minority of the population. Similarly, the International Labor Organisation World Employment Conference in 1976 is considered to have been particularly important in raising issues of employment generation and a redistribution of wealth over and above economic growth. By the 1980s, ‘development’ was seen as a multidimensional concept encapsulating widespread improvements in the social as well as the material well-being of all in society. In addition, it was recognised that there was no single model for achieving development; certainly it required investment in all sectors, including agriculture as well as industry. Rural-based strategies of development were particularly important amongst those promoting ‘development from below’ such as Stohr and Taylor (1981). Rather than a single, ‘top-down’ (and linear) model, it was asserted that development needs to be closely related to the specific local, historical, Plate 1.2 The inevitable consequences of development? Industrial air pollution Source: Gordon Walker, Lancaster University. 20 • What is sustainable development?
sociocultural and institutional conditions, focused on mobilising internal natural and human resources, appropriate technologies and give priority to basic needs. In stark contrast to the theories of development up to that time, development was to be more inclusive, with individual and cooperative actions and enterprises becoming the central means for (or ‘agents’ of) development. Strong and Plate 1.3 The pollution of poverty Source: author. b. Washing in the Jakarta floods a. Hazardous housing on a Calcutta roadside Source: author. What is sustainable development? • 21
enduring notions (as will be seen through subsequent chapters) of ‘participatory development’ emerged at this time in recognition of the shortcomings of top-down, externally imposed and expert-oriented research and development practice (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). Above all through the 1980s, it started to be understood that development needed to be sustainable; it must encompass not only economic and social activities, but also those related to population, the use of natural resources and the resulting impacts on the environment. The 1980s, however, have been referred to as the ‘lost decade’ in development. The suggestion is that, with the exception of the ‘Asian Tigers’, the widespread experience in the developing world was of ‘development reversals’, i.e. previous gains were lost and in many cases went into reverse. ‘Per capita national incomes in Latin America and Africa, for example, declined, investment declined (resulting in the deterioration of infrastructure and transport, communications, education and health care) and unemployment and underemployment grew’ (Hewitt, 2000: 301). Furthermore, global inequality increased in the 1980s: the income ratio of rich to poor nations worsened in this decade and continues to do so as seen in Table 1.1. For many developing countries through the 1980s, development had to be pursued in the context of global economic recession and a mounting ‘debt crisis’. Starting in Latin America, with Brazil and Mexico announcing that they could no longer service their official debts, concern spread through the commercial banks and northern governments (that had previously lent huge monies in a context of low interest rates and global expansion) about widespread defaulting and the possible collapse of the international monetary system. Figure 1.6 illustrates the persistent and generally mounting challenge throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s of servicing debt in relation to export performance of regions of the developing world. Economic recession impacted on developing countries through a combination of declining international demand, increasing protectionism in the industrialised countries, deteriorating terms of trade, negative capital flows, continuing high interest rates, and unfavourable lending conditions. These factors had serious implications for the environment, as considered in Chapter 3, and were primary aspects of Table 1.1 Income ratios between rich and poor nations ............................................... Year Income of richest 20% divided by income of poorest 20% ............................................... 1960 20:1 1980 46:1 1989 60:1 1999 74:1 ............................................... Sources: Schurmann (2002); UNDP (1999). 22 • What is sustainable development?
the context in which sustainable development was pursued in the 1980s (and remain so). Not only did huge interest repayments mean money going out without any direct impacts on productive development internally, but savings had to be made, typically in the finance for environment departments and through cuts in social services. The growing inequality globally and the increasingly diverse experiences of development and underdevelopment in the South through the 1980s were important factors in shaping what has been termed the ‘impasse in development studies’ (Schurmann, 2002) that was also considered to have characterised this period. The suggestion was that ‘old certainties’ concerning understanding development were ‘fading away’ and that existing theories ‘could ever less adequately explain experiences of development and underdevelopment’ (p. 12): i.e. there was a concern about how development was being theorised as well as the concerns over the development impacts on the ground. A number of factors continued to underpin such concerns through the 1990s. For example, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism undermined the strength of Marxist analyses (that had underpinned dependency theories, for example). A ‘post-modern’ critique within the social sciences generally at this time was also fundamentally about moving away from an era dominated by notions of modernisation and modernity. Both these factors had profound implications for development theory and practice. Furthermore, the rise of globalisation (as considered below and in Chapter 2) was Figure 1.6 Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services by world region Source: World Bank (1997). What is sustainable development? • 23
changing the position of the nation state and national governments across economic, social and political spheres. Yet the nation state was central within existing theories of development as seen above. Evidently, all these factors raised many questions for those involved in both development thinking and practice through the 1990s. The neo-liberal 1990s In the North, disillusionment with the record of state involvement in the economy (and social life more broadly) also mounted from the late 1980s. This was illustrated in the ascendancy of conservative governments and the politics of Reagan and Thatcher in the US and UK, for example. A belief in what Simon (2002: 87) terms the ‘magic of the market’ developed and neo-liberal ideas of development took hold. Neo-liberalism is essentially an approach to development that considers the free market to be the best way to initiate and sustain economic development. Typical policy implications of such an approach therefore centre on removing the influence of the state in markets; in removing tariffs on imports and subsidies on exports, for example, and denationalising public industries and service provision. The roots of neo-liberalism are in the neo-classical economics of Adam Smith and ‘this ideology rapidly became the economic orthodoxy in the North and was exported to the global South via aid policies and the measures formulated to address the debt crisis’ (Simon, 2002: 87). For many nations in the developing world, their entry into the world economy through the 1990s was increasingly defined by the neo- liberal policies of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As already suggested, many developing countries began to experience severe balance of payments difficulties in the 1980s that were considered to threaten the international financial system as a whole. Debt became the concern of the two ‘mainstays of the global economic order’, the WB and the IMF. The assessment in the early 1980s was that the economic crisis in developing countries was more than a temporary liquidity issue (as it had been conceived in the 1970s). Rather, comprehensive, longer-term solutions were required, based on packages of broad policy reforms in indebted nations. The term structural adjustment programme (SAP) is used to refer to the generic activities of the IMF and WB in this arena. The central objective of SAPs as defined by the World Bank was to ‘modify the structure of an economy so that it can maintain both its 24 • What is sustainable development?
growth rate and the viability of its balance of payments in the medium term’ (Reed, 1996: 41), i.e. to address issues of debt. The first SAP was implemented in Turkey in 1980 and by the end of the decade 187 SAPs had been negotiated for 64 developing countries (Dickenson et al., 1996: 265). Most countries today have some kind of SAP since they are the basis for receipt of WB lending that now reaches most countries of the world as shown in Figure 1.7. Although each package of policy reform is tailored for the particular country, SAPs generally have included many or all of the elements listed in Figure 1.8. It has been argued that the impacts of SAPs quickly went far beyond the original national contexts for which they were designed, to become an instrument for global economic restructuring (Reed, 1996) and through the conditions attached, they enabled the IMF and WB to ‘virtually control the economies’ of many developing nations (Hildyard, 1994: 26). Certainly, these international institutions currently influence development policy and planning in the developing world to an unprecedented extent and are important actors in determining the prospects for sustainable development in the future, as seen in Chapter 3. Through the 1990s, recognition also grew of the unprecedented changes of a global character occurring in all arenas of economic, social, political (and environmental) activity. The term ‘globalisation’ became: widely used to explain the causes and effects of most aspects of life at the turn of the century . . . While open to different interpretations, globalisation captures a description of the widening and deepening of economic, political, social and cultural interdependence and interconnectedness. (Willett, 2001: 1) In short, globalisation encompasses the various processes of change through which interactions between different regions are increasing and the world becomes ever more global in character. Whilst global links and interconnections between places and peoples around the world have existed previously (through colonial ties, for example), the nature, extent and depth of contemporary processes of globalisation are relatively new. As Allen and Hamnett (1995) suggest, it is not the global scope of movements of people or resources currently, but the immediacy and intensity with which we can now experience other parts of the globe, which is unprecedented and is part of what distinguishes globalisation from earlier periods of ‘internationalism’. Furthermore, processes of global integration now extend to much What is sustainable development? • 25
Figure 1.7 The global reach of the World Bank Note: Countries not members of WB/IMF and therefore ineligible. Source: New Internationalist, no. 365, March 2004.
more than the flow of goods and services, for example, as illustrated further in Chapters 2 and 3. However, whilst the world is becoming more global, it does not necessarily mean it is becoming more uniform, as discussed in Box A. Into the twenty-first century, one of the most radical reactions within development thinking to the dilemmas of development on the ground and to the limitations of both conventional and alternative schools of thought came from what’s known as the ‘post- development’ school (most closely associated with Escobar, 1995). Within this thinking, the concept of development as a desirable process itself is contested for the ways in which it ‘involves a dependent and subordinate process, creates and widens spatial inequalities, harms local cultures and values, perpetuates poverty and poor working and living conditions, produces unsustainable environments, and infringes human rights and democracy’ (Hodder, 2000: 17). Not only is development considered to have failed, but the development project itself is condemned for creating and producing the opposite of what it promised (Corbridge, 1999). In short, a post-development era depends on breaking the ‘holds of westernisation’ be it as organised by the aid industry or activities of western private capital. ‘Defending the local’ (such as through ecological, women’s and people’s organisations) and resisting the forces of globalisation are core prescriptions for change. Post- developmentalists emphasise grassroots participation and the capacities of organisations at the local level as agents of change (the suggestion being that the state has failed for the way that it has facilitated the westernisation of the development project). Whilst the post-development school can be criticised for focusing on the ‘worst’ experiences of the last decades (Rigg, 1997) and for ignoring the improvements shown in longer-term data sets, post-development thinking has helped reaffirm the importance of the local in development processes (Potter et al., 2004), which will be seen to be a feature of more sustainable development processes in later chapters. Figure 1.8 The principal instruments of structural adjustment ...................................................... Cuts in: G government expenditure G public sector employment G real wages Pricing policies designed to: G eliminate food subsidies G raise agricultural prices G cost recovery in public services Trade liberalisation involving: G currency devaluation G credit reform G privatisation of state-owned institutions G higher interest rates ...................................................... What is sustainable development? • 27
Box A The unevenness of globalisation Despite the global character of many major processes of economic, political, environmental and social change in the world currently, it should not be taken that globalisation affects all people or all areas of the globe equally. It is evident that some parts of the world are ‘left out’ in the sense that they are not part of a network of communications or do not receive multi-national investment, for example. A simple illustration is that half of the world’s population has never made a telephone call. (Potter et al., 2004) Figure 1.9 highlights the geographical differences in the use of the Internet. Over half of the population of the United States is now online, whereas in countries like Thailand, only a minority of the urban population is able to access this network. Approximately 70 per cent of all traffic on the Internet originates from or is addressed to North America (Knox and Marston, 2004). Furthermore, 80 per cent of all global websites are in English, yet only 10 per cent of the world’s population speaks English (UNDP, 2001). Figure 1.9 Internet users per 1,000 population, 2001 Source: UNDP (2003). The uneven reach of globalisation is also illustrated in terms of foreign direct investment – investment made by private companies that is a major driving force of economic globalisation. The developed world accounts for two-thirds of the world’s FDI stock (UNCTAD, 2003). In particular, it is firms from the EU, the US and Japan which are the major owners and sources of outward FDI. In large measure, these major investors 28 • What is sustainable development?
overseas are also investing in each other. Table 1.2 confirms that the great proportion of inward FDI flows are to the high-income countries of the world. In contrast, the African continent, for example, could be suggested to be only loosely connected to this globalising economy. Table 1.2 Inward foreign direct investment, by major world region, 2000 ............................................................................................................. Total flows, millions of dollars % of world total ............................................................................................................. World 1,167,337 Low income countries 6,812 0.6 Middle income countries 150,572 12.9 High income countries 1,009,929 86.5 East Asia and Pacific 42,847 4 Europe and Central Asia 28,495 2.4 Latin America and Caribbean 75,088 6.4 Middle East and North Africa 1,209 0.1 South Asia 3,093 0.3 Sub-Saharan Africa 6,676 0.6 ............................................................................................................. Source: Compiled from World Bank (2003a). Changing perceptions of the environment The history of environmental concern is quite similar to that of development studies: although people have held and articulated varying attitudes towards nature stretching back many years, it is only since the 1960s that a coherent philosophy and language surrounding the environment (‘environmentalism’ as defined by Pepper in 1984) can be identified. In continuity with ‘development thinking’, it is possible to identify significant differences and changes over time concerning ideas about the environment; regarding society’s relationship with nature and in terms of the prescribed conservation requirements within modern environmentalism. Although the focus here is largely on ‘mainstream’ environmentalism, i.e. the broad consensus that can be identified as forwarded for example within successive conferences and publications of international institutions, the continued diversity within modern environmentalism should not be denied or underestimated. For example, there is a persistent and fundamental divergence between ‘reformist/technocentric’ and ‘radical/ecocentric’ environmentalism which is the source of much contemporary debate within sustainable development. Box B What is sustainable development? • 29
Box B Modes of thought concerning humanity and nature It is argued that society’s desire to manipulate nature, concomitant with an acceptance that the Earth nurtures our own existence, is inherent in the human condition. ‘Technocentric’ and ‘ecocentric’ refer to the two extreme positions. In reality, the distinction between these different perspectives is often blurred. As O’Riordan (1981) suggests, rarely is the world so neatly divided into two camps; rather we all tend to favour certain elements of both modes, depending on such factors as our changing economic status and the institutional setting or issue at hand. The categories should not, therefore, be thought of as rigidly fixed or mutually exclusive. Environmental philosophies: Technocentric Ecocentric Human-centred: humanity has a desire to manipulate nature and make the world a more certain place in which to live. Earth-centred: the Earth nurtures humanity’s existence and should be treated with respect and humility. Green labels: ‘Dry Green’ ‘Deep Green’ Reformist in that the present economic system is accepted, but considered to require some gradual revision. Radical in that quite rapid and fundamental changes in economy and society are desired. Belief in political status quo, but more responsible and accountable institutions. Self-regulation through ‘enlightened conscience’. Supports devolved, political structures with emphasis on self-reliant communities and pursuit of justice and redistribution across generations. Environmental management strategies: Reliance on scientific credibility, modelling and prediction. Management strategies geared to retaining global stability based on ecological principles of diversity and homeostasis. Promotes the appropriate manipulation of markets to create cost-effective solutions to environmental improvements. New and fundamentally different conservation solutions required which are flexible and adaptable. Sustainable development through rational use of resources, better planning and clean technologies, for example. Alternative and appropriate technologies. Sources: compiled from Pepper (1996), O’Riordan (1981) and O’Riordan (1995). 30 • What is sustainable development?
highlights the principal differences between these two philosophical standpoints on nature and society and the varied implications of each for conservation action. Development as environmentally destructive In the 1960s, environmentalism was largely a movement reflecting European and American white, middle-class concerns. The undesirable effects of industrial and economic development were beginning to be seen via a number of ‘conspicuous pollution incidents’ (Bartelmus, 1994: 5) and people were worried about the effects on their own lifestyles and health: ‘after two centuries of industrialism and urbanisation, people now began to rediscover the idea that they were part of nature’ (McCormick, 1995: 56). Environmentalists campaigned on issues such as air pollution and whaling and often received substantial support from the media. In contrast to earlier nature protection or conservation movements within these regions, environmentalism was overtly activist and political. The combination of actual changes in the environment and people’s perceptions generally at this time brought widespread public support for the environmental movement, particularly amongst the younger groups. As Biswas and Biswas (1985) suggest, ‘the environment and Vietnam became two of the major issues over which youth rebelled against the establishment’ (p. 25). For the new environmentalists, it was not solely their local outdoor environments which were perceived to be under threat, but human survival itself. A number of very influential ‘global future studies’ were published in the early 1970s which served to reinforce and spread the fears and influence of western environmentalists. For example, texts such as The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968), Blueprint for Survival (Goldsmith et al., 1972) and The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) modelled an ever-expanding population and mounting demands of society on a fundamentally finite resource base. In order to ‘avoid the disastrous consequences of transgressing the physical limits of the Earth’s resources’ (Bartelmus, 1994: 5), urgent conservation actions (particularly population control in the developing world) and ‘zero-growth’ in the world economy were required. Not surprisingly, this environmental movement found little support in the developing nations. Many developing nations (outside Latin America) had only just gained independence and were sceptical What is sustainable development? • 31
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[438] Ibn-Haiyân, fol. 128 r.; Abd-al-wâhid, p. 45; Maccarî, t. I, p. 316, 318. [439] J’ai cru devoir préférer ici le témoignage de l’auteur copié par Maccarî (t. I, p. 319), dont le récit est le plus circonstancié, à celui de Homaidî (apud Abd-al- wâhid, p. 37). [440] Ibn-al-Abbâr, p. 165, 166. Le man. d’Ibn-Bassâm, (t. I, fol. 11 r. et v.) m’a servi à corriger quelques fautes dans ces textes. [441] Maccarî, t, I, p. 285; variantes chez Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 11 v., 12 r. [442] Voyez mon Catalogue des man. orient. de la Bibl. de Leyde, t. I, p. 227. [443] Ibn-Hazm, Traité sur les religions, t. II, fol. 227 r. [444] Voyez mon Catalogue, t. I, p. 225, 230. [445] Ibn-Hazm, Traité sur l’amour, fol. 99 r.-102 v. [446] Voyez Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 82 v. [447] Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 9 v.-11 r., 114 r.-115 r.; Ibn-al-Athîr; Maccarî, t. I, p. 319, 320; Abd-al-wâhid, p. 38-40; Rodrigue de Tolède, c. 44. [448] Homaidî, que tous les autres écrivains arabes ont copié. [449] Ou Motamid, selon d’autres. [450] Abd-al-wâhid, p. 40, 41. [451] Voyez Ibn-al-Athîr. [452] Voyez Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 157 r. [453] Ibn-al-Athîr, sous l’année 407. [454] Voyez Ibn-al-Athîr, sous l’année 407. [455] Le même, ibid. [456] Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. III, fol. 139 v.-143 v.
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An Introduction To Sustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot

  • 1.
    An Introduction ToSustainable Development 3rd Edition 3rd Edition Jennifer A Elliot download https://ebookbell.com/product/an-introduction-to-sustainable- development-3rd-edition-3rd-edition-jennifer-a-elliot-1721274 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
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  • 6.
    An Introduction to SustainableDevelopment ‘This well-written and accessible text provides students with an up-to-date comprehensive guide to sustainable development. It is particularly effective in highlighting the tensions and challenges between development theory, policy and practice.’ Dr Samantha Punch, University of Stirling ‘An Introduction to Sustainable Development is an eminently readable and wide-ranging text, ideal for undergraduate students or anyone else interested in the current issues and debates surrounding sustainable development.’ Thomas Perreault, Syracuse University Sustainable development continues to be the key idea around which environment and development are structured. In addition, sustainable development is now stated as a principal policy goal of many more institutions in development than at any previous time. But the last decade has also witnessed development reversals and accelerated environmental degradation in particular places. This extensively revised third edition continues to provide an accessible introduction to the principal ideas behind and practices flowing from the notion of sustainable development with a particular focus on the developing world. The new edition encompasses greater critical reflection on the motives underpinning and changes seen in the pursuit of sustainable development. The inherently political and conflicting nature of sustainable development and the difficult challenges it thereby presents for local communities through to multilateral institutions are highlighted. Explicit attention is given to the significance of place and difference in shaping the prospects of sustainability including within the context of a globalising world economy. Progress in the arena of developing indicators of sustainable development is also incorporated. Containing many new boxed case studies, discussion questions, chapter summaries and guides for further reading, this text provides an invaluable introduction to the characteristics, challenges and opportunities of sustainable development. Jennifer A. Elliott is Principal Lecturer in Geography at the University of Brighton.
  • 7.
    Routledge Perspectives onDevelopment Series Editor: Professor Tony Binns, University of Otago The Perspectives on Development series will provide an invaluable, up-to-date and refreshing approach to key development issues for academics and students working in the field of development, in disciplines such as anthropology, economics, geography, international relations, politics and sociology. The series will also be of particular interest to those working in interdisciplinary fields, such as area studies (African, Asian and Latin American Studies), development studies, rural and urban studies, travel and tourism. If you would like to submit a book proposal for the series, please contact Tony Binns on [email protected] Published: An Introduction to Sustainable Development, 3rd edition Jennifer A. Elliott HB 0415–335582, PB 0415–335590 Children, Youth and Development Nicola Ansell HB 0415–287685, PB 0415–287693 Environmental Management and Development Chris Barrow HB 0415–280834, PB 0415–280842 Gender and Development Janet Henshall Momsen HB 0415–266890, PB 0415–266904 Rural–Urban Interactions in the Developing World Kenneth Lynch HB 0415–258707, PB 0415–258715 Theories and Practices of Development Katie Willis HB 0415–300525, PB 0415–300533 Third World Cities, 2nd edition David W. Drakakis-Smith HB 0415–19881X, PB 0415–198828 Forthcoming: Cities and Development Jo Beall Health and Development Hazel Barrett Population and Development W.T.S. Gould Tourism and Development Richard Sharpley and David J. Telfer Local Knowledge, Environment and Development Tony Binns, Christo Fabricius and Etienne Nel Participation and Development Andrea Cornwall
  • 8.
    Routledge Perspectives onDevelopment Series An Introduction to Sustainable Development Third edition Jennifer A. Elliott
  • 9.
    First published 2006 byRoutledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Jennifer A. Elliott All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Elliott, Jennifer A., 1962– An introduction to sustainable development / Jennifer A. Elliott.– 3rd ed. p. cm. -- (Routledge perspectives on development) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–415–33558–2 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 0–415–33559–0 (papercover : alk. paper) 1. Sustainable development – Developing countries. 2. Environmental policy – Developing countries. I Title. II Series. HC59.72.E5E43 2005 338.9′27′091724–dc22 2005004404 ISBN10: 0–415–33558–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–33559–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–33558–4 (hbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–33559–1 (pbk) This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
  • 10.
  • 12.
    Contents List of platesviii List of figures x List of tables xiii List of boxes xv Acknowledgements xvi Introduction 1 1 What is sustainable development? 7 2 The challenges of sustainable development 44 3 Actors and actions in sustainable development 90 4 Sustainable rural livelihoods 140 5 Sustainable urban livelihoods 189 6 Sustainable development in the developing world: an assessment 235 References 262 Index 279
  • 13.
    Plates 1.1 Promoting themessages of sustainable development 12 a. Sign on entry to Kang, Botswana b. VOYCE (Views of Young Concerned Environmentalists) Four Seasons Mural, Brighton, England 1.2 The inevitable consequences of development? Industrial air pollution 20 1.3 The pollution of poverty 21 a. Hazardous housing on a Calcutta roadside b. Washing in the Jakarta floods 2.1 The challenges of aridity to human settlement 62 a. Northern Nigeria b. Southern Tunisia 2.2 Delivering basic urban needs 65 a. Water in Jakarta, Indonesia b. Fuel in Kairouan, Tunisia 3.1 Generating awareness of HIV/Aids in Africa 124 a. Zambia b. South Africa 3.2 NGO–state collaboration in slum upgrading, Delhi, India 135 4.1 Income opportunities in rural areas outside agriculture 147 a. Wage employment in brick-making, India b. Packing flowers, Kenya c. Desert tourism, Tunisia 4.2 Cash crops for export 154 a. Large-scale tea production, Indonesia b. Tobacco production, Zimbabwe 4.3 Harnessing scarce water resources for agricultural production in Tunisia 167 a. Tabia and jessour irrigation b. Water control in the El Guettar oasis
  • 14.
    4.4 Women inenvironmental management 178 a. Fuelwood collection, Zimbabwe b. Organising the community: a Lampungese wedding c. Preparing fields for agriculture, The Gambia 5.1 Urban informal income opportunities 198 a. Door-to-door welding, Harare, Zimbabwe b. Garment production, Kairouan, Tunisia c. Food trading/transport, Calcutta, India 5.2 Low-income housing 202 a. Bangkok squatter settlement b. Public housing, Harare c. Tenement blocks, Calcutta 5.3 Making a living through waste, Indonesia 210 5.4 Vehicular pollution, Calcutta 220 List of Plates • ix
  • 15.
    Figures 1.1 Defining andinterpreting the contested concept of sustainable development 10 1.2 Critical objectives and necessary conditions for sustainable development as identified by the WCED 13 1.3 The objectives of sustainable development 13 1.4 The stages of economic development as modelled by Rostow 17 1.5 The Frank model of underdevelopment 19 1.6 Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services, by world region 23 1.7 The global reach of the World Bank 26 1.8 The principal instruments of structural adjustment 27 1.9 Internet users per 1,000 population, 2001 28 1.10 The World Conservation Strategy objectives of conservation 34 1.11 The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development: the challenges we face 38 1.12 The Millennium Development Goals and Targets 40 2.1 Total global water use, 1940–2000 46 2.2 Per capita global water use, 1940–2000 47 2.3 Municipal waste management in the European Union 49 2.4 Resource dependence and development 51 2.5 Share of world population and fossil fuel consumption 55 2.6 The changing distribution of poverty in the developing world 58 2.7 Well-being as revealed through participatory poverty assessments 59 2.8 The poverty and environment connection 60 2.9 Children caught in conflict 67 2.10 Infant mortality in England and Wales 68 2.11 Fire and floods worldwide 73
  • 16.
    2.12 Carbon dioxideemissions: share of world total 78 2.13 Responsibility for net emissions of greenhouse gases 79 a. as calculated by the World Resources Institute b. as calculated by the Centre for Science and Environment 2.14 The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) 81 2.15 The progress of the Chernobyl plume 81 2.16 Capacities of influence in trade negotiations 83 3.1 Forces and actors in environmental outcomes 92 3.2 Questioning the UK government’s commitment to fighting poverty 102 3.3 The Environmental and Natural Resources Management lending at the World Bank 104 3.4 The Oxfam ‘Making Trade Fair’ campaign 107 3.5 Options and environmental issues in raising trade and foreign exchange 108 3.6 Corporate influence in global affairs 114 3.7 Business tools for environmental accountability 117 3.8 The costs and benefits of borrowing 119 3.9 The relationship between economic growth and adjustment lending 120 3.10 Pressures of adjustment on the environment 121 3.11 Examples of environmental taxes 130 3.12 Civil society participation in environmental summits 133 4.1 The multifunctional role of agriculture 141 4.2 Sources of rural livelihood 146 4.3 Concepts of endowment and entitlement 149 4.4 The hierarchy of agro-ecosystems 150 4.5 The major forms of incorporation of agriculture into the world economy 152 4.6 The concerns over GMOs 161 4.7 Aspects of the backlash against industrialised agriculture: the growth of organic farming and Fair Trade products 162 4.8 Responses to food deficit 164 4.9 Agricultural technologies with high potential sustainability 166 4.10 Lessons for the achievement of sustainable rural livelihoods 168 4.11 The contrasting ‘blueprint’ and ‘learning process’ approaches to rural development 169 4.12 Where farmers’ priorities might diverge from those of scientists 170 List of Figures • xi
  • 17.
    4.13 The majorcomponents of participatory learning and action 173 4.14 Women’s substantial interest in the environment 176 4.15 Women organising to manage environmental resources 177 4.16 Social capital formation in natural resource management 183 5.1 Levels of urbanisation and predicted change 190 5.2 The Green and Brown urban environmental agendas 192 5.3 The world’s largest urban agglomerations in 2000 196 5.4 Informal sector activities 200 5.5 Opportunities and challenges of informal sector employment 201 5.6 The deprivations associated with urban poverty 204 5.7 The health status of waste pickers in Bangalore in relation to non-pickers 207 5.8 The different kinds of rental and ‘owner occupation’ housing for low-income groups in cities of the developing world 209 5.9 The meaning of sustainable development as applied to urban centres 223 5.10 Common characteristics of sustainable urban development 228 5.11 Means for ensuring better access to environmental services by low-income groups 232 6.1 The headline indicators in the UK sustainable development strategy 239 6.2 The intentions of the national core set of indicators 240 6.3 Indicators for measuring sustainability 240 6.4 The Bellagio Principles for Assessment 241 6.5 The visions for trade in the future 252 6.6 Comparing the characteristics of community-based and donor initiatives 258 xii • List of Figures
  • 18.
    Tables 1.1 Income ratiosbetween rich and poor nations 22 1.2 Inward foreign direct investment, by major world region, 2000 29 2.1 International gaps in access to safe water supply and sanitation 55 2.2 Rural–urban gaps in access to improved drinking water 56 2.3 Access to basic water services in poor, middle-class and wealthy neighbourhoods of Accra, Ghana, 1991–2 56 2.4 Regional distribution of people living on fragile land 61 2.5 Child mortality, selected countries 67 2.6 The state and corporate power 75 2.7 Carbon dioxide emissions: per capita 78 3.1 Selected Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) 93 3.2 Resource flows to and from developing countries 100 3.3 Destination of current GEF monies by thematic area 105 3.4 Cow power 113 3.5 Low incomes and high indebtedness 118 3.6 Government spending: education and debt servicing compared 120 3.7 The number of municipalities involved in Local Agenda 21 128 3.8 Increasing collaboration between the World Bank and NGOs 137 4.1 Aspects of the reality of rural living 142 4.2 Leading crop protection and biotechnology companies 155 5.1 Actual and predicted distribution of the world’s urban population, by region 195 5.2 Historical distribution of the world’s 100 largest cities 195 5.3 Industrialisation and employment in selected Latin American countries, 1963–9 197
  • 19.
    5.4 Urban deathsfrom indoor air pollution 212 5.5 Proportion of urban population with improved water sources and sanitation facilities 213 5.6 Questioning environmental improvement 214 a. the adequacy of service b. the consistency of household supply xiv • List of Tables
  • 20.
    Boxes A The unevennessof globalisation 28 B Modes of thought concerning humanity and nature 30 C The unexpected environmental impacts of development 47 D India’s missing millions 70 E Responsibility for global warming under debate 78 F The export of hazardous waste 84 G European Union Action Programmes and the environment 99 H Agenda 21 planning 128 I The impact of free trade on maize production in Mexico 150 J The deterioration of rural livelihoods 158 K Coping with drought: improved security or increased vulnerability? 163 L The value of indigenous technologies 172 M Building women’s rights in sustainable water management 180 N Community conservation in Lake Mburu National Park, Uganda 185 O Green and Brown environmental agendas 192 P Poverty and the environment within informal waste management activities 206 Q The Cochabamba water wars, Bolivia 215 R Maquila developments on the Mexico–US border 219 S The Society for the Promotion of Area Resources Centre (SPARC) in Mumbai 231
  • 21.
    Acknowledgements I was pleasedto be asked to write this third edition of this text. Most importantly, I am pleased that it is proving to be a useful introduction for students and others interested in this challenge of sustainable development in the developing world. I wrote the first edition whilst employed as a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare; the bulk of it completed whilst the university was closed by the government as students engaged in demonstrations over resources for their study. The materials on which I drew to compile that original edition (and indeed those of the students with whom I was working in the early 1990s) were very limited; sustainable development was a relatively new idea for everyone and the impact of two successive years of drought were bigger concerns amongst my colleagues and for the people of Zimbabwe than the recently negotiated ‘Economic and Structural Adjustment Programme’. There was certainly no electronic access to academic journals nor online materials emanating from major institutions like the World Bank. Writing this third edition from Brighton in 2004, I think regularly on whether the aspirations of those students of geography in Zimbabwe whom I came to know are being realised now; whether the proliferation of writings and experiences on sustainable development, the structural reforms that their country has gone through, and the advances in information technology that I have access to, have made a positive difference in their lives. I am sure that many people could answer in the negative (without even reading this book). However, that is another book. I hope that this edition will continue to provide a useful introduction to some of the principal ideas, debates, changes seen, lessons being learnt and future challenges and opportunities underpinning the notion and practice of sustainable development as understood in relation to developing countries. With each edition the task of writing
  • 22.
    has become harderas the literature has expanded and fundamentally as the geographies of those components are revealed. In writing this third edition, I continue to be thankful for the supportive environment in which I work at the University of Brighton and particularly the friendship of my colleagues. My biggest thanks are to my family who will be those most pleased that this edition has been completed. The author and publisher would like to thank the following for granting permission to reproduce material in this work: David Simonds for Figure 3.2; Earthscan Publications Ltd for Figure 5.6; the Guardian newspaper for Table 3.4. Acknowledgements • xvii
  • 24.
    Introduction This book isconcerned with the continued challenges and opportunities of finding sustainable patterns and processes of development within the international community for the future. Since the publication of the first edition of this text in 1994, it is evident that much has been learnt in terms of the principles behind and the characteristics of policies, programmes and projects that appear to be more sustainable than previous such interventions, and certainly in terms of how such trends can be monitored and evaluated. However, whilst the idea of sustainable development may be widely recognised by the public, academics and practitioners in many disciplines and fields, both in the developing and more industrialised countries, there continue to be many patterns of human welfare and the status of environmental resources worldwide that suggest that further scrutiny and efforts are required. Too often, development processes are characterised by the loss or degradation of primary environmental resources. In many countries, ‘development reversals’ are being seen, with rising proportions of people below basic poverty lines and falling life expectancies, for example. The concern continues to be that many of the patterns and processes of development will not be able to supply the needs of the world’s population into the future and cannot deliver the higher standards of living to the rising numbers of people essential to the conservation of the environment. The pursuit of sustainable development is now stated as a principal policy goal of many of the major institutions of the world including the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade
  • 25.
    Organisation. This isconfirmation of how understanding of the global challenge of sustainable development has moved on to encompass the complex interdependencies of environmental, social and economic development. In addition, the context in which sustainable development is being sought in the twenty-first century is quite different from that of the 1990s. In particular, an increasingly globalised world has brought new challenges as well as opportunities for the environment and for development. New actors (such as transnational corporations and civil society organisations) and new technologies (particularly in communications), for example, now shape outcomes in resource development and management to a much greater extent than previously. Ensuring that processes of globalisation operate to reach the needs of the poor rather than to marginalise particular groups and places further, is central to the challenge of sustainable development currently. The primary focus of the book is the challenges and opportunities for sustainability in the less economically developed regions of the world. Fundamentally, this is because it is here that the majority of the world’s poor reside. This is not to suggest that sustainability is mostly a problem for the poor. Indeed, most pollution, for example, is a result of affluence, not poverty. Furthermore, the prospects of sustainable development in any one location are in part shaped by forces and decision-making which are often situated at great distances away such that it is impossible to consider the developing world in isolation from the wider global community. However, there are also particular and distinct issues of sustainability in the developing world that will be seen to lie in factors of both the natural and the human environment. For example, many countries of what can be termed the developing world are in the tropics where the boundary conditions on development, particularly in agriculture, are often quite different from those of temperate regions. These regions also encompass many of the world’s ‘fragile lands’, such as the major arid and semi-arid zones and forest ecosystems, where bio-physical factors in combination with social characteristics may make them particularly susceptible to degradation and make recovery from disturbance difficult. Large sections of the populations of these countries live in environments in which securing basic needs is extremely problematic and which may even be detrimental to human health. Not only do rising numbers of people in the developing world suffer the multiple deprivations associated with poverty, but they also live in countries that are becoming economically poorer and more indebted, for example. These factors of the human environment further combine 2 • Introduction
  • 26.
    to create particularchallenges and opportunities for sustainable development. In order to understand the characteristics of resource use or human conditions in the developing world and to allow more sustainable patterns to be supported, it is essential to identify the underlying processes of change. Some of these processes may operate solely at a local level, whilst others may impact across many places and constitute global forces of change. All to some degree, and in combination, shape the interactions between people and the environment (wherever they live) and the relationships between people in different places. It is for these reasons that sustainable development is a common challenge for the global community as a whole. In the course of this book, it will be seen that sustainable development in the future requires actions for change at all levels, addressing both the human and physical environments, through interventions in physical, political-economic and social processes. One of the primary aims of the book is to highlight the progress that has been made towards establishing new patterns and processes of development which are more sustainable in terms of the demands they make on the physical, ecological and cultural resources of the globe, and the characteristics of technology, societal organisation and economic production which underpin them. Understanding the characteristics of successful sustainable development projects will be essential for meeting the worldwide ongoing and evolving challenges of balancing present needs against those of the future. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, a lot has been learnt from ‘practice on the ground’ concerning the principles for actions that are more sustainable and the nature of the continued challenges. As the term ‘sustainable development’ reaches further into popular consciences worldwide and more institutions are stating sustainability as a major policy goal, there is a need to reflect critically on what is trying to be achieved and the inherently political nature of interventions in resource management towards these ends. The meaning and origins of the notion of sustainable development is traced in Chapter 1 within an analysis of thinking and practice in development theory and in environmentalism. Whilst the interdependence of future environment and development ends is recognised in both literatures, it is seen that substantial debate and contestation characterise both the theory and practice of sustainable development. The historical overview presented also confirms that the context within which environment and development are being pursued is changing rapidly, requiring continuous re-evaluation of Introduction • 3
  • 27.
    the meaning ofsustainable development as presented within particular schools of thinking and major international summits, for example. The chapter reveals some of the divergences as well as the commonalities within the global agenda of sustainable development. In Chapter 2, the impacts of past development processes on both people and the environments of the world are discussed in detail, providing a fuller insight into the nature of the challenges of sustainable development for individual actors and the various institutions of development. It is seen that development continues to depend heavily on natural resources for an increasing number of functions but that inequality in access to resources has also been a persistent and entrenched feature of past development patterns and processes. Such inequality is seen to underpin substantial human insecurity, conflict and premature deaths (as well as resource degradation) which confirm that development is not meeting the needs of current generations. In addition, the increasing global-scale impacts of human activities through, for example, climate warming raise very starkly the question of compromising the development opportunities of future generations. The inherently political nature of sustainable development is confirmed through consideration of a number of future challenges including questions of responsibility for environmental degradation and of sovereignty in the use of natural resources. In Chapter 3, the range of actions which have been taken at a variety of levels on behalf of some of the core institutions in development towards ensuring sustainability in the future are identified. Development is certainly no longer something undertaken principally by governments: the chapter highlights the expanded role of civil society organisations in recent years in delivering environmental improvements and development opportunities. Indeed, a central concern in the chapter is to consider how many institutions of development are changing what they do, but also how they are working in new ways, together, to address the integrated challenges of sustainable development. The chapter also considers a number of ‘cross-cutting’ issues of trade, aid and debt, that illustrate the ways in which people and places across the globe are interconnected but also how these issues operate to shape the capacities of particular actors in development. In Chapters 4 and 5, the particular challenges and opportunities of sustainable development in the developing world are considered in rural and urban contexts. It is quickly seen that the two sectors are not 4 • Introduction
  • 28.
    distinct and thatthe environment and development concerns therein are often interrelated. Indeed, one of the limitations of past development policies has been their tendency to consider rural and urban areas separately and there is now much better understanding of the complex and multi-directional linkages between the two sectors that shape landscapes and livelihoods. However, important differences are also seen in rural and urban areas in terms of the nature of the immediate environmental problems and development concerns, the options for securing income and livelihood, the hazards and sources of instability of living and working in these sectors, and the specific opportunities for action. Yet the principles which are seen to be now guiding more sustainable development interventions in practice are regularly common to both rural and urban settings. For example, addressing the welfare needs of the poorest groups and building responsive and inclusive systems of research and development are identified as being essential to achieving the goals of development and conservation in both sectors. In Chapter 6, a number of core remaining challenges of sustainable development for the global community are highlighted. Data from the substantive chapters of the book are drawn together to assess whether a common future can be identified and whether the finances for poverty alleviation and sustainable development will be realised, for example. Assessing the progress made and the prospects for sustainable development has also been assisted substantially in recent years through the development and improvement of indicators of sustainability and systems for monitoring. These are also overviewed in the chapter. Since the publication of the first edition of this text, there have been many reminders of the very direct relationship between human society and the resources and environmental processes of the globe. Recently, these have included a tsunami (originating in an earthquake under the Indian Ocean) and a war in Iraq (that cannot be divorced entirely from the geography of oil resources). Both have led to the loss of thousands of lives and removed basic development opportunities for many more. Through this book, the challenges of sustainable development will certainly be seen to encompass better understanding of environmental processes, international collaboration in multi- lateral environmental agreements and the conservation of lands and forests, for example. But it will also be seen to include freedom from repression, the accountability of industry to stakeholders and the power of all individuals to participate in the decisions that shape the opportunities for their own development. Introduction • 5
  • 30.
    1 What issustainable development? Summary There are many different definitions of sustainable development coming from various disciplines and with different assumptions about the basic relationship between society and nature. Ideas of sustainable development have a long history in the literatures of both development and environmentalism. There have been a number of important international conferences within which actions towards sustainable development have been debated (and contested) at the highest levels of government. Sustainable development is widely accepted as a desirable policy objective amongst many institutions concerned with the future development of the resources of the globe. Ideas concerning the best way of achieving development have changed over time, but are rarely replaced entirely. Mainstream environmentalism encapsulates the dominant ideas surrounding society–environment relationships, but are not subscribed to by all interests, equally. Sustainable development is currently being pursued in the context of an increasingly globalised world, but one which is also characterised by poverty. The global challenge of sustainable development lies in complex interdependencies of environment, social and economic development. Introduction In 1984, the United Nations established an independent group of 22 people drawn from member states of both the developing and developed worlds, and charged them with identifying the long-term environmental strategies for the international community. In 1987, the World Conference on Environment and Development published their report entitled, ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED, 1987), often known as the ‘Brundtland Report’, after its chair, the then Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report used the term ‘sustainable development’ widely and defined it as ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (p. 43). The report is
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    said to haveput sustainable development firmly into the political arena of international development thinking. Certainly, it has been translated into more than 24 languages (Finger, 1994) and its definition of the term continues to be that which is most widely used. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the ‘Earth Summit’, took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the time, it was the largest ever international conference held, with over 170 governments represented (Adams, 2001) and a further 2,500 NGOs and 8,000 accredited journalists attending (O’Riordan, 2000). The central aim was to identify the principles of an agenda for action towards sustainable development in the future. The challenge was seen to require consensus at the highest level, so that, for the first time, heads of state gathered to consider the environment. By this time, the term ‘sustainable development’ had also ‘gained a currency well beyond the confines of global environmental organisations’ (Adams, 1990: 2). Certainly in the developed world, the substantial media attention given to the serious environmental disturbances surrounding forest fires in Indonesia, flooding in the Americas, China and Bangladesh, and typhoons in South-East Asia, for example, brought questions of conservation and ideas of sustainability into the public vocabulary. In the fields of development and the environment, an evident consensus was emerging that sustainable development was an important rallying point for research and action and a desirable policy objective which should be striven for. However, it was evident through the decade of the 1990s, that there was substantial debate and contestation concerning the meaning and practice of sustainable development. For example, whilst the primary output of the Rio Conference, the huge ‘Agenda 21’ document, carried much political authority and moral force (Mather and Chapman, 1995) important tensions were evident through the proceedings at Rio such as between the environmental concerns of rich and poor countries, between those who wished to exploit resources and those who wished to conserve them, and between the development needs of current generations and those of the future. For some, the term ‘sustainable development’ has subsequently been redefined so many times and used to cover so many aspects of society– environment relationships that there are now ‘doubts on whether anything good can ever be agreed’ (Mawhinney, 2001: 1). For others, sustainable development is an idea that ‘makes a difference’ precisely because it is contested, requires debate and compromise and because it challenges both researchers and policy-makers (McNeill, 2000). 8 • What is sustainable development?
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    In 2002, 104heads of state once again met in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The global challenge of sustainability is now understood to lie in the complex interdependencies of environmental, social and economic development (Potter et al., 2004). New understanding has emerged of the linkages between environmental resources and conflict and the threats to environment of globalisation (as well as opportunities) as discussed in more detail here and in Chapter 2. In addition, a much more diverse range of interest groups was engaged in activities at Johannesburg than at Rio. In particular, there were many more non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the developing world representing issues of human rights, social justice and business accountability, for example. These activities suggested new ways of addressing sustainable development at a global level and a ‘more decentralized understanding of where change comes from’ (Bigg, 2004: 5). This chapter identifies in some detail the origins of the concept of sustainable development and its current ‘meaning’ in terms of finding alternative patterns of progress to meet the needs of the global community. Through an analysis of the key debates in the previously separate literatures of development thinking and environmentalism, it is possible to understand the sources of continued conflict regarding sustainable development in theory and practice and the broad political economic context in which sustainable development is being sought into the twenty-first century. The concept of sustainable development Literally, sustainable development refers to maintaining development over time. By the early 1990s, it was suggested that there were more than 70 definitions of sustainable development in circulation (Holmberg and Sandbrook, 1992). Figure 1.1 lists just a small number of such definitions and the varied interpretations of the concept which have flowed from these different ideas. Definitions are important, as they are the basis on which the means for achieving sustainable development in the future are built. Evidently, different disciplines have influenced and contributed to the sustainability debate, ‘each making different assumptions about the relation between environment and the human subject’ (Lee et al., 2000: 9). Differences are even more important when thinking about policy development: how the human and environmental ‘condition’ is What is sustainable development? • 9
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    thought about, viewedor understood underpins subsequent planning and interventions in the form of development and conservation projects, yet different disciplines and philosophies may assign quite divergent ‘orders of priority’ to these policies and programmes. During the course of this text, it will be apparent that, although there are many signs of progress, there is also much debate and uncertainty as to the most appropriate strategies to foster sustainable change. Indeed, as suggested in the quotations in Figure 1.1, the attractiveness (and the ‘dangers’) of the concept of sustainable development may lie precisely in the varied ways in which it can be interpreted and used to support a whole range of interests or causes. The challenges of understanding what this idea of sustainable development may mean, and how people can work towards it, are Figure 1.1 Defining and interpreting the contested concept of sustainable development ................................................................................................................. Definitions of sustainable development ‘In principle, such an optimal (sustainable growth) policy would seek to maintain an “acceptable” rate of growth in per-capita real incomes without depleting the national capital asset stock or the natural environmental asset stock.’ (Turner, 1988: 12) ‘The net productivity of biomass (positive mass balance per unit area per unit time) maintained over decades to centuries.’ (Conway, 1987: 96) ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 43) Interpretations of sustainable development ‘A creatively ambiguous phrase . . . an intuitively attractive but slippery concept.’ (Mitchell, 1997: 28) ‘Like motherhood, and God, it is difficult not to approve of it. At the same time, the idea of sustainable development is fraught with contradictions.’ (Redclift, 1997: 438) ‘It is indistinguishable from the total development of society.’ (Barbier, 1987: 103) ‘Its very ambiguity enables it to transcend the tensions inherent in its meaning.’ (O’Riordan, 1995: 21) ‘Sustainable development appears to be an over-used, misunderstood phrase.’ (Mawhinney, 2001: 5) ................................................................................................................. 10 • What is sustainable development?
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    evident in abrief analysis of the definition of sustainable development provided by the WCED. Their apparently simple definition of sustainable development is immediately seen to contain a distinction and a potential conflict between the interests of the present and those of future generations. Further, very challenging notions can be identified such as those of needs and limits. Questions emerge such as: what is it that one generation is passing to another? Is it solely natural capital or does it include assets associated with human ingenuity, language or other aspects of culture? What and how are the limits set – by technology, society or ecology, for example? What of the fact that, currently, needs in one place or amongst particular groups are often fulfilled at the expense of others? Fundamentally, ‘needs’ mean different things to different people and are linked to our ability to satisfy them, i.e. are closely aligned to ‘development’ itself. So, society is able to define and create new ‘needs’ within certain groups (that could be interpreted as ‘wants’), without satisfying even the basic needs of others. These questions highlight the many sources of conflict in the debates over the meaning of sustainable development: conflict between the interests of present generations and those of the future; between human well-being and the protection of nature; between poor and rich; and between local and global. Furthermore, the substantial challenges of operationalising the concept of sustainable development were clear in the report of the WCED, back in 1987. Figure 1.2 displays the critical objectives identified by the Commission and the necessary conditions for sustainable development in the future, evidently encompassing a huge breadth and scale of activity. A more prosperous, more just and more secure global future was seen to depend on new norms of behaviour at all levels and in the interests of all. The conditions for such a future encompass all areas of human activity, in production, trade, technology and politics, for example, and encompass cooperative and mutually supportive actions on behalf of individuals and nations at all levels of economic development. Most definitions of sustainable development encompass the idea that there are three interdependent pillars of sustainable development: environmental, economic and social. In 1987 Barbier presented these as three interlocking circles as seen in Figure 1.3. The objective of sustainable development is to maximise the goals across all three systems and is illustrated by the intersection of these circles. Critically, the model encompasses the understanding that each of the system goals (examples of which are identified in the figure) is socially What is sustainable development? • 11
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    Plate 1.1 Promotingthe messages of sustainable development a. Sign on entry to Kang, Botswana Source: David Nash, University of Brighton. b. VOYCE (Views of Young Concerned Environmentalists) Four Seasons Mural, Brighton, England Source: Kim Jackson, Brighton and Hove City Council. 12 • What is sustainable development?
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    Figure 1.3 Theobjectives of sustainable development Source: compiled from Barbier (1987). Figure 1.2 Critical objectives and necessary conditions for sustainable development as identified by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) ................................................................................................................. Critical objectives G Reviving growth G Changing the quality of growth G Meeting essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water and sanitation G Ensuring a sustainable level of population G Conserving and enhancing the resource base G Reorientating technology and managing risk G Merging environment and economics in decision-making Pursuit of sustainable development requires: G A political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making G An economic system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development G A production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development G A technological system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance G An international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance G An administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction ................................................................................................................. Source: WCED (1987). What is sustainable development? • 13
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    constructed and thatachieving sustainable development requires trade-offs; choices have to be made at particular points in time and at particular scales as to what is being pursued and how, and sustainable development requires recognition of the costs involved for particular interests and for groups of people. Whilst many of the early contributions to defining sustainable development came from the disciplines of economics and ecology, it is the third sphere that has accommodated much recent work. For Starkey and Walford (2001), for example, sustainable development is a moral concept that seeks to define a ‘fair and just’ development. They suggest that since the environment is the basis of all economic activity, and of life itself, ‘it is surely only right that the quality and integrity of the environment be maintained for future generations’ (p. xix). Notions of ‘environmental justice’ are now a prominent part of contemporary discussions of the meaning and practice of sustainable development and take the moral concerns further: in addition to environmental protection, the concern is for how environmental bads (such as pollution) and goods (such as access to green space) are distributed across society. Environmental justice also encompasses a concern for the equity of environmental management interventions and the nature of public involvement in decision-making. Understanding is mounting of the political nature of sustainable development in practice; how the solutions proposed (and the choices and trade-offs made) can carry different costs for different groups of people. Clearly, whilst common sense would seem to tell us that our development should not be at the expense of that of future generations, the challenges in practice are substantial. In order to identify the challenges of implementing sustainable development actions and to realise the opportunities for sustainable development, it is necessary to understand the changes in thinking and practice from which the concept has developed. As Adams (2001) suggests, sustainable development cannot be understood in ‘an historical vacuum’ (p. 22). Of particular importance are the changes in thinking about what constitutes ‘development’ and how best to achieve it, and changing ideas about the ‘environment’. Indeed, the current conflicts surrounding sustainable development today could be considered a legacy of the substantially separate nature of these two debates in the past (Lee et al., 2000). Furthermore, it is considered that the debates on sustainable development have been important in reshaping understanding in both these arenas (McNeill, 2000). 14 • What is sustainable development?
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    Changing perceptions ofdevelopment Poverty, hunger, disease and debt have been familiar words within the lexicon of development ever since formal development planning began, following the Second World War. In the past decade they have been joined by another, sustainability. (Adams, 2001: 1) Development is often discussed in relation to ‘developing countries’, but is a concept which relates to all parts of the world at every level, from the individual to global transformations (Potter et al., 2004). Development is something to which we all aspire and, certainly in the more developed world, ‘self-development’ has become something that is actively encouraged and an endeavour on which large amounts of money are spent, for example. Ideas about the best means by which to achieve our aspirations and needs are potentially as old as human civilisation. The study of development, however, has a relatively short history, really dating back only as far as the 1950s. Since then, the interdisciplinary field of development studies has seen many changes in thinking regarding the meaning and purpose of development (ideologies) and in development practice in the field (strategies of development). Although these shifts are considered chronologically here, in reality existing theories are rarely totally replaced; rather, new ones find relative favour and contestation over the prescriptions for development flowing from them continue. Optimistic early decades During the 1960s, development thinking (encompassing these aspects of ideology and strategy) prioritised economic growth and the application of modern scientific and technical knowledge as the route to prosperity in the underdeveloped world at that time. In short, the ‘global development problem’ was conceived as one in which less developed nations needed to ‘catch up’ with the West and enter the modern age of capitalism and liberal democracy. Underdevelopment was seen as an initial stage through which western nations had progressed and the gaps in development that existed could be gradually overcome through an ‘imitative process’ (Hettne, 2002: 7), significantly, through a sharing of the experience of West in terms of capital and know-how. In short, development was seen in terms of modernisation and, in turn, modernisation was equated with westernisation (and an associated faith in the rationality of science and technology) during this period. This ‘modernisation thesis’ What is sustainable development? • 15
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    dominated mainstream theoriesof economic development from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. It was an optimistic time: it was thought that underdevelopment could be overcome through the spatial diffusion of modernity from the West to less developed countries and from urban centres to rural areas, for example. It was assumed that many development problems of the underdeveloped world would be solved quickly through the transfer of finance, technology and experience from the developed countries. Insights from neo-classical economics as modelled by authors such as Rostow (1960) were very influential in development thinking at this time. Rostow’s model of the linear stages of economic development is shown in Figure 1.4. On the basis largely of the experience and history of the more developed societies (i.e. a Eurocentric stance), it was suggested that, through assistance in reaching a critical ‘take-off’ stage in levels of savings and investment, the benefits of development and characteristics of ‘modernisation’ (including of society, politics and culture) would inevitably and spontaneously flow from the core to less-developed regions. Industrialisation through capitalist growth was seen as the central requirement in order for development to take place and through this strengthening of the material base of society, all countries had an equal chance to develop. Whilst there were differences in emphasis regarding the nature of the strategies to deliver industrial growth, there was an absolute faith within development thinking at this time that there was a linear, unconstrained path to economic development and an ‘unswerving faith in the efficacy of urban-based industrial growth’ (Potter et al., 2004: 94). There was an active role envisaged for the state in creating the conditions needed to achieve ‘take-off’ (such as setting policy to stimulate local demand and savings) and in setting appropriate rates of taxes. Aspects of these ideas, such as the importance of the free market and the priority given to the European experience, found renewed emphasis in the 1990s within structural adjustment programmes as detailed below. The optimism of the theorists of the 1960s, however, was generally not borne out by experience of development on the ground in that decade. By the 1970s, inequality between and within countries had in fact worsened. The empirical evidence concerning economic growth as measured by gross national product (GNP) suggested that, whilst change had been achieved, this ‘development’ was not shared equally amongst the populations of these nations. For example, in Brazil in 1970, the poorest 40 per cent of the population received only 6.5 per cent of the total national income, in contrast to the 66.7 per cent of 16 • What is sustainable development?
  • 40.
    the total nationalincome received by the richest 20 per cent of the population (Todaro, 1997). Into the 1980s, rising levels of debt, the oil crisis and the problems for oil-importing countries led to growing dissatisfaction with ideas of modernisation as development. The optimism of a speedy end to underdevelopment faded on the basis of such emerging ‘real-world observations’ (Potter et al., 2004: 97). During the 1970s, development thinking was influenced strongly by the writings of scholars within the developing world itself, particularly from Latin American and the Caribbean (notably those regions most strongly linked to the United States). They considered the socioeconomic structures and economic conditions of their countries in terms of the exploitative/dependent relations with other parts of the world, particularly through colonialism in the past and with the capitalist economy generally. The politics of development came to the fore within such writings. In Europe too at this time, there was a reinvigorated interest in the work of Marx and an emerging ‘New Left’ movement that linked with the struggles of the Third World anti-colonial movements (Potter et al., 2004). Through the 1970s, what became known as the radical or ‘dependency’ school of thought became dominant in development. This school is perhaps most closely associated with the work of Andre Gunder Frank (1967), a European economist trained in America, but who carried out much research in Central and Latin America. Figure 1.4 The stages of economic development as modelled by Rostow Source: Rostow (1960). What is sustainable development? • 17
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    Fundamentally, the assertionin dependency theory was that underdevelopment was not the result of any inadequacies in economic, social or environmental conditions within those countries themselves, but the direct outcome of development elsewhere and the manner in which those countries were incorporated into the operations of the international capitalist system, i.e. the structural disadvantages of these countries and regions. Rather than seeing the US and Europe as the source of a cure for the ills of the developing world, dependency theorists saw the role of these regions as the source of those ills, i.e. in actively creating the problems of underdevelopment. To use Frank’s terminology, development and underdevelopment were two sides of the same coin. As illustrated in Figure 1.5, peripheral or satellite regions and countries are integrated into the world system through processes of unequal exchange and dependent relations with the metropolitan core. In consequence, the further entrenched they become in such processes, the more they are held back in development, rather than enabled to progress. This ‘development of underdevelopment’ was modelled as applying to processes of unequal exchange operating both internationally and internally within countries, and was used to explain patterns of regional and national underdevelopment in countries like Brazil. The barriers to development as modelled by dependency theorists, therefore, lay in the international division of labour and the terms of trade, rather than a lack of capital or entrepreneurial skills, as within modernisation thinking. One of the principal policy responses to flow from the dependency ideas was import substitution industrialisation (ISI). ISI is a strategy to enable peripheral countries to industrialise through looking inward (setting up domestic industry and supplying markets previously served by imports). It depends on a strong role for the state in protecting new industries via import tariffs and quotas and controlled access to foreign exchange. Many Latin American countries such as Brazil and Argentina had established substantial industrial bases by the 1960s using this strategy towards providing consumer goods such as clothing, cars, food and drinks to sizeable home markets. However, ISI has proven less successful in relation to the production of intermediate and capital goods which are more capital than labour intensive (Hewitt, 2000) and where problems of the lack of domestic capital to invest in such production and a lack of purchasing power on behalf of local, relatively poor, citizens have emerged. Other means towards ‘withdrawal’ from the international capitalist economy such as through the formation of regional trading areas (as a means for expanding domestic markets) have generally not 18 • What is sustainable development?
  • 42.
    been sustained overtime. In short, dependency theory did much to expose the structural disadvantages of peripheral countries in relation to the capitalist core, and therefore how unlikely it was that they would follow the stages of economic growth mapped out on the basis of early experiences in Europe and North America (as modelled by modernisation theorists). However, the internal problems of local economies were generally underestimated within dependency theory. The lost decade of the 1980s? By the 1980s, dependency theory had to a large extent moved out of fashion within development thinking, criticised in particular for its rather deterministic emphasis on the role of external economic structures in shaping society and development. Many commentators by this time were starting to consider the basic development conditions and needs of people within countries of the developing world, to focus on issues of self-reliance in development and on the internal forces of change. The expression, ‘another development’ is Figure 1.5 The Frank model of underdevelopment Source: Corbridge (1987). What is sustainable development? • 19
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    often used asan umbrella term to include a broad sweep of changes in thinking regarding development and how best to achieve it from the late 1970s. As a whole, proponents of ‘another’ or ‘alternative’ development make less recourse to theorising social change and are more concerned with how development should occur (Thomas, 2000). Phrases such as ‘growth with equity’ or ‘redistribution with growth’ emerged in the 1970s and encapsulated the recognition that economic growth remains a fundamental ingredient within development thinking and action, but that it was critical to ensure that the benefits do not fall solely to a minority of the population. Similarly, the International Labor Organisation World Employment Conference in 1976 is considered to have been particularly important in raising issues of employment generation and a redistribution of wealth over and above economic growth. By the 1980s, ‘development’ was seen as a multidimensional concept encapsulating widespread improvements in the social as well as the material well-being of all in society. In addition, it was recognised that there was no single model for achieving development; certainly it required investment in all sectors, including agriculture as well as industry. Rural-based strategies of development were particularly important amongst those promoting ‘development from below’ such as Stohr and Taylor (1981). Rather than a single, ‘top-down’ (and linear) model, it was asserted that development needs to be closely related to the specific local, historical, Plate 1.2 The inevitable consequences of development? Industrial air pollution Source: Gordon Walker, Lancaster University. 20 • What is sustainable development?
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    sociocultural and institutionalconditions, focused on mobilising internal natural and human resources, appropriate technologies and give priority to basic needs. In stark contrast to the theories of development up to that time, development was to be more inclusive, with individual and cooperative actions and enterprises becoming the central means for (or ‘agents’ of) development. Strong and Plate 1.3 The pollution of poverty Source: author. b. Washing in the Jakarta floods a. Hazardous housing on a Calcutta roadside Source: author. What is sustainable development? • 21
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    enduring notions (aswill be seen through subsequent chapters) of ‘participatory development’ emerged at this time in recognition of the shortcomings of top-down, externally imposed and expert-oriented research and development practice (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). Above all through the 1980s, it started to be understood that development needed to be sustainable; it must encompass not only economic and social activities, but also those related to population, the use of natural resources and the resulting impacts on the environment. The 1980s, however, have been referred to as the ‘lost decade’ in development. The suggestion is that, with the exception of the ‘Asian Tigers’, the widespread experience in the developing world was of ‘development reversals’, i.e. previous gains were lost and in many cases went into reverse. ‘Per capita national incomes in Latin America and Africa, for example, declined, investment declined (resulting in the deterioration of infrastructure and transport, communications, education and health care) and unemployment and underemployment grew’ (Hewitt, 2000: 301). Furthermore, global inequality increased in the 1980s: the income ratio of rich to poor nations worsened in this decade and continues to do so as seen in Table 1.1. For many developing countries through the 1980s, development had to be pursued in the context of global economic recession and a mounting ‘debt crisis’. Starting in Latin America, with Brazil and Mexico announcing that they could no longer service their official debts, concern spread through the commercial banks and northern governments (that had previously lent huge monies in a context of low interest rates and global expansion) about widespread defaulting and the possible collapse of the international monetary system. Figure 1.6 illustrates the persistent and generally mounting challenge throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s of servicing debt in relation to export performance of regions of the developing world. Economic recession impacted on developing countries through a combination of declining international demand, increasing protectionism in the industrialised countries, deteriorating terms of trade, negative capital flows, continuing high interest rates, and unfavourable lending conditions. These factors had serious implications for the environment, as considered in Chapter 3, and were primary aspects of Table 1.1 Income ratios between rich and poor nations ............................................... Year Income of richest 20% divided by income of poorest 20% ............................................... 1960 20:1 1980 46:1 1989 60:1 1999 74:1 ............................................... Sources: Schurmann (2002); UNDP (1999). 22 • What is sustainable development?
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    the context inwhich sustainable development was pursued in the 1980s (and remain so). Not only did huge interest repayments mean money going out without any direct impacts on productive development internally, but savings had to be made, typically in the finance for environment departments and through cuts in social services. The growing inequality globally and the increasingly diverse experiences of development and underdevelopment in the South through the 1980s were important factors in shaping what has been termed the ‘impasse in development studies’ (Schurmann, 2002) that was also considered to have characterised this period. The suggestion was that ‘old certainties’ concerning understanding development were ‘fading away’ and that existing theories ‘could ever less adequately explain experiences of development and underdevelopment’ (p. 12): i.e. there was a concern about how development was being theorised as well as the concerns over the development impacts on the ground. A number of factors continued to underpin such concerns through the 1990s. For example, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism undermined the strength of Marxist analyses (that had underpinned dependency theories, for example). A ‘post-modern’ critique within the social sciences generally at this time was also fundamentally about moving away from an era dominated by notions of modernisation and modernity. Both these factors had profound implications for development theory and practice. Furthermore, the rise of globalisation (as considered below and in Chapter 2) was Figure 1.6 Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services by world region Source: World Bank (1997). What is sustainable development? • 23
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    changing the positionof the nation state and national governments across economic, social and political spheres. Yet the nation state was central within existing theories of development as seen above. Evidently, all these factors raised many questions for those involved in both development thinking and practice through the 1990s. The neo-liberal 1990s In the North, disillusionment with the record of state involvement in the economy (and social life more broadly) also mounted from the late 1980s. This was illustrated in the ascendancy of conservative governments and the politics of Reagan and Thatcher in the US and UK, for example. A belief in what Simon (2002: 87) terms the ‘magic of the market’ developed and neo-liberal ideas of development took hold. Neo-liberalism is essentially an approach to development that considers the free market to be the best way to initiate and sustain economic development. Typical policy implications of such an approach therefore centre on removing the influence of the state in markets; in removing tariffs on imports and subsidies on exports, for example, and denationalising public industries and service provision. The roots of neo-liberalism are in the neo-classical economics of Adam Smith and ‘this ideology rapidly became the economic orthodoxy in the North and was exported to the global South via aid policies and the measures formulated to address the debt crisis’ (Simon, 2002: 87). For many nations in the developing world, their entry into the world economy through the 1990s was increasingly defined by the neo- liberal policies of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As already suggested, many developing countries began to experience severe balance of payments difficulties in the 1980s that were considered to threaten the international financial system as a whole. Debt became the concern of the two ‘mainstays of the global economic order’, the WB and the IMF. The assessment in the early 1980s was that the economic crisis in developing countries was more than a temporary liquidity issue (as it had been conceived in the 1970s). Rather, comprehensive, longer-term solutions were required, based on packages of broad policy reforms in indebted nations. The term structural adjustment programme (SAP) is used to refer to the generic activities of the IMF and WB in this arena. The central objective of SAPs as defined by the World Bank was to ‘modify the structure of an economy so that it can maintain both its 24 • What is sustainable development?
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    growth rate andthe viability of its balance of payments in the medium term’ (Reed, 1996: 41), i.e. to address issues of debt. The first SAP was implemented in Turkey in 1980 and by the end of the decade 187 SAPs had been negotiated for 64 developing countries (Dickenson et al., 1996: 265). Most countries today have some kind of SAP since they are the basis for receipt of WB lending that now reaches most countries of the world as shown in Figure 1.7. Although each package of policy reform is tailored for the particular country, SAPs generally have included many or all of the elements listed in Figure 1.8. It has been argued that the impacts of SAPs quickly went far beyond the original national contexts for which they were designed, to become an instrument for global economic restructuring (Reed, 1996) and through the conditions attached, they enabled the IMF and WB to ‘virtually control the economies’ of many developing nations (Hildyard, 1994: 26). Certainly, these international institutions currently influence development policy and planning in the developing world to an unprecedented extent and are important actors in determining the prospects for sustainable development in the future, as seen in Chapter 3. Through the 1990s, recognition also grew of the unprecedented changes of a global character occurring in all arenas of economic, social, political (and environmental) activity. The term ‘globalisation’ became: widely used to explain the causes and effects of most aspects of life at the turn of the century . . . While open to different interpretations, globalisation captures a description of the widening and deepening of economic, political, social and cultural interdependence and interconnectedness. (Willett, 2001: 1) In short, globalisation encompasses the various processes of change through which interactions between different regions are increasing and the world becomes ever more global in character. Whilst global links and interconnections between places and peoples around the world have existed previously (through colonial ties, for example), the nature, extent and depth of contemporary processes of globalisation are relatively new. As Allen and Hamnett (1995) suggest, it is not the global scope of movements of people or resources currently, but the immediacy and intensity with which we can now experience other parts of the globe, which is unprecedented and is part of what distinguishes globalisation from earlier periods of ‘internationalism’. Furthermore, processes of global integration now extend to much What is sustainable development? • 25
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    more than theflow of goods and services, for example, as illustrated further in Chapters 2 and 3. However, whilst the world is becoming more global, it does not necessarily mean it is becoming more uniform, as discussed in Box A. Into the twenty-first century, one of the most radical reactions within development thinking to the dilemmas of development on the ground and to the limitations of both conventional and alternative schools of thought came from what’s known as the ‘post- development’ school (most closely associated with Escobar, 1995). Within this thinking, the concept of development as a desirable process itself is contested for the ways in which it ‘involves a dependent and subordinate process, creates and widens spatial inequalities, harms local cultures and values, perpetuates poverty and poor working and living conditions, produces unsustainable environments, and infringes human rights and democracy’ (Hodder, 2000: 17). Not only is development considered to have failed, but the development project itself is condemned for creating and producing the opposite of what it promised (Corbridge, 1999). In short, a post-development era depends on breaking the ‘holds of westernisation’ be it as organised by the aid industry or activities of western private capital. ‘Defending the local’ (such as through ecological, women’s and people’s organisations) and resisting the forces of globalisation are core prescriptions for change. Post- developmentalists emphasise grassroots participation and the capacities of organisations at the local level as agents of change (the suggestion being that the state has failed for the way that it has facilitated the westernisation of the development project). Whilst the post-development school can be criticised for focusing on the ‘worst’ experiences of the last decades (Rigg, 1997) and for ignoring the improvements shown in longer-term data sets, post-development thinking has helped reaffirm the importance of the local in development processes (Potter et al., 2004), which will be seen to be a feature of more sustainable development processes in later chapters. Figure 1.8 The principal instruments of structural adjustment ...................................................... Cuts in: G government expenditure G public sector employment G real wages Pricing policies designed to: G eliminate food subsidies G raise agricultural prices G cost recovery in public services Trade liberalisation involving: G currency devaluation G credit reform G privatisation of state-owned institutions G higher interest rates ...................................................... What is sustainable development? • 27
  • 51.
    Box A The unevennessof globalisation Despite the global character of many major processes of economic, political, environmental and social change in the world currently, it should not be taken that globalisation affects all people or all areas of the globe equally. It is evident that some parts of the world are ‘left out’ in the sense that they are not part of a network of communications or do not receive multi-national investment, for example. A simple illustration is that half of the world’s population has never made a telephone call. (Potter et al., 2004) Figure 1.9 highlights the geographical differences in the use of the Internet. Over half of the population of the United States is now online, whereas in countries like Thailand, only a minority of the urban population is able to access this network. Approximately 70 per cent of all traffic on the Internet originates from or is addressed to North America (Knox and Marston, 2004). Furthermore, 80 per cent of all global websites are in English, yet only 10 per cent of the world’s population speaks English (UNDP, 2001). Figure 1.9 Internet users per 1,000 population, 2001 Source: UNDP (2003). The uneven reach of globalisation is also illustrated in terms of foreign direct investment – investment made by private companies that is a major driving force of economic globalisation. The developed world accounts for two-thirds of the world’s FDI stock (UNCTAD, 2003). In particular, it is firms from the EU, the US and Japan which are the major owners and sources of outward FDI. In large measure, these major investors 28 • What is sustainable development?
  • 52.
    overseas are alsoinvesting in each other. Table 1.2 confirms that the great proportion of inward FDI flows are to the high-income countries of the world. In contrast, the African continent, for example, could be suggested to be only loosely connected to this globalising economy. Table 1.2 Inward foreign direct investment, by major world region, 2000 ............................................................................................................. Total flows, millions of dollars % of world total ............................................................................................................. World 1,167,337 Low income countries 6,812 0.6 Middle income countries 150,572 12.9 High income countries 1,009,929 86.5 East Asia and Pacific 42,847 4 Europe and Central Asia 28,495 2.4 Latin America and Caribbean 75,088 6.4 Middle East and North Africa 1,209 0.1 South Asia 3,093 0.3 Sub-Saharan Africa 6,676 0.6 ............................................................................................................. Source: Compiled from World Bank (2003a). Changing perceptions of the environment The history of environmental concern is quite similar to that of development studies: although people have held and articulated varying attitudes towards nature stretching back many years, it is only since the 1960s that a coherent philosophy and language surrounding the environment (‘environmentalism’ as defined by Pepper in 1984) can be identified. In continuity with ‘development thinking’, it is possible to identify significant differences and changes over time concerning ideas about the environment; regarding society’s relationship with nature and in terms of the prescribed conservation requirements within modern environmentalism. Although the focus here is largely on ‘mainstream’ environmentalism, i.e. the broad consensus that can be identified as forwarded for example within successive conferences and publications of international institutions, the continued diversity within modern environmentalism should not be denied or underestimated. For example, there is a persistent and fundamental divergence between ‘reformist/technocentric’ and ‘radical/ecocentric’ environmentalism which is the source of much contemporary debate within sustainable development. Box B What is sustainable development? • 29
  • 53.
    Box B Modes ofthought concerning humanity and nature It is argued that society’s desire to manipulate nature, concomitant with an acceptance that the Earth nurtures our own existence, is inherent in the human condition. ‘Technocentric’ and ‘ecocentric’ refer to the two extreme positions. In reality, the distinction between these different perspectives is often blurred. As O’Riordan (1981) suggests, rarely is the world so neatly divided into two camps; rather we all tend to favour certain elements of both modes, depending on such factors as our changing economic status and the institutional setting or issue at hand. The categories should not, therefore, be thought of as rigidly fixed or mutually exclusive. Environmental philosophies: Technocentric Ecocentric Human-centred: humanity has a desire to manipulate nature and make the world a more certain place in which to live. Earth-centred: the Earth nurtures humanity’s existence and should be treated with respect and humility. Green labels: ‘Dry Green’ ‘Deep Green’ Reformist in that the present economic system is accepted, but considered to require some gradual revision. Radical in that quite rapid and fundamental changes in economy and society are desired. Belief in political status quo, but more responsible and accountable institutions. Self-regulation through ‘enlightened conscience’. Supports devolved, political structures with emphasis on self-reliant communities and pursuit of justice and redistribution across generations. Environmental management strategies: Reliance on scientific credibility, modelling and prediction. Management strategies geared to retaining global stability based on ecological principles of diversity and homeostasis. Promotes the appropriate manipulation of markets to create cost-effective solutions to environmental improvements. New and fundamentally different conservation solutions required which are flexible and adaptable. Sustainable development through rational use of resources, better planning and clean technologies, for example. Alternative and appropriate technologies. Sources: compiled from Pepper (1996), O’Riordan (1981) and O’Riordan (1995). 30 • What is sustainable development?
  • 54.
    highlights the principaldifferences between these two philosophical standpoints on nature and society and the varied implications of each for conservation action. Development as environmentally destructive In the 1960s, environmentalism was largely a movement reflecting European and American white, middle-class concerns. The undesirable effects of industrial and economic development were beginning to be seen via a number of ‘conspicuous pollution incidents’ (Bartelmus, 1994: 5) and people were worried about the effects on their own lifestyles and health: ‘after two centuries of industrialism and urbanisation, people now began to rediscover the idea that they were part of nature’ (McCormick, 1995: 56). Environmentalists campaigned on issues such as air pollution and whaling and often received substantial support from the media. In contrast to earlier nature protection or conservation movements within these regions, environmentalism was overtly activist and political. The combination of actual changes in the environment and people’s perceptions generally at this time brought widespread public support for the environmental movement, particularly amongst the younger groups. As Biswas and Biswas (1985) suggest, ‘the environment and Vietnam became two of the major issues over which youth rebelled against the establishment’ (p. 25). For the new environmentalists, it was not solely their local outdoor environments which were perceived to be under threat, but human survival itself. A number of very influential ‘global future studies’ were published in the early 1970s which served to reinforce and spread the fears and influence of western environmentalists. For example, texts such as The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968), Blueprint for Survival (Goldsmith et al., 1972) and The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) modelled an ever-expanding population and mounting demands of society on a fundamentally finite resource base. In order to ‘avoid the disastrous consequences of transgressing the physical limits of the Earth’s resources’ (Bartelmus, 1994: 5), urgent conservation actions (particularly population control in the developing world) and ‘zero-growth’ in the world economy were required. Not surprisingly, this environmental movement found little support in the developing nations. Many developing nations (outside Latin America) had only just gained independence and were sceptical What is sustainable development? • 31
  • 55.
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    [438] Ibn-Haiyân, fol.128 r.; Abd-al-wâhid, p. 45; Maccarî, t. I, p. 316, 318. [439] J’ai cru devoir préférer ici le témoignage de l’auteur copié par Maccarî (t. I, p. 319), dont le récit est le plus circonstancié, à celui de Homaidî (apud Abd-al- wâhid, p. 37). [440] Ibn-al-Abbâr, p. 165, 166. Le man. d’Ibn-Bassâm, (t. I, fol. 11 r. et v.) m’a servi à corriger quelques fautes dans ces textes. [441] Maccarî, t, I, p. 285; variantes chez Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 11 v., 12 r. [442] Voyez mon Catalogue des man. orient. de la Bibl. de Leyde, t. I, p. 227. [443] Ibn-Hazm, Traité sur les religions, t. II, fol. 227 r. [444] Voyez mon Catalogue, t. I, p. 225, 230. [445] Ibn-Hazm, Traité sur l’amour, fol. 99 r.-102 v. [446] Voyez Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 82 v. [447] Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 9 v.-11 r., 114 r.-115 r.; Ibn-al-Athîr; Maccarî, t. I, p. 319, 320; Abd-al-wâhid, p. 38-40; Rodrigue de Tolède, c. 44. [448] Homaidî, que tous les autres écrivains arabes ont copié. [449] Ou Motamid, selon d’autres. [450] Abd-al-wâhid, p. 40, 41. [451] Voyez Ibn-al-Athîr. [452] Voyez Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. I, fol. 157 r. [453] Ibn-al-Athîr, sous l’année 407. [454] Voyez Ibn-al-Athîr, sous l’année 407. [455] Le même, ibid. [456] Ibn-Haiyân, apud Ibn-Bassâm, t. III, fol. 139 v.-143 v.
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