Sustainability?

Ron's comments on the following:
There is a large difference between 'sustainable development' and 'sustainable agriculture'. You mostly discussed the former via Brundtland report. Some say this was so successful because most politicians interpreted to mean that we could have 'development' (i.e. 'growth') in the traditional sense and care for the environment. They obviously didn't get it, but that was what people signed on to in Rio '92, Agenda 21 etc.

'Sustainable agriculture' is a US term. It was invented by the more 'progressive' wing of the ag research establishment for the purpose of getting on the agroecology bandwagon without using the "O" word, ( i.e. organic), anathema to ag researchers and congressmen (until very recently). A very different history.

Re sustainable development, a missing figure on your page is Herman Daly, and the concept of "Steady State Economics", (1977)--versus 'growth economics'. He has a recent book called "Beyond Growth" written in economeze [HC79.E5 D324 1996] and a much more accessible one (my favorite) called "For the Common Good" (1989 [HD75.6 .D35 1989]) , written with a theologian J. Cobb. There they discuss alternatives to GNP as a measure of 'development' (as opposed to 'growth')


What does this really mean? Is it, as one commentator says, basically "ambiguous, vacuous, or otiose", a "high-visibility, low-content term" (Bryan Norton)? A bit of exploration reveals that it is a term/concept that first appeared in the 1980s and really bloomed in the 1990s, along with 'globalization', to apostrophize [O.E.D.: "Rhet. A figure of speech, by which a speaker or writer suddenly stops in his discourse, and turns to address pointedly some person or thing, either present or absent; an exclamatory address...] the question "can we keep doing what we're doing?" Its principal application is in discussions of limits, which were once focused on fairly simple extrapolation models for resources ("limits to growth" --Jay Forrester [HD82 .F63], Club of Rome [HC59 .L54 1974]). A long history of dire predictions that didn't turn out (Malthus onward) and unforeseen technological saviours makes for a hard sell for predicted crises, but there are plenty of indicators that irreversible "tipping points" do occur. The most recent warnings I've seen have been in fisheries and in global climate, but there are others (like the ozone layer, and CO2). Consider this:

...the environmental demands of our economic system now fill the available environmental space of the planet... The first environmental limits that we have confronted, and possibly exceeded, are not the limits to nonrenewable resource exploitation, as many once anticipated, but rather the limits to our use of renewable resources and to our use of the environment's sink functions --its ability to absorb our wastes... The details are far less important than coming to terms with the basic truth that we have no real option other than to recreate our economic institutions in line with the reality of a full world...
(David C. Korten "Sustainability and the Global Economy" in Visions of a New Earth [GF80 .V57 2000], pg 31)
Another rather stirring summary:
The need for sustainability arose from the recognition that the profligate, extravagant, and inequitable nature of current patterns of development, when projected into the not-too-distant future, leads to biophysical impossibilities.
(Goodland 1995, pg 5 and cited below)

A fundamental document in development and popularization of the concept of sustainability is the Brundtland Report of 1987 ("Our Common Future", HD75.6 .O97 1987) which defined "sustainable development" as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The fundamental question seems to come down to whether growth, which is the fundamental assumption and requisite of conventional economic models, can be sustained. Quoting Korten again:

...the prevailing wisdom continues to maintain that economic growth offers the answer to poverty, environmental security, and a strong social fabric --and that economic globalization --which involves erasing economic borders to allow the free flow of goods and money-- is the key to growth. Indeed, the more severe the mounting economic, environmental, and social crises become, the stronger the policy commitment to these same prescriptions, even as evidence mounts that they are not working. (30)

[aside: want to see a today's-news version? Hastert Rebukes Bush Adviser]

'Growth' has also meant (or perhaps necessitated?) amalgamation. Korten summarizes:

Any industry in which five firms control 50 percent or more of the market is considered by economists to be highly monopolistic. The Economist magazine recently reported that five firms control more than 50 percent of the global market in the following industries: consumer durables, automotive, airlines, aerospace, ecetronic components, electrical and electronic, and steel. Five firms control over 40 percent of the global market in oil, personal computers, and --especially alarming for its consequences on public debate on tehse very issues-- media. (39)

[aside: want to see a today's-news version? The Mouse That Reeled By Robert MacMillan washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

There's nothing much going on today ... other than a $56 billion attempt to reshape the nation's media industry. That $56 billion would come from none other than Philadelphia phenomenon Comcast Corp., which stunned folks during their morning commute yesterday by announcing an unsolicited bid to buy a blue chip piece of America's entertainment industry, The Walt Disney Co.
The subdiscipline of Ecological Economics seeks answers to the question of how to value and quantify environmental qualities, so that decision-making in resource management and resource allocation takes account of environmental costs and consequences.

I've been doing some searching for illuminating materials on 'sustainability', and as usual I've processed fewer than I'd like... but here are some of the bits: