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Explore the meanings and history of sustainability as an integrative term that combines environmentalism and international development. Understand the politics and challenges involved in achieving sustainable development. Consider the need for interdisciplinary studies and collaborative work in addressing environmental degradation and resource use.
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Lecture GEOG 270 Fall 2007 October 1, 2007
GEOG 270Geography of Development and Environmental Change What is “Sustainability” A Convergence of Development and Environmental Discourses
Recap Last Lecture • What and where is the Third World • What is development – many definitions and points of view • Three theories of development • Take home message: • we need to be aware of theory as it underpins and constructs the meanings of these terms for various actors and subjects of development
Today: “Sustainability” • Meanings and History of “Sustainability” • The Politics of Sustainability
Before we start What is sustainability? or Can you give an example of how the term is used?
Convergence of two discourses: • Development in the 1960s • Environmentalism
Discourse #1: Development Project outcomes and continuity Desertification near newly-drilled water holes
Discourse #2: Enviromentalism Metaphors for survival
It’s an “Integrative Term” • The term “sustainability” it has become useful precisely because it captures the challenges of growth/prosperity/poverty reduction vs. impacts on the environment
It’s an “Integrative Term” • Brings together the ideas – and therefore the politics and activities – of environmentalism and international development • Multi-scalar (from local to global) • Economic, social and political activities as well as natural processes
Some history • Small but growing movement in the 1970s • IUCN report World Conservation Strategies (1980) • “Brundtland Report” – World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) • “Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Some history (cont.) • “The United nations Conference on Environment and Development” – otherwise known as the “Earth Summit” (1992, Rio)
What’s really changed • With all the change in rhetoric, is there really any change in practice? • Adams (2001) says, “The question remains, however, how deep the apparent revolution in development thinking goes. Has there really been a ‘greening’ of development?... Was the ‘greening of development’ evidence of a paradigm shift in development thought or simply an exercise in relabelling?” • What do you think?
An Integrative Paradigm? • Adams: “However, even in the decade of sustainable development that followed the Brundtland report in 1987, the fields of development and environmental studies were far from unified. The one language of sustainability has hidden the separation of two cultures” – of thought and priorities. • (Adams continues:) “Development crises and environmental crises exist side by side in the literature, and together on the ground, yet explanations fail to intersect. Environmentalists and social scientists speak different languages.” • Need for interdisciplinary studies and collaborative work
Not just academic… • There is also a fundamental ideological component in understanding the issues surrounding environmental degradation and resource use. • For example, the problem (or perception) of “fairness” • Who should reduce carbon emissions, the US or China or India or Japan? (an argument that continues today) • Who has to forego the trappings and benefits of modernity? (“The West gets to have cars and air conditioning – why can’t we?”) • The “survivalists” vs. “Prometheans” (Dryzek; i.e., Spaceship Earth vs. Cornucopia )
Chameleon Word? • Dryzek: “Does this variety of meanings mean that we should dismiss sustainable development as an empty vessel that can be filled with whatever one likes? Not at all. For it is not unusual for important concepts to be contested politically.” (e.g., democracy”)
Politics Rears its Ugly Head • The “working out” of exactly the forms and processes involved in working toward some form of “sustainable development” will therefore be political in nature. • Therefore. it is in the political realm that the solutions must come. • But they must be come out of the best information that social scientists, environmentalists, activists, and especially the people living in poverty around the world can offer.
