SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA

Since the UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in June of 1972, the notion of sustainable development has become central to the development and understanding of contemporary international environmental law and diplomacy. As the 26 principles embodied in the Stockholm Declaration adopted at UNCHE make clear, the numerous ecological crises threatening the planet demand that questions of economic development be integrated with issues concerning protection of the environment. Principle 4, for instance, states: "Man has a special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat which are now gravely imperiled by a combination of adverse factors. Nature conservation including wildlife must therefore receive importance in planning for economic development."

Despite such recognition, however, the Stockholm Declaration did not offer a formal definition of what is now referred to by the phrase "sustainable development." The subsequent adoption by the UN General Assembly of the World Charter for Nature in 1982 provided further support for the general principles and attitudes of environmental conservation expressed in the Stockholm Declaration. Yet it was not until the publication of the Brundtland Report, entitled Our Common Future, in 1987 that sustainable development received its first clear articulation and gained increasingly widespread attention.

As drawn up by the members of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), the Brundtland Report defines environmentally sustainable economic development as that which can "ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Moreover, "sustainable development requires meeting the needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life." [1]

Soon after, the WCED established the Experts Group on Environmental Law. The purpose of this group was to formulate a substantive account of the notion of sustainable development, paying particular attention to the identification of deficiencies and the articulation of proposals with respect to international law, and economic and social policy. The Experts Groups was especially concerned with clarifying complex issues concerning the legal rights and responsibilities of development as necessitated by an awareness of the limits of the earth's natural resources. The group's final report elaborated a host of carefully constructed legal principles intended to assist the effective transformation of "all States individually and collectively" toward the goal of sustainable development and environmental protection. These principles, the group declared, "ought to be in place now or before the year 2000." [2]

Little was done to implement the legal principles suggested by the Experts Group, however, until the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED or Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, as the title of the conference suggests, this gathering was seen as the most significant attempt yet to address the linkage of the environment and development. More specifically, one of the primary concerns was that of evaluating the problems raised by the dual need to protect the environment and enable developing nations to strengthen their economies and improve their standards of living. This was not an easy task, however, given the considerable differences expressed by the conference's participants. While most of the industrialized nations argued for the priority of environmental protection over continued development, most of the developing nations insisted that their precarious economic development--and thus the exploitation of their natural resources--could not be imperiled by an undue emphasis on environmental protection.

Despite these differences, a consensus was achieved which enabled the participants to adopt three non-legally binding instruments: (1) the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; (2) Agenda 21 (which lays out prescriptions for sustainable development in the twenty-first century); and (3) the Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forest (or the Forest Principles). The conference also resulted in the signing of two global conventions (on Climate Change and Biological Diversity), as well as the establishment of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), a body intended to assess and monitor progress in the implementation of Agenda 21. From these developments, it is obvious that sustainable development has attained the status of the common, regulative idea intended to guide present and future environmental law and policy at the national and international level.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE CORE THEMES

Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration proclaims: "Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature." Despite the impressive place assumed by the idea of sustainable development in recent years, it is not yet clear from our discussion what the term entails. A review of the major agreements and statements produced in support of sustainable development enables us to identify the following central elements that are thought to be entailed by the concept (note that the following is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive):

1. As the above quotation makes clear, any conclusions concerning the idea of sustainable development must remain dependent upon the human dimension. The idea of sustainable development thus straightforwardly represents an anthropocentric approach to environmental issues. In other words, protection and conservation of the natural environment is to be undertaken primarily, if not solely, for the purpose of human welfare. This belief is further augmented by the statements made in Principles 2 and 3 of the Rio Declaration:

Principle 2: "States have . . . the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies" as long as this exploitation does not "cause damage to the environment of other States or other areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction."
Principle 3: "The right to development must be fulfilled so as to meet equitably developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations."

These principles express two apparent "rights": that of exploitation, i.e. , the natural environment is little more than an economic resource to be utilized as any nation-state sees fit; and that of development, i.e., industrial and economic development for the benefit of human welfare is the paradigm through which to view human interaction with natural reality.

2. It is also clear that the current framework within which international instruments concerning sustainable development are developed places heavy emphasis on State sovereignty over natural resources. This is in agreement with customary principles and practices of public international law. As with Principle 2 of the Rio Declaration, international environmental instruments incorporating the idea of sustainable development explicitly affirm State sovereignty. For instance, Principle 1 of the Forest Principles announces: "States have the sovereign and inalienable right to utilize, manage and develop their forests in accordance with their development needs and level of socio-economic development. . . ." Nevertheless, even though sovereignty over resources is granted the status of an "inalienable right," State sovereignty in this respect is supposedly subject to the obligations incurred under international law.

3. Principle 3 of the Rio Declaration also points to two other important aspects of the idea of sustainable development: equity and intergenerational responsibility. These are emphasized as well in Principle 5, which declares: "All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world"; and Principle 8, which calls for the eventual elimination of unsustainable patterns of production, consumption, and population growth in order to achieve "a higher quality of life for all people." Sustainable development, it is argued, can only be obtained if each generation bears responsibility for the continued protection and functioning of ecosystems for future generations, and if worldwide poverty and other social disparities are eradicated. This corresponds with the recommendations of the WCED in the Brundtland Report, as mentioned above.

4. In view of the issues raised in (3) above, sustainable development is regarded as including the notion of "common but differentiated responsibilities." As expressed in Principles 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Rio Declaration, both so-called developed and developing nations share the responsibility to protect, conserve, and restore the environment, but this responsibility weighs differently according to whether States are developed or developing. This differentiation of responsibilities has two facets: First, it is recognized that developed or industrialized nations contribute most greatly to environmental degradation and possess the economic and technological means to begin to actively redress this degradation. Second, developing nations are also acknowledged as contributing in their own ways to environmental degradation but are held to have less financial and technological capability of responding to such problems. Consequently, the achievement of a global and equitable version of sustainable development requires a greater transfer of resources from developed to developing nations in order to, so to speak, "level the playing field."

WHENCE JUSTICE?

It would appear that the idea of sustainable development is one that is explicitly intended to further the goal of greater justice across the planet. It is debatable, however, whether it is truly suitable for that purpose. Consider the following difficulties raised by the themes discussed in the previous section. The strong anthropocentrism at the heart of the concept of sustainable development weakens the perception that the natural environment ought to be protected and, even more, restored. This, in fact, is a reflection of the primacy assumed by development in the phrase "sustainable development." Although the idea of sustainable development is promoted as the preferred paradigm for environmental action within the context of the nation-state system, it is absurd to ignore the fact that development itself is one of the most pressing problems at hand. And development, no matter how closely it is wrapped in "green" language, is by definition predicated on the continued expansion, production, consumption, and exploitation of the earth.

As we have seen, our natural environment is considered by the dominant paradigm to be little more than a standing-reserve whose only purpose is to provide resources for human exploitation. Consideration of the possibility--which can be called interspecies justice--that other forms of life on the planet might be entitled to the same "adequate conditions of life" and "fundamental right to freedom" believed to obtain for humans is almost entirely absent. This is not to say that claims about the "inherent" value of nature should (or should not) be adopted instead. It is to say, however, that a conceptual framework which strictly divides humanity from nature and posits nature as an object merely for human use, is most likely unable to support the kinds of changes in value and belief that are needed to effectively address environmental destruction and thus extend the scope of justice across the entire planet. If the intertwined needs and interests of human and nonhuman life alike are to be genuinely recognized, future environmental institutions and treaties must resist the temptation to extract human concerns from their broader natural mooring and elevate them to a separate and inherently superior status (such as a "right" to development that would trump all environmental concerns). The recent attempts at drafting principles that integrate human and environmental rights seem to be a positive effort in this direction.

The conventional utilitarian approach poses problems as well for the goals of intergenerational responsibility and equity included in the idea of sustainable development. While the emphasis on intergenerational issues is intended to temper the kind of short-term thinking characteristic of our long-standing practices of uncontrolled exploitation of the environment, exploitation nevertheless retains its prominent place. It is no accident that Principle 4 of the Rio Declaration states that environmental protection constitutes only a "part" of the development process. On the one hand, it must be asked whether the sense of justice conveyed by the inclusion of intergenerational concerns can be adequately served by the belief that more development is the answer to the world's problems. And on the other hand, the question arises as to how justice can be served if developing nations are unable to obtain a standard of living suitable to a healthy and secure life, that is, if the current social and economic inequities found between North and South remain.

Unfortunately, this difficult situation is one of the thorniest issues confronting all people who are concerned with safeguarding the environment. One possibility, however, is to acknowledge that the constant growth-development ideal which asserts that poorer nations will be able to match the current status of the most wealthy nations and that the richest nations will be able to maintain their current status, will have to be revised in favor of the view that a more equitable distribution of wealth with respect to the planet's fragile environmental limits is most desirable both economically and ecologically. Indeed, this may occur whether we would like it to or not. [3] This is sure to be an unfavorable position, yet the principle of intergenerational equity and responsibility is one which calls for a strong sense of fairness when considering how the requirements of justice are to be balanced both within and between generations.

Finally, mention should be made of the continued reliance on the inviolability of State sovereignty. This is a complex issue due to the historical emergence of independent nation-states following the Second World War. For many of the developing nations, sovereignty over their natural resources is an integral part of their demand for self-determination and an equal status in international law and negotiation. Thus, at UNCED for example, the developing nations negotiated with the view to protecting their "right" to development according to their internal interests and needs. Yet there is a strong tension between State sovereignty as enshrined in traditional international law and the responsibility enunciated in international environmental instruments that States not cause environmental damage which reaches beyond their own borders, a tension that currently resolves itself in favor of the individual State. It is arguable, then, whether a system which privileges State sovereignty over global environmental concerns can adequately address the problems facing the planet and its inhabitants and, concomitantly, whether such a system can lead to the actualization of justice across State boundaries.

Not only does the current system make it incredibly difficult to create the ecological norms and consensus needed for a global response to environmental issues, but also to implement international agreements and guide active and effective compliance. It would be unrealistic to think that any kind of global society will soon (if ever) replace the State system. However, it is reasonable to argue for a reduced emphasis on national sovereignty, and a greater emphasis on the creation of democratic coalitions composed of numerous local actors operating outside the narrow State-driven model, legally empowered to design and enforce environmental policy that is not simply applied from the top-down.

A discourse of development, even one shrouded in the guise of sustainability, which is so happily adopted and promoted by the very political and corporate agents who have historically abused the environment for the purpose of "progress" must, it seems to me, be viewed with a much more critical eye than has been evidenced thus far. It cannot be denied that the idea of sustainable development represents something of a step in the right direction toward the goal of establishing an international response to the urgent problems of planetary environmental degradation. Yet it is only that, a small step, and not the summum bonum that it is currently held out to be. Obviously, anything that can be done to mitigate the destructive effects of our dominant economic and development practices should be vigorously pursued, but to uphold "development" as the guiding principle by which to address environmental issues tout court is misguided and certainly inadequate. Saddled as it is with many unquestioned assumptions which help to uphold the status quo--such as the need for a continuous process of development, progressive consumption, and the necessity of the State-corporate partnership to control the course and process of our responses to ecological crises--sustainable development appears to be an idea whose time has not only come but, perhaps, has already passed.



NOTES

1. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 8.

2. Experts Group on Environmental Law of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development: Legal Principles and Recommendations (London, Dordrecht, Boston: Graham&Trotman/Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 7.

3. The Founex Report, the published result of an international meeting held in Founex, Switzerland in June 1971, warned that, due to such factors as the steadily increasing pressure of population growth and uncontrolled pollution, the planet's natural resources will be exhausted if the entirety of the world's population is raised to the current standard of living of the richest nations. That means, of course, that the standard of living now enjoyed in the developed nations will not be "sustainable" either for them or the developing nations.

© 1997 Patrick Hayden

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