Setting the Context for Evaluating Sustainable Development - Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment - page 12

Therefore, there is an element of conservation that features strongly
in much of the above debates - the maintenance of the status quo . Few
developing countries want to disturb or reduce their economic com-
petitiveness. However, a recognition that the world is constantly chang-
ing and must be accommodated is also there. Evolution is thought to
underpin much of this change but it is of course enhanced or aggra-
vated by the activities of humans, not only in science and technology
but also in the culture that they adopt and the growth of populations.
It is the pace of change that has altered and our impact grows greater
by the day. The obligation to the needs of future generations weighs
heavily within the argument.
The report of the Rio Summit (UNCED, 1992) recognised these issues
and identified some major themes. Mitchell et al . (1995) have distilled
from the literature of Rio and other reports four principles which
underlie the guidance and advice that is given and take us beyond the
pure environmental agenda, or at least to a better understanding of
why environmental conditions change.
These principles are:

❏

Equity : The concern for today's poor and disadvantaged.

❏

Futurity : The concern for future generations.

❏

Environment : The concern for the integrity of ecosystems.

❏

Public participation : The concern that individuals should have the
opportunity to participate in decisions that affect them.

Only one of these themes is directly concerned with the environment.
The others are moral imperatives or cultural endorsements or mecha-
nisms by which change can be effected through common ownership of
the problem. However, they all impinge on sustainable development
and their selection as major themes has come from the environment
debate. They arise from a collective view of 'what is best' for the world
both now and in the future. They represent our current stance on these
issues but it is not necessarily true that these principles will hold in the
future even though most of us would subscribe to them today.

Extension of the debate

The scope or focus of the debate has therefore been extended into new
realms concerned with social, legal, economic, political and technical
aspects of how we live (commonly known under the acronym SLEPT).
The shift has introduced a much wider debate about the values we place
on various aspects of our lives, how we treat others and what level of
intervention it is appropriate for a state or organisation to adopt to address
these issues. Hence the move to an agenda with a different focus, known
as sustainability. Since the word 'sustainability' has come into frequent