Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In other words, development strategy should not be predicated upon ever expanding
economic growth or GDP. The whole world should not use as its model for future
prosperity what has occurred in the West. The standard of life is not the same as
the quality of life. Development should focus on enhancing the latter, should
be more about well-being than the relentless accumulation of material products, and
each region with its own ecological and cultural heritage should be able to chart its
own distinct and distinctive path. In many ways the Brandt Commission Report
echoed the work of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives
(IFDA) which published, also in 1980, Dossier No.17,
Building Blocks for Alternative
Development Strategies
, stating:
The development
problematique
can thus be defined in an objective way: the
society, its economy and polity, ought to be organized in such a manner as to
maximize, for the individual and the whole, the opportunities for self-fulfillment.
Developing, as the etymology suggests, means removing the husk - that is
overcoming domination; liberating; unfolding. Development is the unfolding of
people's individual and social imagination in defining goals, inventing means
and ways to approach them, learning to identify and satisfy socially legitimate
needs. . . . To develop is to be, or to become. Not to have.
(IFDA, 1980: 10)
Thus wealth and development took on a qualitative as well as a quantitative
aspect. Material and spiritual poverty both need to be addressed. In 1983 work
started on a major study by the World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED) that would firmly establish sustainable development as the most significant
concept and practice of our time. In 1987 the results were published as
Our Common
Future
(the Brundtland Report). More than half of the Commission were repre-
sentatives from developing countries, ensuring that global environmental concerns
would not overwhelm the desire to eradicate problems of human need and poverty.
Unlike Brandt, Brundtland did offer a definition of
sustainable development
:
'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs' (WCED, 1987: 43).
This definition is still commonly used, despite it attracting serious criticisms for
suggesting that economic growth, industrial modernization and market imperatives
should be key drivers and goals for all nations. Whereas the industrialized North
seemed to be, and in many ways still is, concerned with environmental impacts, the
issues confronting the majority South included poverty, health, income, agricultural
sustainability, food security, educational opportunity and achievement, shelter,
sanitation, desertification and armed conflict. Nevertheless, the Brundtland Report
did tacitly recognize the internal contradictions within the concept when it stated:
[Sustainable development] contains within it two key concepts:
1
The concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor,
to which over-riding priority should be given.
2
The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.
(WCED, 1987: 43)
