Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
had the effect of reducing the level of the Aral Sea by 20 metres between 1960 and
the turn of the century, with water covering just 10 per cent of the area it formerly
had covered. Increased salinization led to the extinction of fish species, the destruction
of the fishing and fish-processing industries, and the contamination of agricultural
land up to 200 kilometres from the banks of the former inland sea (McNeill, 2000).
Given this, in theory, then, global societies are confronted with three options:
1
Simultaneously addressing environmental concerns along with economic growth,
even in the short run.
2
Placing higher priority on economic growth, while addressing environmental
concerns that can be dealt with at relatively low cost in the short run.
3
Placing higher priority on maintaining or restoring the environment in the short
run.
(World Bank, 2003: 24)
The work currently being undertaken on formulating a replacement for the MDGs
with a new set of sustainable development goals is an ambitious but necessary attempt
to pull all of these concerns and critiques together into an informative and motivating
set of global objectives.
Sustainable development as a 'dialogue of values'
There has been no shortage of academic critiques of sustainable development. Banerjee
(2003) offers a trenchant analysis of the sustainable discourse, powerfully arguing
that the concept of sustainable development is subsumed under, and largely defined
by, the dominant economic paradigm and is informed by colonial thought, which
has resulted in the disempowerment of a majority of the rural populations in the
developing world. Banerjee acknowledges that the sustainable development discourse
encompasses notions of plurality and even genuine dialogue, but asserts through his
analysis of biotechnology, Western science, biodiversity and intellectual property
rights that there remains a very real danger of marginalizing or co-opting the
traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples and others who depend on
their land for their livelihood. A great deal of the discussion around green business
focuses on technicist solutions and eco-efficiency, with green marketing ultimately
reduced to the economic bottom line at the organizational level obscuring macro-
economic factors and likely ecological impacts. Conventional rationalizations of
competitive advantage still pervade governmental and corporate literature. Banerjee
writes:
Current development patterns (even those touted as 'sustainable') disrupt social
system and ecosystem relations rather than ensuring that natural resource use
by local communities meets their basic needs at a level of comfort that is satis-
factory as assessed by those same communities. What is needed is not a common
future but the future as commons.
(2003: 174)
Much of this is echoed in Adams (2001: 381) who, in his analysis of the environment
and sustainability in the Third World, argues there is 'no magic formula for sustainable
