Sustainable Development – Blueprint or Fig Leaf?

Chapter 2 asked what economics has to do with it, ‘it’ being the natural environment. The response was eco–nomics, defined as a new field of economics that reaches beyond the marketplace to deal with non-marketed scarce environmental services. There is no reason why economics should not reach even further into other areas for making rational choices, as long as it involves other scarce amenities. Governments supply some of these amenities as public goods such as security, public health, distribution of wealth, education, culture, and in fact environmental protection. All these goods and services meet societal goals like the satisfaction of human needs, a better quality of life beyond material standards of living, or, in the long term, sustainable development. The question is whether general proclamations on these goals hide potential trade-offs and deflect attention from actual implementation. Cornucopian rhetoric on social progress and development risks to remain just this – rhetoric. Has the paradigm of sustainable development run its course?

This chapter explores first the meaning and operationality of ‘development’ as a broad paradigm for attaining social goals beyond, or possibly in opposition to, economic growth. It then specifies those limitations that might thwart the simultaneous attainment of the different goals, rendering development non- sustainable. The translation of these limitations into measurable limits is one way of operationalizing sustainable development. Setting standards and norms for development constraints is judgemental, however; it does not provide a definite blueprint for implementation.