Sustainable development

Abstract

Through a historical reconstruction, this chapter examines how the concept of sustainable development has been interpreted and institutionalised and the debates this has generated. Focusing on UN engagement reveals tension between those for whom sustainable development offers a radical potential for societal transformation and those that point to its reformist foundations. For some, sustainable development promotes a growth-oriented model, as witnessed in ecological modernisation, while others hold that it requires accepting limits to growth, subsequently taken up in the de-growth agenda. Constructing sustainable development into weak and strong forms also reveals how issues of democracy come to the fore. Sustainable development, particularly in its strong forms, is foundational to any democratic political system. However, the type of democracy, and thus the role of the state, the power of the economic system, the responsibility of economic interests, and the value of environmental citizenship and civil society participation, all remain open to debate. Entry into the Anthropocene raises the spectre that we have reached the end of ‘sustainability’ as a discourse of development and as a policy paradigm. But, the radical potential of sustainable development remains, especially when a sharp distinction is maintained between the sustainable development imaginary and its use in institutional contexts.