Towards Conceptual Tool Differentiation in the Sustainable Development Discussion: Critical Loads and Sustainable Development in Siberia

Abstract

In the wider debate about the environmental sustainability of various human activities, the literature lacks a specific link between the discussion and the use of differentiated analytical tools for conceptualizing and measuring sustainable development. This paper explores a key issue in the sustainability debate: developing differentiated analytical tools to define and apply the concept of sustainability. This work seeks to build a theoretical bridge between the root concept of sustainable development and a new concept, critical loads, which both defines and measures the unsustainability of certain anthropogenic activities. The development of the sustainability concept is briefly reviewed, followed by a discussion of the difficulty of applying this concept due to definitional problems. The author argues that by using concepts which make explicit the relationships between anthropogenic activities and environmental degradation, policy makers can better apply the concept of sustainable development. The author assesses the critical loads concept as a way for policy makers to assess differentiated levels of unsustainability. To illustrate this, the author explores the use of the critical loads concept to assess environmental degradation in Siberia, which is currently being used to contribute to a sustainable development policy for the region. Moving from a dichotomous, relatively static view of human-environment interactions to one which captures varying degrees of these interactions reveals greater insights about the political, economic, and physical relationship between nature and its most influential species, Homo sapiens. This project is written under the auspices of IIASA's Sustainable Boreal Forest Resources project. The project aims to add a quantitative input to a sustainable development concept for the boreal forest zone in Russia, and to provide an analysis of the data which may help policy makers identify a portfolio of policy options for the region. Using the critical loads concept, the author will assess the status of the Siberian region, and analyze the risks and impacts of anthropogenic pollution on the environment and its life forms there. This work provides the theoretical support for the research work on boreal forest resources.