Sustainable Development

For all too many people the terms sustainable development[1] and smart growth, a phrase that has similar but not identical meaning, are simply another set of popular buzz words that over time will run its course. But within the past fifteen years, planners representing local, state, and federal governments as well as private businesses have worked independently and sometimes jointly to anticipate and shape future development, identify existing and emerging constraints and opportunities, and create workable plans to assure that those needs will be addressed and that cities and other communities will be able to continuously reproduce and revitalize themselves in a manner that is respectful of environmental and social equity values.


The most commonly used and nearly universally accepted definition of sustainable development is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That definition was prepared by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, Report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, and was published by Oxford University Press in 1987 and is available online at: http://www.are.admin.ch/are/en/nachhaltig/international_uno/unterseite02330/


The WCED recognized that the world is balanced on a knife edge. Continuation of the status quo of maximizing economic production and ignoring everything else would eventually lead to catastrophic environmental collapse and socioeconomic chaos. Their principal insight was that the conventional economic production imperative must be integrated into a tripartite but singular unity on equal footing with an ecological imperative to protect local, regional and global environments and a social equity imperative to minimize poverty, weaving together economy, environment, and equity to confront the challenges of reducing over-consumption and unequal distribution of goods while stabilizing and enhancing the environment on which we all depend.


At first glance, sustainable development certainly seems simple enough: present and future generations must work to achieve an equitable distribution of material goods that does not degrade natural systems. But even people who agree that sustainability is a good thing have no general agreement on how or if the concept could be transformed into real world practice, especially since neither cities nor agriculture are now or are likely to be sustainable in the future.


However, advocates of sustainability maintain that if the built environment is to become more human-scale, ecosystems healthier, economic development more responsive to the needs of place, and the benefits of improved environmental and economic conditions more equitably distributed, then sustainable development is the only answer. Philip Berke and Maria Manta conducted research in 2000 in which they analyzed the literature to determine the key characteristics of sustainable development and used those characteristics to study several dozen plans across the U.S. Their working definition is provided below.[2]

Sustainable development is a dynamic process in which communities anticipate and accommodate the needs of current and future generations in ways that reproduce and balance local social, economic, and ecological systems, and link local actions to global concerns.

That definition can be expanded logically to reflect a set of seven operational performance principles for evaluating local sustainability efforts. All of those principles retain an explicit connection to the scale, shape, location, and quality of human settlements. They also refer to clusters of qualities and avoid being too narrow or too tightly focused.

1)   Large-scale land use and development activities should support natural ecosystem cycles and life-support functions rather than modify them to fit urban needs; examples include agricultural, forestry and fisheries practices that conserve land, water, habitats, indigenous flora and fauna, as well as plant and animal genetic resources.

2)      Restoration of environments damaged by human activities should be based on natural systems rather than engineering or management convenience; for example, ersatz restoration that has been foisted on the American public by Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers and whose sole intention is to enrich powerbrokers, such as is represented by the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, must be rejected outright.

3)      Create human-scale, livable communities that foster independence from individual vehicular transportation to the extent possible; adopt land use policies that prohibit zoning that isolates employment locations, shopping and services, and housing locations from each other as well as low-density growth focused on creating automobile access to increasing expanses of greenfields located further and further from activity centers; the goal is to decrease traffic congestion and commuting times, air pollution, inefficient energy consumption and greater reliance on foreign oil, inequitable distribution of economic resources, and prevent the loss of a sense of community.

4)      Create place-based local economies that operate within natural system limits; economic development strategies must recognize the natural advantages of a specific place, whether rural or urban, within its region and build upon the existing business community, local strengths, and opportunities.

5)      Create policies and implementation measures that insure the most disadvantaged people in our society are provided a full range of opportunities to improve their quality of life. Equitable access to socioeconomic resources and an equitable distribution of economic and environmental costs and benefits, critical community services (e.g., education, healthcare), and opportunities to participate in decisions that affect the community is critical. Achievement of this goal requires special attention to progress made by those who are the most disadvantaged in the community, usually women, youth, and children; indigenous people; the disabled; and racial/ethnic minorities.

6)      Polluters that generate adverse community-wide effects should be required to pay the real clean-up costs; specific policies and regulations with teeth should force firms and individuals who pollute the environment to be legally liable for the costs of the damage they have caused to the larger community. The goal must be effective restoration that will return the environment to a pre-damage condition.

7)      Communities should act responsibly with regard to other jurisdictions by respecting their needs within the wider region or even internationally in making their own communities sustainable; examples include cooperative ventures to create environmentally appropriate water and groundwater use policies and actions, minimize uncontrolled growth that stresses infrastructure and use of individual vehicles, and promote multi-jurisdictional solutions to regional issues such as transportation, low-density greenfield development (sprawl), or energy-efficient building codes.

Having provided the above information, it is time for pessimists to weigh in with their comments and criticisms. Several critics claim that the sustainable development concept violates Karl Popper’s requirement that to be verifiable propositions must be falsifiable, and what rational person would willingly choose non-sustainable development. Ironically that criticism doesn’t apply since the non-sustainable scenario is merely the extrapolation of our current way of life and many of the “haves” and powerbrokers are determined to continue on that familiar, though potentially destructive, course while turning their backs on the plight of the “have-nots.” Thus, many critics believe whatever their convenient slogans, businesses have intentionally chosen non-sustainable development and will continue on that path as long as it rewards them financially. Business and profits as usual is the mantra of the day; another way to put it is, "In Growth We Trust."


Many opponents of the idealization of sustainable development question whether the implicit heart of sustainability — inter-generational equity or fairness to coming generations — can be operationalized. After all, who knows what marvelous technological innovations lay just over the horizon that could possibly make the lives of future generations so much easier and more fulfilling than ours?[3] And many American conservatives flatly reject the social equity facet as social engineering that violates the principle of individual freedom. Others characterize the term itself as too vague, or as empty but convenient rhetoric that can be twisted and turned to meet the needs of powerful interest groups, especially corporate. Still others question inclusion of the environment as a goal of equal standing, demanding to know which environment is indicated: today’s damaged and degraded human modified/cultural landscape or some earlier, presumably more pristine example. And many activists, advocate, and environmental (and other) planners maintain that the goal of social justice will always be the weak link in that triumvirate, honored by flowery verbiage but unsupported by meaningful actions. In addition, they correctly point out that society has failed miserably in the historic and recent past to equitably distribute economic values or to protect the natural and quasi-natural environment. Therefore, they ask, what other than foolish optimism leads anyone to suppose such lofty goals can be achieved in the future? And finally, skeptics point out that most advocates for sustainability ignore the very real and very difficult to resolve conflicts between the three goals: resource conflicts between economic development and environmental protection; property conflicts between social equity and economic development; and development conflicts between environmental protection and social equity.[4] Pray tell, they ask, how will those conflicts be resolved in a world of real politics where neither trees nor poor people contribute to political campaigns or have seats at tables where critical environmental decisions are made?

Author’s Note: For a good chuckle that underlines many of the points made above, I’ve provided a humorous quote from the web site of the National Mining Association. Those who fail to see the humor have never visited an open pit mine or seen the real world consequences of mine operation or abandonment.

The members of the National Mining Association share a mutual responsibility with all Americans to ensure that our actions meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. This simple statement defines the concept of sustainable development, a concept that is embraced by the American mining industry and reflected in our operations in the United States and abroad.

Source: http://www.nma.org/policy/sustainable_dev.asp

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[1] Over the past nearly 20 years, geoscientists have become increasingly involved in a variety of pursuits that can best be labeled sustainable. That number includes geologists, hydrologists, hydrogeologists, geomorphologists, geophysicists, geochemists, soil scientists, and oceanographers who have contributed to sustainability studies in natural resource production, surface and ground water quality and quantity, erosion controls, pollution controls, etc.

[2] Philip Berke and Maria Manta. (2000). Are we planning for sustainable development? An evaluation of 30 comprehensive plans. Journal of the American Planning Association, 66(1), 21-33.

[3] For a difficult but fascinating essay on ethics that deals with intergenerational equity and a variety of other topics, see: Ernest Partridge. “In Search of Sustainable Values,” paper presented at an International Conference, Reflections on Discounting, Vilm Island, University of Greifswald, Germany, May 28, 1999; originally published in The International Journal of Sustainability, vol. 6, no.1, 2003; found online at http://gadfly.igc.org/papers/sustain.htm .

[4] See Scott Campbell. (1996). “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities? Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 62, no. 3, 296-312.