Sustainable Development: Concepts, Rationalities and Strategies

Martin O'Connor lives and works in South Wairarapa, New Zealand.

3 decision support techniques that do not depend exclusively on market incentives and monetary valuation. The World Conservation Strategy published by the mCN (1980) recognised the full dimensions of these problems, and introduced the concept of sustainable development, placing the emphasis on the exploitation of natural systems and the use of biological natural resources within limits so that the availability of these resources for use by future generations would not be jeopardised by the current use of them. At this time, the imposition of quotas and the definition of critical loads and environmental standards were suggested as the sorts of instruments necessary to cope with the problems of limited availability of environmental resources. Although the mCN publication did not obtain a high international profile, the idea of policy norms to respect critical loads has become quite widely accepted in the environmental policymaking of Western countries. This has often put the policy agencies in difficult situations. Polluting industries are inclined to argue that the critical loads are defined too restrictively. The complexity and time lags of ecological effects makes it hard to say exactly what constitutes a critical load beyond which there will be irreversible damage, and lobbying interests can play on these uncertainties to try and weaken the environmental standards. In addition, polluting industries can use the argument of negative impacts on "the economy" (particularly as regards employment and export prospects) to blackmail governments, regulatory agencies and the general public.

Editors' Introduction.- The Implications of Environmental Sustainability for Economic Growth.- Ecological Distribution and Distributed Sustainability.- Bioeconomic Conceptions and the Concept of Sustainable Development.- Sustainable Development and Public Policy.- The Political Economics of Sustainability.- Rational Assumptions in Energy Scenarios.- Short-run and Long-run Adjustment to Environmental Policy: a Neo-Austrian Approach.- Sustainability and Structural Change.- Sustainability Concepts and Total Economic Valuation.- A Practical Sustainability Criterion when there is International Trade.- How Strong is Weak Sustainability?.- Sustainability Principles and Depreciation Estimates of Natural Capital in Brazil.- Environmental Decision Making-a Comparison between Cost-Benefit Analysis and Multicriteria Decision Aid.- Sustainability, Uncertainty and Intergenerational Fairness.- Sustainable Development, Rationality and Time.- Towards a Decision-making Framework to Address Sustainable Development Issues.- Sustainable Development and the Process of Justifying Choices in a Controversial Universe.