AN EXCERPT FROM A SUSTAINABLE WORLD

– Knowledge for Sustainable Development: What Do We Need to Know? Stephen Viederman

A Sustainable World:

Introduction

 (Excerpt)

TED TRZYNA

[Author biographic information]

I can't speak for all the contributors to this volume, but I believe most of them would agree with three broad conclusions, each of which raises a tough challenge: (1) Sustainable development requires cutting across many professions and disciplines; how can we break down the barriers between them? (2) Among other things, sustainable development is a social process; what works? (3) Above all, sustainable development is a moral principle; how can we build it into decision-making?

A cross-cutting concept: How to break down the barriers?

That sustainable development is a cross-cutting concept is both a strength and a weakness. It forces us to get beyond our usual compartmented thinking and consider the interrelationships between ecology, economy, and society. But this requires bringing together people who have very different backgrounds, mindsets, and agendas. Getting them to understand each other is not easy. 

Denis Goulet has written elsewhere that three distinct rationalities, or basic approaches to logic, converge in development decision-making. These are technological, political, and ethical rationality:

Problems arise because each rationality approaches the other two in reductionist fashion, seeking to impose its view of goals and procedures on the decision-making process. The result is technically sound decisions which are politically unfeasible or morally unacceptable or, in other cases, ethically sound choices which are technically inefficient or politically impossible [Goulet, "Three Rationalities in Development Decision-making,"  World Development 14(2) (1986)]. 

This is an example of what the late philosopher Abraham Kaplan called the Law of the Instrument: The surgeon cuts, the carpenter hammers; a problem is seen as lending itself to one's resources.

How can we break down the barriers between professions, disciplines, institutions, sectors?

A social process: What works?

Sustainable development is a social and political process. The ultimate challenge is not a scientific or technical one, but one that requires changing human behavior. As I talk with people on the front lines of the sustainability movement around the world, however, I find them with a sense of isolation. they unfailingly express a strongly felt need for models or success stories. They want to learn from others who are struggling with the same issues elsewhere. How can they avoid making the same mistakes? What works?

Fifteen years after the World Conservation Strategy introduced the concept in the international community, there is a large and rapidly growing literature on sustainable development, but case studies are surprisingly few and hard to come by. The literature is long on policy proposals, descriptions of projects, and technical guidance, and short on relating practical experience with social process. The case studies that do exist are widely dispersed, often in reports and journals that have very limited distribution . . . 

One thing is clear: Sustainable development requires leadership and a new architecture for political and social organization - fundamental change, not just more information and still more sets of paper plans and strategies.

A moral principle: How to build it into decision-making?

Above all - as Steven Viederman states so eloquently - sustainable development is a moral principle. It is not so much about what is, but what should be. It has to do with value choices. 

It has become commonplace for those who speak and write in this field to stress the importance of values in motivating people to care for the world around them and call for a new "global ethic" . . . However, there has been little consideration of how moral ideas translate into policies and decisions that will move the world toward sustainability.

Transforming public attitudes and internalizing ethical values - through schools, religious groups, and the media - will be important in the long run, but we can get results much more quickly by institutionalizing the process of taking ethics into account. In other words, we need to make careful articulation of value choices an explicit part of policy formulation and decision-making. [For more on this theme, see Building values into decision-making and Raising annoying questions.]  

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