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Problems on the road to sustainable development:
Problems with "development" as a concept
"Sustainable yes - sustainable development no", this is the nature of the criticism of what in the meantime has become the omnipresent combination of both concepts of sustainability and development. The reason for the rejection of the combination are reservations concerning the concept of "development". To want to combine it with sustainability is a contradiction in itself. Whereas sustainability belongs to a new ecological view of the world, the term development originates from the obsolete, mechanistic world view (a comparison of both can be found in
Basic Course 5).
[Wolfgang Sachs;
Fig.: Brandes & Apsel Verlag] |
"Over and above this", says Wolfgang Sax, scientist at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy (www.wupperinst.org), "a terrain of linguistic ambivalence has been created by linking 'sustainable' and 'development'. The new approach shifted the geometric location of sustainability from nature to development in a subtle way; whereas previously 'sustainable' was related to renewable resources, it now relates to development. The perception changes along with this shift; the meaning of sustainability shifts from the protection of nature to the protection of development.
In face of the fact that development has conceptionally become a husk, that which was supposed to remain sustainable became unclear and disputed. For this reason in the following years, all types of political protagonists, even zealous defenders of economic growth were in the position to clad their intentions in the term 'sustainable development'. The term became self-referential as a result, as a definition provided by the world bank closely confirms. 'What is sustainable? Sustainable development is development that remains.' "
[Source: Wolfgang Sachs, Nach uns die Zukunft (After us the Future). Der globale Konflikt um Gerechtigkeit und Ökologie (The Global Conflict Around Justice and Ecology), Frankfurt/Main 2002, p. 65] |
If, despite this criticism, one cannot dispense with the established combination of "sustainable development", one cannot avoid defining the term more closely and draw a line between the outmoded term as a part of the modernisation theory. The following figure provides suggestions for this.
[Author: Ragnar Müller]
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