The Economics of Enough_ How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters - Diane Coyle [37]
The question of a practical definition of sustainability is far from new. The debate about environmental sustainability took its present shape following the publication of the Brundtlandt Report, Our Common Future, in 1987. This UN-commissioned work, led by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtlandt, defined the term:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
• the concept of “needs,” in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
• the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.
It continued:
Development involves a progressive transformation of economy and society. A development path that is sustainable in a physical sense could theoretically be pursued even in a rigid social and political setting. But physical sustainability cannot be secured unless development policies pay attention to such considerations as changes in access to resources and in the distribution of costs and benefits. Even the narrow notion of physical sustainability implies a concern for social equity between generations, a concern that must logically be extended to equity within each generation.24
This steps beyond the bounds of the debate about climate science and into the areas covered later in this book.
Subsequently, the concept of sustainability has been extended. Partha Dasgupta has argued that the Brundtlandt definition does not go far enough. He says of this definition of sustainability: “It doesn’t, for example, demand that development be optimal or just. But how is a generation to judge whether it is leaving behind an adequate productive base for its successor?”25 So he introduces the dimension of social welfare and the practical question of how sustainability is to be judged.
The economist Robert Solow has also argued for a more capacious definition of sustainability, leaving for the next generation “whatever it takes to achieve a standard of living at least as good as our own and to look after the next generation similarly.”26 The focus on living standards is more generous than the mere fulfillment of needs, and the formulation passes on the responsibility for sustainability in all successive generations as well, as it is recursive. Economist Paul Collier adopts a similar ethical test for today’s use of natural assets, the test of stewardship, which he contrasts with both utilitarianism and “romantic environmentalism.” Future generations should be able to benefit not only from the preservation of resources but also the ability to use them productively. He notes, too, that this ethical concept has great resonance in a number of religions and seems to accord widely with our moral intuition.27 Amartya Sen also thinks the emphasis on equal access to the resources available for economic activity by successive generations is incomplete. Sen emphasizes that the environment should be understood to include humans and our activities—it is not just a “state of nature” separate from us—and we should aim to enrich the environment in this wider sense.
He also argues that it is too meager an ambition to conceive of future generations only in terms of their needs; we should include their potential to act, participate, have different values and make different choices, so that they are not just passive