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Sustainable Development: Differing Definitions

Sustainable Development: Differing Definitions. Tim Swanson. Sustainable development. “Development is sustainable when it meets the needs of the present generation without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” Brundtland Commission, 1987, WCED.

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Sustainable Development: Differing Definitions

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  1. Sustainable Development:Differing Definitions Tim Swanson

  2. Sustainable development “Development is sustainable when it meets the needs of the present generation without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” Brundtland Commission, 1987, WCED.  A constraint on current actions?

  3. Sustainable development Rio Declaration of 1992 states in Principle 3 that the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of both present and future generations.  A balancing of current and future in current choices?

  4. How should current generation use SD as a decision making mechanism? Constraint on certain choices? What constraint? Requirement to consider future generations? What generations? How do they differ from what we want? Solow’s “Nature of Capital” Nobel Address: Would we want our grandparents to have made different development choices? Are we unhappy with the world that they left us? What constraints would we impose upon them?

  5. Mining Paradise? Naura Commission • Mining of phosphates that remove top inches of topsoil from island state • Left without any capacity for future food security • Exchanged for large amount of cash • Spent on mounting large West End musical (that never opened)  How should the current generation be constrained to provide for the future ones?

  6. What should Sustainable Development mean as a constraint on choices by current generation? • Untouched Stocks? Nonuse (leave it as you found it)? Leave precisely the same island that we found? Pristine lakes, untouched forests, unendangered species, unturned soils, un-fished stocks?

  7. Sustainable Development Definitions Use resources but constrained to keep the same levels of stocks? (No “mining” of capital stock) Catch only fish that would die anyway. Use only firewood that would fall on the ground. Eat plants that will be eaten in any event. Provide the same flows for other species so that their stocks stay the same. Leave non-renewing resources (minerals, fuels, ores, phosphates) untouched.

  8. Sustainable Development Definitions Mining allowed so long as compensating investments occur (no consumption of mined assets) Fish stocks, forests, mines, phosphates, wildlife, plants – all stocks may fall so long as the returns are invested in other assets (local hospitals, local schools, businesses)

  9. Definitions of SD Strong Sustainability Weak Sustainability Strong Constraints Same capital stock intact No conversion No substitution Weak Constraints Only amount of capital stock, Not the same form of capital Conversion and Substitution

  10. Ecologists Version – “Strong Sustainability” Maximum Sustainable Yield Flow of resource Stock of resource (e.g. fish)  Possible to consumer MSY each year and still leave stock intact

  11. Sustainable Development – Ecological Definition • “Critical Loads” legal/ecological concept Flow of pollutants that does not reduce the systems capacity to handle future flows of the pollutant e.g. SOX flows that do not add to acidity level of ecosystem (i.e. detract from its capacity to handle future flows)

  12. Sustainable Devmt? Global Use of Resources (Opschoor et al)

  13. Weak Sustainability – Economists Definition Capital Stock is anything that generates a flow of services for potential use Different forms of capital 1) “Natural capital” (Kn) Flows: plants, fish, air, water, timber, minls • “Physical capital” (Kp) Flows: goods, services, transportation • “human capital” (Kh) Flows: skills, ideas, technologies, health  Solow: Are we happy with the particular set of capital that our grandparents left to us? (less Kn, more Kp)

  14. Weak Sustainability Hartwick-Solow Rule Development is sustainable so long as the entire aggregate (of all forms of) capital stocks are maintained at a constant level. K = Kn + Kp + Kh

  15. Weak Sustainability Conversion of capital stock is allowed, so long as entire returns are invested in other forms of capital (“golden rule”) H-S Rule: agg K constant Kp stock rises with investment Kn stock declines Time

  16. Weak sustainability Legal/economic concept of “net economic investment” (mining vs. invmt) Amount of investment (Savings) net of: Depletion of Kn Depreciation of Kp

  17. Sustainable Development?

  18. Sustainable Development? What constraint should have been imposed upon the Nauru grandparents? Maintain paradise? Room for people? MSY? No room for development? Maintain critical capital? Which is which? Conversion of capital? Avoid Musicals?

  19. Next Week How to avoid doing damage to future generations? Discounting and inter-generational equity.

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