The need for a renewed relationship with the environment and interest in sustainable development has been building over the past 30 years. In 1972 Danella and Dennis Meadows shook the world’s complacency with their book Limits to Growth (1972). They argued the Earth’s resources and ability to absorb pollution are finite. Using computer simulations, they predicted the Earth’s population and development progress would experience physical constraints within a century. After this first warning came more research and deliberation into the long-term consequences of continued industry and population expansion. This led to the publication of the World Conservation Strategy by the International Union for the Conser-vation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN, 1980), which was one of the first reports to introduce the concept of sustainable development. This was followed by the World Commission on Environment and Develop-ment (Brundtland Commission) Report in 1987, entitled Our Common Future (WCED, 1987), which placed the concept of sustainable develop-ment at centre stage and promoted it as a vehicle for deliverance.
The sustainable development concept is not new, but increasing pres-sures on the world’s finite resources and environmental capacity have led to a more deliberate restatement of the philosophy, along with evolving guidelines to put it into practice. Our Common Future described sus-tainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987). This is not very different from the view that we do not inherit the earth from our forefathers but borrow it from our children, and the old philosophy that something should be left for future genera-tions. As such, sustainable development builds on the old principles of conservation and stewardship, but it offers a more proactive stance that incorporates continued economic growth in a more ecological and equi-table manner. In this regard the opening definition above is supplemented with more specific implications and guidelines throughout the WCED report.
Figure 9.1 illustrates some of the guidelines that emerged from Our Common Future, which in turn have stimulated further discussion at Tourism and sustainable development 169
1 Establishing ecological limits and more equitable standards
'Requires the promotion of values that encourage consumption standards that are within the bounds of the ecological possible and to which all can reasonably aspire.'
2 Redistribution of economic activity and reallocation of resources
'Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met.' 3 Population control 'Though the issue is not merely one of population
size but of the distribution of resources, sustainable development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.'
4 Conservation of basic resources
'Sustainable development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth: the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and the living beings.'
5 More equitable access to resources and increased technological effort to use them more effectively
'Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond which lies ecological disaster . . . But ultimate limits there are, and sustainability requires that long before these are reached the world must ensure equitable access to the constrained resource and reorient technological efforts to relieve the pressure.'
6 Carrying capacity and sustainable yield
'Most renewable resources are part of a complex and interlinked ecosystem, and maximum sustainable yield must be defined after taking into account system-wide effects of exploitation.' 7 Retention of
resources
'Sustainable development requires that the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources foreclose as few future options as possible.'
8 Diversification of the species
'Sustainable development requires the conservation of plant and animal species.'
9 Minimize adverse impacts
'Sustainable development requires that the adverse impacts on the quality of air, water, and other natural elements are minimised so as to sustain the ecosystem's overall integrity.'
10 Community control 'Community control over development decisions affecting local ecosystems.'
11 Broad national/
international policy framework
'The biosphere is the common home of all human-kind and joint management of the biosphere is prerequisite for global political security.'
12 Economic viability 'Corporate environmental policy is an extension of total quality management.'
13 Environmental quality
'Corporate environmental policy is an extension of total quality management.'
14 Environmental audit
'An effective environmental audit system is at the heart of good environmental management.' 15 Triple bottom line ‘Economic prosperity, environmental quality and
social justice.'
Figure 9.1: Sustainable development components.
various government levels and within business. The first nine compo-nents were extracted from the WCED report and formed the basis of Canada’s early attempts to integrate this type of philosophy into its national policy (Canadian Environment Advisory Council, 1987).
Following the WCED report other writers and agencies have added to the list of components shown in Figure 9.1. This list is not designed to be exhaustive but to illustrate the ongoing refinement of the concept of sus-tainable development and the increasing emphasis on its application. It has been noted, for example, that the priority on maintaining ecological diversity and distributing more productivity to developing regions implies increased community control (Component l0), which in turn fosters increased regional self-reliance (Rees and Roseland, 1988). Like-wise, these two authors and Stanley (1992) maintain there is a need for more international agreements and business–government partnerships (Component 11) to direct national and individual actions. To the ecologi-cal limitations and social equity of the sustainable development philoso-phy must be added the concept of economic viability (Component 12) according to the British Columbia Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (1991).
The business community and literature have been responding to the environmental–economic opportunities that exist within the ‘greening’
process over the past ten years or so. A minority of corporations are still in the early phase of responding to environmental problems as they arise.
The majority of corporations has established systems and programmes to comply with the new regulations, but a further minority has moved
‘beyond compliance’ into a proactive mode of management. This evolu-tionary process is slowly leading to the complete integration of the envi-ronmental dimension into corporate strategic planning (Component 13).
To bring environmental considerations and sustainable development into the mainstream of corporate planning requires increased accountability and the environmental audit has been gaining credibility in this area.
Hunt and Auster (1990) contend a ‘strong auditing programme’ is essen-tial to successful proactive environmental management (Component 14).
Elkington (1999) has bundled several of the earlier dimensions into his concept of triple bottom line accounting by adding environmental and social considerations to the more regular financial accounting concerns of modern business. He notes the need to measure environmental impacts in terms of new metrics such as the life cycle impacts of products and potentially polluting emissions. Furthermore he recognises that ‘if we fail to address wider political, social and ethical issues, the backlash will inevitably undermine progress in the environmental area’ (Elkington, 1999).
As noted above, from a temporal perspective, sustainable development should have both vertical and horizontal components. The broadening of Tourism and sustainable development 171
the definition to include consideration of the needs of future generations and of current social equity has produced a continuum of sustainability positions, a summary of which is shown in Figure 9.2.
The growing interest and support for sustainable development is not without its critics and skeptics. Some maintain that it is such a fuzzy concept that it may prove to be of little practical use in tackling the envi-ronmental issues that are emerging. However, as Figure 9.1 illustrates, the short definition of sustainable development should be viewed only as a summary goal, and that from this has evolved a series of more specific objectives and methodologies. Others consider that it is a passing fad, akin to the energy crises of the past. But this perception fails to acknowledge that evidence of environmental stress started more than 30 years ago, and instead of disappearing it has gradually increased to the point where admitted nonenvironmentalists are beginning to take notice. One author who has addressed such skepticism and doubts is George Winter (1988) who developed a listing of pros and cons for 40 issues regarding the intro-duction of an integrated system of environmental business management.
Some authors have criticised the fundamentals of the concept of sus-tainable development itself, discussing the oxymoronic nature of the term (see, for example, Huckle, 1996) and claiming that ‘sustainable’ (with its steady-state implications) and ‘development’ (with its growth implica-tions) are mutually exclusive (Page and Dowling, 2002). According to Barkin (1996), the concept of sustainable development has created seem-ingly impossible goals for policy makers and development practitioners
‘. . . [since] present levels of per capita resource consumption in the richer countries cannot possibly be maintained much less generalized to people living in the rest of the world.’
This theme has permeated much of the recent debate on sustainable development and has contributed to the advent of terms such as ‘sustain-ability’ and ‘sustainable future,’ possibly in attempts to avoid emphasis-ing the oxymoronic nature of the terms ‘sustainable’ and ‘development.’