CHAPTER 3: Sustainable Development or Sustaining Crises?
3.2 Historical Overview of Sustainable Development
According to Drexhage and Murphy, ‘The UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, was the first major international gathering to discuss sustainability at the global scale’ (Drexhage and Murphy 2010:7). Amongst the various outcomes from this conference was the commissioning in 1983 of the WCED to unearth the relation between economic development and environmental degradation (Drexhage and Murphy 2010:7). Four years later in 1987, the commission under the leadership of the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, produced a landmark report Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report. The commission comprised of representatives from both developing and developed countries and the ensuing report reflects a balanced and challenging outlook and recommendations on the relationship between development and the environment. Besides coining the classic definition of sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987:45), the report ushered in novel ways of tackling the tension between development and the environment. We have to take into account that this was before the crises of anthropogenic global warming had been become so palpable to the general public.
3.2.1 Our Common Future
The title of the report, Our Common Future, highlights the notion of community and interdependence in sharing one common future and one common planet. The report elucidates and laments that, ‘The Earth is one but the world is not. We all depend on one biosphere for sustaining our lives. Yet each community, each country, strives for survival and prosperity with little regard for its impact on others’ (WCED 1987:27). Thus way back in 1987, the need to form a community of common purpose and values beyond national or
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regional interest was already seen as indispensable to curb environmental degradation. It was already evident that development set on narrow myopic national interests would have dire effects not only on other nations’ desire for development but on the natural environment. The report indicated that the global crisis was one; ‘There are not separate crises; an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one’
(WCED 1987:5). Closely linked to this point was the identification of poverty as the problem for sustainable development.
The report emphasizes that poverty affects efforts at sustainable development and at addressing environmental degradation. According to the report, ‘ Those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive; They will cut down forests; their livestock will overgraze grasslands; they will overuse marginal land; and in growing numbers they will crowd into congested cities’ (WCED 1987:28). If we interpret this citation within our context of the effects of climate change which include flooding and droughts, one could see how the poor people not only contribute to environmental degradation but are also victims themselves. It is like people in painful shackles trying to break free but whose efforts only make the shackles tighter than before. Central to such an understanding of poverty in Our Common Future is the lucid point that, ‘Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. It is therefore futile to attempt to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality’ (WCED 1987:3). It is pertinent to take note that the vision of sustainable development can never be met without candidly addressing the problem of poverty. If indeed sustainable development is a solution and paradigm for curbing climate change, it cannot ignore the plight of the poor and of the earth.
3.2.2 The Earth Summit and Rio Declaration
A year after the Brundtland Report was published; the IPCC was formed in 1988 as noted in chapter 2, to provide a scientific assessment of climate change. In 1990, the IPCC produced its first assessment report and affirmed that, ‘Since the industrial revolution the atmospheric concentrations of several greenhouse gases, i.e. carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4),
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chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), nitrous oxide (N2O), and tropospheric ozone (O3), have been increasing primarily due to human activities’ (Watson et al 1990:5). All these factors were influential in the consequent Earth Summit or the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Summit marked 20 years since the Stockholm Conference and mapped a global plan in its Rio Declaration which is known as Agenda 21 (Drexhage and Murphy 2010:8). The Rio Declaration produced 27 principles on sustainable development and we shall highlight few of these.
Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration reveals the anthropocentric slant of sustainable development when it asserts that, ‘Human beings are at the centre of concerns of sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature’
(UNCED1992). Even though this principle can be interpreted as radically anthropocentric it is also open to be interpreted in our context as calling for the recognition for the plight of the poor in addressing sustainable development. Equally important is principle 3 which states that, ‘the right to development must be fulfilled as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations’ (UNCED 1992). How this can be equitably done still remains a bone of contention amongst developing and developed countries, especially in light of global warming and climate change caused by extensive fossil fuelled economic growth.
Concerning action towards attaining sustainable development, principle 7 of the Rio Declaration sheds some light in avowing that;
States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developing countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command (UNCED 1992).
The cooperation that the principle avows has not been really happened in the twenty years following the Conference. While is it spelt out that states have ‘common but differentiated
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contributions’ to make towards curbing environmental degradation with developed countries taking the initiative, in reality this proposal has not been wholly honoured. The fact that Agenda 21 from the UNCED IN 1992 serves a mere working plan with no legally binding constraints on any country does not help the cause for effective sustainable development (Rao 2000:5). Thus, the relationship and tension between sustainable development and the ecology is at the centre of this chapter. Having looked briefly at the historical development of sustainable development it suffices now to analyze critically the definitions of sustainable development and how these affect the efforts at curbing global warming and climate change.