Concerns pertaining to inequality and social exclusion have been equally important as environmental degradation to development experts.
This report of United Nations http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/world-social-situation-2013.html discusses why serious attention should be drawn to inequality.
Does that mean the capitalism is failing? or the whole subject of sustainable development is dumb?
Thank you Alexandre for short and valuable response. I wonder if there have been done any studies on the balance you are talking about?
The whole concept is a furphy. It is a concept that fails to stimulate the transformative change we needed to have adopted 30 years ago. Green-wash is everywhere. Every soap powder to mineral extraction enterprise is 'sustainable' and none of it actually is. The price mechanism is in large part responsible for this. We do not account for environmental externality in anything we pay for, and until we do our entire market remains distorted. This is a massive re-adjustment. Good to see the IMF calling for a carbon-price - but this is still part of the problem. CO2 is only one greenhouse gas emission amongst many hundreds/thousands of causes of 'un' sustainable activity on this planet. To fetishise just one of these ignores the fundamental problems with capitalism and our lifestyle priorities.
I recommend the thinking of Roling and Wagemaker as a starting points and also the devastating critique of the late Val Plumwood.
Roling, N. G., & Wagemakers, M. A. E. (1998). A new practice: Facilitating sustainable agriculture. In N. G. Roling & M. A. E. Wagemakers (Eds.), Facilitating sustainable agriculture: Participatory learning and adaptive management in times of environmental uncertainty (pp. 3 - 22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plumwood, V. (2003). Sustainable what? Humanities and sustainability workshop. Retrieved from http://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/shp-workshop/Plumwood.pdf
Capitalism may become a failure if its key practitioners are unable to recognize and adapt the concepts of sustainable development in a way that can on one side preserve this form of economic system, while ensuring that the natural and human resources of the world are not exploited exclusively for the generation of capital.
The concept of sustainability is not new. In fact many human societies have mastered the art of applying sustainable concepts in a variety of cultural and geographical regions of the earth. It is ironic that many of these societies have been called "primitive" societies.
These two concepts (capitalism and sustainability) clash because some segments of the human family have accepted the idea of "progress" and "development" to mean ever increasing generation of capital, and more rapid invention and application of technology at all cost.
Ultimately there is a choice to be made, hopefully we make the right one.
Thank you Anne and Dave; progress just for the sake of progress is never sustainable. Sustainability for the sake of ensuring human beings' existence should be a burning issue for developed world and also a way forward for developing countries. A 4 C warmer world and half of world's capitals for one percent of the world population are not things that can sustain. http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf
So, apart from ethics, for the sake of sustainability and respect for the nature, the world must revisit policies towards inclusion, economic growth, and environmental degradation.
Kenneth, here's a definition for you.
Capitalism = a social order based on the endless subordination of life - human and non-human - to commodity production. In the case of human life, subordination means the organization of society such that the vast majority of individuals have the vast majority of their time and energy sucked up, vampire-like as Marx wrote, in work producing commodities, either commodities produced for profit - which is then reinvested to impose more work - or the commodity labor power - the willingness and ability to work. In the process they suffer exploitation, alienation and a host of other ills. In the case of non-human life it means being converted into the raw materials of commodity production. In the process they and their life-worlds are poisoned, bulldozed, consumed and destroyed. As a result of these characteristics vast numbers of beings (both human and non-human), naturally struggle to avoid or escape this fate, so capitalism is a system fraught with antagonism and conflict. Sustainable capitalism is, therefore, a nightmare.
http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/port.html
I would say the talk about sustainability (just like the newer attribution of "Green..." to everything) is nothing more than an attempt to remedy in a top-down fashion some of the biggest (system endangering) faults in capitalism. Just like the first social security laws back then, when children were to weak to become soldiers. Or the brief semi-Keynesian escapade around the midst of the 20th century. They are not even real reforms of a system Harry described quite well, only thought to perpetuate the unchangeable (just think about Zizeks dictum that we can imagine the end of the world but not the end of capitalism).
The failure of capitalism particularly the market to distribute income and wealth efficient, fair and where no one is worst off that provoke issue of sustainable development. It should be understood the the production pattern in society that generate inequality for the vast majority while allocating wealth to the few who own and control it.
