The Brundtland Commission knew or should have known in 1987 they were dealing with a sustainability problem when they concluded that we needed to go beyond business as usual to solve the social and environmental crisis associated with business as usual since 1876, they knew or should have not that this needed a sustainability fix not a sustainable development patch.
If they would not have mixed up a sustainability problem with a sustainable development problem they would have had 3 choices: a) to recommend going red markets if they were giving priority to the social sustainability problem they documented; b) ) to recommend going green markets if they were giving priority to the environmental sustainability problem they documented; and c) ) to recommend going sustainability markets if they were giving priority to the socio-environmental sustainability problem they documented. Instead, they recommended sustainable development, a patch to the issues, that does not take us neither close to the beyond business as usual model they asks us to go.
Then, the Rio + 20 process came along settling the sustainable development discourse by prioritizing the environmental issue and hence, deciding to go green economies, green growth, and green markets.
And this raises the question, Will the period 1987 to 2012 be known in the history of economic thought as a great sustainability thinking failure period?
What do you think?
Hello!, happy day.
I consider that this is a question that can be seen from both the perspective of development and the environmental perspective.
If it is analyzed taking into account what happened before and what is happening right now, yes, it is a complicated period, at least. We do not have the misinformation and the need for development of the industrial revolution, nor were we heading towards the pit we are currently heading to by taking measures too late.
It is undoubtedly a period of "uncertainty" in which the range of options was open and no one took the one that was truly needed. The magnitude of the problem was underestimated, and while we are now working with what we have, we are dealing with the consequences.
Will the period from 1987 to 2012 be known in the history of economic thought as the period of the great failure of thinking about sustainable development? I think we can talk about a great failure of thinking about sustainable development within the framework of disciplinary and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary thinking. This was to be expected. Because the problem of sustainable development belongs to the evil problem. There is no unambiguous solution to such problems. However, since 2010, this "great failure of thinking" has activated the unification of systemic thinking and transdisciplinary worldview. This contributed to an active rethinking of the problem of sustainable development using a systematic transdisciplinary approach. As a result, to the three options that you described, a fourth option appeared. Ecological, economic, social and cultural development can be considered sustainable if their concepts are built taking into account the laws of natural development. Thanks to this result, active work is underway today to build such concepts. You can read about this work in the following articles
Mokiy, V.S. & Lukyanova T.A. (2019). The External and Internal Planet’s Limits to Growth: Transdisciplinary Rethinking. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2019, 134-144. http://dx.doi.org/10.30845/ijhss.v9n9a16
Mokiy, V. S. & Lukyanova, T. A. (2019). Imperatives of Sustainable Development from the Perspective of Systems Transdisciplinary Approach. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 10. https://doi.org/10.22545/2019/0127
Mokiy, V.S., & Lukyanova, T.A. (2022). Sustainable development of nature and society in the context of a systems transdisciplinary paradigm. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 13, Special Issue on Complex Resilience and Sustainability. Transdisciplinary Perspectives, In G. del Cerro Santamaría (Ed.), 15-35. https://doi.org/10.22545/2022/00192
Iker, thank you for taking the time to comment.
The only explanation why the Brundtland Commission(Our common future 1987) got so wrong and recommended sustainable development as the solution of a sustainability problem is that i) they only were able to see the situation through additive thinking; and ii) directed that additive thinking, not to go beyond business as usual as they said we needed to go, but to find ways to kick the socio-environmental problem box into the future and focus on how to keep the pollution production economy still running while trying to solve the problem. All sustainable development approaches represent different ways to save the old capitalism model for the moment knowing that the system as a hole will collapse sooner or later if the root cause of the sustainability problems highlighted in 1987 is not fixed.
But the period from 2012 to now seems even worse, as they reached the right conclusion in 2012 Rio +20 / UNCSD to go green market, green growth and green economies, but then they decided to avoid that despite the need and consensus for paradigm change that was present then. AND they went the way of dwarf green markets, dwarf green growth, and dwarf economies; and to justify that, which goes against the well known Thomas Kuhn’s evolution of scientific paradigms loop, they are using alternative academic facts, academic tunneling, and apparently, willful academic blindness just because the scientific fix appears to be NOT POLITICALLY PALATABLE now.
But as scientists, we are supposed to follow only the scientific truth, once we do not do that as those supporting dwarf green markets are doing from goverments, to researchers and to international organizations like the UN, then we are acting and supporting something not science based…..
How can they expect to solve the environmental problem created by the pollution production market a la Adam Smith by managing the consequences without fixing the cause generating those consequences?. Yet, they keep going around and around ignoring the science against what they are doing AND blindly focus on managing consequences.
In summary, the 1987 to 2012 period can only be recorded in the history of economic thought as a period of sustainability thinking failure given the facts.
Have a nice day
Dear Vladimir, thank you for taking the time to write.
I started my commitment to the advancement of true sustainability thinking since 1999 as I saw the world going the wrong way with sustainable development and when I saw people writing about sustainability as it was sustainable development or presenting sustainable development tools as sustainability tools when they are not.
Then people were talking about sustainability LOOSELY as there was not a theory sustainability by 1997 to 2003, and I took it up to myself to correct that by publishing a formal theory and its application in 2003 knowing that it would be ignored so that if people keep trying to pass sustainable development as sustainability after that now they are going to be doing it under willful academic blindness.
Have you ever seen the following papers, they have some good food for thouthgts;
Beyond traditional sustainable development: Stating specific and general sustainability theory and sustainability indices using ideal present-absent qualitative comparative conditions
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281276522_Beyond_traditional_sustainable_development_Stating_specific_and_general_sustainability_theory_and_sustainability_indices_using_ideal_present-absent_qualitative_comparative_conditions
Linking Sustainable Development Indicators by Means of Present/Absent Sustainability Theory and Indices: The Case of Agenda 21
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298654455_Linking_Sustainable_Development_Indicators_by_Means_of_PresentAbsent_Sustainability_Theory_and_Indices_The_Case_of_Agenda_21
Respectfully yours;
Lucio
The period 1987-2012 overlaps the era when the Washington Consensus policies were being promoted and implemented in most developing countries. Then there came the Millennium Development Goals of 2000. As aforementioned, much concentration was focused on unbalanced sustainable development. Sustainable development balances on three pillars (Social, economic and ecological). The Washington consensus, however, paid most attention to the economic pillar while disregarding the social and ecological pillars. In other words, there was lop-sided economic thinking that did not pay attention to holistic sustainability.
Robert, good day. I see you agree that period was a massive failure in terms of sustainability thinking sending us the way of sustainable development instead of sustainability based development. The Brundtland commission sent the world in 1987 into 6 different additive school of thoughts competing for development as each of them reflects a different form of sustainable development.
The confusing approach to sustainability issues the commision gave us in 1987 led in the end to given priority to the environmental sustainability issue, where in the Rio +20 Conference it was agreed that the way to go was green markets, green growht, and green economies, but in the end they avoided going this way, where we are now.....Since 1987 to 2012, the environmental sustainability issue went towards worse.....From 2012 to now, the environmental sustainability issue has gone even worse....
The common aspects in both periods is that decision makers have been focused on managing the consequences of the root cause driving the environmental sustainability issue, not on fixing the root cause of the pollution production problem issue.
Robert, have you ever seen the articles below?, they have some good food for thoughts
Introducing a Simple Qualitative Comparative Dichotomy Approach to State and Clarify Sustainable Development and Sustainability Related Concepts and Issues
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281244558_Introducing_a_Simple_Qualitative_Comparative_Dichotomy_Approach_to_State_and_Clarify_Sustainable_Development_and_Sustainability_Related_Concepts_and_Issues
Sustainability thought 177: What are environmental pollution production markets, environmental pollution reduction markets, environmental pollution management markets and no environmental pollution production markets? How do they work?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370755686_Sustainability_thought_177_What_are_environmental_pollution_production_markets_environmental_pollution_reduction_markets_environmental_pollution_management_markets_and_no_environmental_pollution_produ
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