'Sustainable development' has been a popular
conceptual framework since the World Commission on Environment and Development
issued its report to the United Nations in 1987 (WCED, 1987). Also
known as the “Brundtland Report”,
after the commission’s chairperson, Gro Harlmen Bundtland of Norway, its goal
was to define a new approach to addressing pressing social and environmental
needs of the world. Among its chief
concerns were
- 1. Poverty (hunger, health, housing, wealth distribution, exposure to natural disasters
- 2. Growth (fossil fuel and other natural resource consumption and pollution), global agenda to deal with the deterioration of natural and social environments.
Today, 24 years later, sustainable development and
sustainable tourism are widely accepted as appropriate philosophies upon which
to base policy decisions and behavioral practice. Their
wide acceptance is due, in part, to the flexibility used to interpret their
meaning. “Sustainable development” is an oxymoron, in that
it implies both environmental conservation and stewardship (through
sustainability), and natural resource exploitation (or development). Proponents
for both of these perspectives commonly use “sustainable development” to argue
for their respective positions. For Destination marketing organizations
(DMOs), for example, sustainable development often means maintaining and
growing tourist expenditures and tourism investments. This may be in
complete opposition to slow growth conservationists for whom sustainable
tourism is tourism development that does not impact local natural environments
traditional cultures.
Sustainable tourism, however, mostly applies to
mostly amenity rich geographic settings and, as such, is a niche area of
application for the broader sustainable development paradigm. Urbanization,
as a primary force for global social transformation can provide a more general
and perhaps universal perspective on sustainable development. Several efforts
have been made in popular media, for example, to rate the sustainability of cities,
along with justifications for those ratings. A compilation of several of those
lists shows a dominance of European cities, followed by North America and then
a few cities in other parts of the world (table 1, sources: d'Estries, 2011; Grist, 2007; Linssen & Sindik, 2008).
What is more valuable for these sustainable cities
lists is the criteria that they are based on. A review of the sources for table
1 resulted to two general types of criteria against which these cities
stood out in various ways: their environmental footprint and their quality of
life (table 2) (see also, . The environmental footprint of cities includes technological
investments and innovations that either reduce greenhouse gas emissions or,
secondarily, enhance the recycling of natural resources. As such, they are
efforts to reduce the environmental impact of cities, with ultimate goals of
reducing or mitigating the worldwide severity of global warming and
environmental change. Quality of life criteria, on the other hand, are much less
narrowly focused on global environmental issues. Instead, they address local
lived experiences and the creation of places that are comfortably adapted to
their social and environmental geographies. Open space, park lands, air, water,
transportation systems, forests and heritage sites are shared, common resources
that require conservation for future generations as much as the fossil fuels
and other non-renewable resources.
The sustainable cities criteria in Table 2 reflect
the perspective of environmental organizations that are the strongest
supporters of sustainable development, which reflects a strong bias toward the
conservation of natural and social resources.
It also shows a bifurcation in that perspective between mitigation,
which is a mostly engineering challenge, and adaptation, which is a more
difficult social planning challenge.
The difference in these two perspectives is also
evident in the area of sustainable tourism. The most common approach to
instituting and verifying sustainable tourism is through engineering evaluations
of the environmental footprint of a hotel, resort or tourist attraction that
result in green certifications. This approach to sustainable tourism is
popular because it is easier to conceptualize and more readily measurable than
are social planning objectives. Tourism industry sectors throughout the world
have adopted green certification programs both to mitigate the environmental
impacts of tourism activities and as an effective marketing mechanism for some
travel segments.
How tourism activities impacts local quality of
life is occasionally acknowledged by the tourism industry, which mostly associates
this through contribution to employment creation and the conservation of
traditional culture through artistic displays and performances, and various
forms of museumization. Tourism’s
broader roles in community development are addressed more by non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and social scientists than by private sector tourism
industry representatives.
The distinction in tourism development between
private businesses ownership of environmental mitigation measures and public
sector and civil society responsibility for public goods is not exclusive.
Governments also build green buildings and adopt internal energy efficiency and
recycling practices to reduce their environmental footprint. In doing so, however, they are behaving more
like private sector entities, rather than setting public policies that
influence broad sectors of community behavior. The true distinction here is the
public goods nature of the resources that comprise most of the quality of life
sustainability criteria. The profit driven private sector is seldom,
if ever, given primary responsibility for ensuring a community’s water and air
quality, and shared open spaces.
After two and a half decades of sustainable
development, this is where we have arrived the sustainable development paradigm
has brought us. There is a private
sector primary focus on the technology of climate and ecosystem mitigations,
and there is a public sector dominance of the realm of quality of life. These
are both positive experiences that have benefitted the communities by reducing
environmental impacts (footprints) and creating more livable places where they
have been adopted.
The problem is that although sustainability
paradigm practices have been adopted throughout the world to a degree beyond
the expectations of many, they have not resulted in effective responses
to global climate change and widespread poverty and hunger. Some have even argued that the success of
sustainability has resulted in a depoliticized and coopted climate change
concerns, resulting in post-modern indifference to the future (Swyngedouw, 2013; Beck,
2010).
The solution? See my previous post on Creative Resilience for the direction that I am currently leaning towards...
References Cited
Beck, UY. (2010) Climate for Change, or How to
Create a Green Modernity. Theory, Culture & Society 27: 254-266.
d'Estries, M. (2011) Top Five Most Sustainable
Cities in the World. Ecomagination.com (29 Nov), online at http://www.ecomagination.com/top-five-most-sustainable-cities-in-the-world,
accessed 20 January 2013.
Grist (2007) 15 Green Cities. Grist (20 July), online at: http://grist.org/article/cities3/, accessed 20 Jan 2013.
Linssen, S. and Christopher Sindik, C. (2008) 2020
Global Sustainability Centers, Ethisphere (7 Sept), online at http://ethisphere.com/2020-global-sustainability-centers/,
accessed 20 January 2013.
Swyngedouw, E. (2013) The Non-political Politics of
Climate Change. ACME: An International
E-Journal for Critical Geographies 12(1): 1-8, online at http://www.acme-journal.org/vol12/Swingedouw2013.pdf, accessed 13 January 2013.
