Sustainable development is generally accepted as an essential element for most human and economic activities. The EU’s 2020 strategy document, as well as Malta’ ancillary National Reform Programme, identify sustainable development as one of the critical success factors for Europe’s prosperity in the current decade and beyond. So, what lies beyond the fashionable rhetoric of sustainability?
David Munro, the late consultant of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, defined sustainable development as: “the complex of activities that can be expected to improve the human condition in such a manner that the improvement can be maintained. Development is a complex of activities, some with social, some with economic objectives, some based on material resources, some on intellectual resources, all enabling people to reach their full potential and enjoy a good life.”
But sustainable development can easily become just a convenient set of buzzwords for everyone concerned with the environment and development. Unless we can define what this concept implies in operational terms, we will not be able to adopt sustainability as a guiding principle for the economic and social practices that must prevail in future.
The concept of sustainable development is not difficult to understand. What is difficult is applying the concept to our socio-economic strategy. To improve the quality of life of people we need to look at different aspects of sustainability.
The first important consideration is the need to support ecosystems as they are the source of the necessities of life including air, fresh water, food, and the materials necessary for clothing, housing, cooking and heating. In an overpopulated island like Malta the preservation of certain aspects of the ecosystems is a particularly different exercise.
The challenge to ensure that the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we grow in our meagre countryside is indeed daunting. The pollution caused by our need to promote economic growth, combined with our often insensitive attitude to caring for our environment, are serious threats to the preservation of our fragile ecosystems.
The costs of environmental deterioration often outweigh the economic and social benefits that can sometimes flow from activities that cause these losses. How many of us consider the value of an undeveloped field in our countryside as being higher than that of a block of apartments built in the same field?
The definition of socioeconomic constraints on development to ensure sustainability is an even more difficult challenge for our political leaders who are responsible for hardwiring the principles of sustainability in their strategic plans. Yet these principles are necessary to guide our society and must include ethical, economic and social factors that must underpin sustainable development.
Our society may need to adopt new social norms in certain aspects of our traditions and customs to ensure that our sensitivity to the preservation of our environment is sharpened. One of these social norms relates to the preservation of our heritage, an important part of which is physical property. As Munro rightly emphasised, our society needs to embrace more enthusiastically the concept that our physical heritage “must be considered as common property and, while traditional users’ rights may be recognised, the resource itself is considered inalienable’”.
In our quest for economic growth – as we feel deprived and insecure and less willing to contribute to or protect the common good – we often lose sight of the validity of this principle. This has sadly happened too often when we experienced quick economic development, partly as a result of weak political oversight on the process of this development.
It is admittedly difficult to define social limits that must be respected to achieve sustainability. One way of defining these limits is to adopt a collaborative approach where all stakeholders in the community are informed about all aspects of the issues under consideration and given the opportunity to discuss the alternative courses of action that can be taken before defining the limits of development.
Economic viability is important for sustainable development. To determine whether benefits outweigh costs we must have measurable criteria for assessing these elements. But the need to reduce the costs of development projects must not be used as a pretext to circumvent environment protection constraints. To quote Munro once again, to move beyond the political rhetoric of sustainable development, our political parties need to define “a clear protocol for assessing sustainability and to follow it consistently to ensure a comprehensive, careful, and deliberate decision-making process.”
jcassarwhite@yahoo.com