Sustainability in development policy formation.

Basic dimensions of sustainable development policies

Despite the fact that the true ecological transition began more than nine thousand years ago, and that ecopolitics has been with us since the beginnings of time--after all, if "before it was chaos" (not to be confused with a biblical reference to the existence of economists before the creation ... we simply point out to the extreme entropy of the Big Bang), it is also a fact that Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden ostensibly due to an ecological act ...--only recently have we awakened to the need to reckon with sustainability. It is true that the concern with the deterioration of natural systems is almost so old as modern human being presence in the planet. Plato (1945), for example, already warned his contemporaries for the serious consequences of the deforestation and of overgrazing more than 2300 years ago.

The "modern" notion of sustainability, however, has its origin in the international debate which begun in 1972 in Stockholm and consolidated twenty years later in Rio de Janeiro. Notwithstanding the variety of interpretations found in the literature and in political speech, the great majority of conceptions represent variations on the definition suggested by the World Commission on Environment and Development, presided by then Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland (1987). Sustainable development is that which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the possibilities of future generations to satisfy their own needs.

The often repeated statement that human beings constitute the center and the raison d'etre of development calls for a new development style that is environmentally sustainable in the access and use of natural resources and in the preservation of biodiversity; that is socially sustainable in the reduction of poverty and inequality and in promoting social justice; that is culturally sustainable in the conservation of the system of values, practices and symbols of identity that, in spite of their permanent evolution, determine national integration through time; and that it is politically sustainable by deepening democracy and guaranteeing access and participation of all sectors of society in public decision-making. This new development style must be guided by a new development ethics, one in which the economic objectives of growth are subordinated to the laws governing the operation of natural systems, subordinated as well to the criteria of human dignity and of improvement in the quality of people's life.

Let us briefly specify this definition in order to unveil the basic components of the new development paradigm, and to glimpse at their implications for the formulation of public policies. Certainly, the interpretation introduced here refers to a development paradigm and not of growth. This seems justified for two key reasons. First of all, to allow for a clear intergenerational and ecological limit to the process of economic growth. Contradicting the commonly accepted notion that sustainable development cannot be attained without growth--a conceptual trap that not even the Brundtland Report itself was able to avoid (see for example, Goodland et al., 1992)--the paradigm of sustainability assumes that growth, defined mostly as monetary increments of the product, and as we have been experiencing it, constitutes an intrinsic component of the insustainability of the current style. In the words of Roefie Hueting, "the less we need is an increment in national income" (Hueting, 1990).

This new paradigm emphasizes that development must produce qualitative changes in the quality of life of human beings. More than the mercantile goods and services exchanged in the market, these aspects include the social, cultural and aesthetic dimensions of meeting material and spiritual needs. It seems warranted to reproduce here the wise observations of Herman Daly (1991) with respect to the displacement of growth as the ultimate goal of development by a process of qualitative changes:

 "The recognition of the impossible is the foundation of science.
 It is impossible to travel at more speed than that of light, to
 create or to destroy matter energy to build a machine of perpetual
 movement, etc. Respecting the theorems of the impossible avoids
 wasting resources in projects doomed to fail. This is the reason
 why economists should have a great interest in the theorems of the
 impossible, particularly the one that demonstrates that its is
 impossible for the world to grow free of poverty and environmental
 degradation. In other words, sustainable growth is impossible.
 In its physical dimensions, the economy is not an open
 subsystem of the Earth's ecosystem, which is finite, not expanding
 and materially closed. When the economic subsystem grows, it
 incorporates a greater proportion of the total ecosystem, having as
 its limits one hundred percent, if not before. Therefore, growth is
 not sustainable. The term sustainable growth, applied to the
 economy, is a bad oxymoron; self contradictory in prose and not
 evocative at all as poetry" (cited, in Spanish in Elizalde, 1996).

Secondly, in addition to what has just been said, the sustainability of development will be assured inasmuch as this process is able to preserve the integrity of the natural processes that guarantee energy and material flows in the biosphere, while at the same time preserving the biodiversity of the planet. This last aspect is of utmost importance because it means that, to be sustainable, development has to move from the current anthropocentrism to biopluralism, granting other species the same onthologic right to life. In short, the environmental sustainability of development refers as much to the physical basis of growth, i.e., the conservation of natural resources incorporated into the production, as it refers to the carrying capacity of ecosystems--the ability of nature to absorb waste and to recover from the human interventions.

Thirdly, it is clearly not enough for development to promote qualitative changes in human well being and to guarantee ecosystemic integrity of the planet to be sustainable. One should keep in mind that "in situations of extreme poverty, the impoverished individual, marginalized or excluded from society and from the national economy, does not have any commitment to avoid environmental degradation if society is not able to thwart his or her own deterioration as a human being" (Guimaraes, 1991b:24). Particularly in developing countries, with serious problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion, the social foundations of sustainability suppose as basic approaches for public policies those of distributive justice, for production of goods and of services, and those of universalization, for policies in education, health, housing and social security. The same applies to gender equality, recognized as a value in itself and thus above economic considerations, which means to promote women's full incorporation in the economic (market), political (vote) and social (well being) citizenship.

In fourth place, the new paradigm also calls for the preservation of diversity in its wider sense--sociodiversity as well as biodiversity--that is to say, the maintenance of the system of values, practices and symbols of identity that reproduces the social fabric and, therefore, guarantee national integration (see for instance, Durston, 1997). This includes promotion of the constitutional rights of minorities and the incorporation of these in concrete policies of bilingual education, demarcation and territorial autonomy, religiosity, community health, etc. Points in the same direction, that of the cultural component of sustainability, several proposals for the introduction of agricultural rights of conservation equivalent to the already recognized rights for the conservation and rational use of the biogenetic endowment of the planet. Reference is made here to the establishment of economic criteria of intellectual property so that "users" and "owners" of biodiversity share their benefits, transforming themselves in co-responsible for its conservation.

In fact, a world increasingly globalized economically and commercially leads to increased agricultural specialization based on more productive species or varieties, with the consequent loss of diversity. Thus, for the cultural sustainability of agricultural systems, one should apply extra-market criteria in order to incorporate the externalities of systems of production that display low productivity from an economic, short term viewpoint, but that guarantee the diversity of species and agricultural varieties. Externalities that guarantee also the everlasting culture that sustains specific forms of economic organization for production.

In fifth place, the political foundation of sustainability is closely linked to the process of deepening of democracy and citizenship, and it strives for the full incorporation of people into the development process. This refers, at the micro level, to the democratization of society and, in the macro level, to the democratization of the State. The first objective presumes the strengthening of social and community organizations, redistribution of resources and information to subordinated social sectors, boosting the analytical capacity of their organizations, and training for decision-making; while the second it is achieved through the opening of State apparatuses to civic control, the reactualization of political parties and of electoral processes, and the incorporation of the concept of accountability in public activities. Both processes constitute politically charged challenges. These can be faced only through the construction of alliances among different social groups, a sure way of providing support and legitimization for revamping the prevailing style of development.

Lastly, what bonds and upholds this specific understanding of sustainability is the urgent need for a new ethics of development. Further to important moral, aesthetic and spiritual elements, this conception closely relates to at least two foundations of social justice already mentioned: productive and distributive justice. The first addresses the conditions that allow for the equality of opportunities that guarantee individuals to fully participate in the economic system, also the concrete possibility for these to satisfy their basic needs, and the existence of a widespread perception of fairness and of being treated according to their dignity and their rights as human beings. The ethics as materialization of distributive justice is oriented to assure that each individual receives the benefits of development according to his of her own merits, needs and means, and those of other individuals (Wilson, 1992).

Specifying more accurately the meaning of the new paradigm, although it may have contributed to overcome the ambiguities of the discourse on sustainable development, still opens new queries. Among others, one must distinguish the actors of sustainability and the actors whose action orientation or concrete behaviors contribute to deepen the unsustainability of the current style of development. Important inquiries emerge also on how to incorporate the logic of sustainability in public policies or, conversely, on how, within the current logic of the sectoral policies, to render these policies more sustainable.

Actors and public policy criteria for sustainable development

Notwithstanding the important evolution of world thought about the crisis of development that manifests itself in the environmental crisis, a general assessment of the alternatives proposed so far reveals that these fail to stand as significant inroads in the search for definitive or novel solutions. Most recipes still follow neoliberal pharmacopoeia and still emphasize structural adjustment programs, reduction of public expenditures, deregulation of economies, unrestrained trade and openness to foreign investments. The truth of the matter is that with more or less sophistication, alternative solutions for the crisis still suppose marginal changes in the institutions and rules of the international economic and financial system (see, for example, Rich, 1994, and Guimaraes, 1992). Public debate indicates, however, the need to promote deep changes in our form of social organization and of interaction with the cycles of the nature. In one word, the very power and strength of the discourse on sustainability derives from multiple paradoxes.

At the outset, sustainable development assumes importance at the very same moment that the centers of world power declare the collapse of the State as a driving force for development, proposing its replacement by market mechanisms and instruments, while declaring the failure also of government planning. However, a careful review of the basic components of sustainability--i.e., maintaining the stock of resources and the environmental quality for the satisfaction of the basic needs of current and future generations--in fact requires the existence of a regulated market and a long term horizon for public decisions. Among other reasons, because actors and variables such as "future generations" or "long term" are foreign to the market, whose signs respond to the "optimal" use of resources in the short term.

The same applies, even more so, to the specific type of current scarcity. We no longer live in the world portrayed at the times of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972), when the main concern referred almost exclusively to natural resources depletion. The shortage of natural resources can, although imperfectly, be confronted in the market place, via substitution of natural by physical capital, either through the emergence of new products to substitute for exhausted resources (e.g., petroleum by hydrogen to fuel transport systems) or by new technologies that extend natural reserves (e.g. more fuel efficient engines). What society confronts nowadays is a radically different predicament. We are faced with the deterioration of crucial environmental processes that cannot be simply replaced by others. Elements like climatic balance, the ozone layer, biodiversity or the carrying capacity of ecosystems transcend the realms of the market. These cannot be substituted, short of accepting as a viable solution relocating humankind to other planets once the environmental cycles that support life on Earth are exhausted.

On the other hand, it is truly impressive, if not contradictory from a sociological viewpoint, the current unanimity in favor of sustainability. It is impossible to find a relevant social actor against sustainable development. If this were not sufficient indication of the common sense about the void that usually accompanies absolute social consensus, development thinking itself, as well as the history of the social struggle that sets it in motion, evolve based on conflict among actors whose interests swings from disparity to antagonism.

Industrialization, for example, has often opposed the interests of agriculture, displacing the axis of accumulation from the countryside to the city; in the same way that the advancement of urban workers affected the rural masses negatively. It is not being suggested here a vision of history in which antagonisms between classes or social strata inevitably crystallize through time. In fact, agricultural capital has become linked more and more strongly to the industrial capital, while peasants gradually turned into rural workers, with behaviors and aspirations similar to those of its urban counterpart. In any case, one need to pose the question of who are the actors promoting sustainable development. One would hardly expect to be the ones who constitute the social basis of the current style, who have a lot to lose and stand very little to win with the change towards sustainability.

It is unavoidable to suggest, mainly from the reality of the developing countries of the South, that the paradigm of the sustainable development will only become reality once we specify its real components, its sectoral, economic, environmental and social contents. There is no doubt, for instance, that one of the pillars of the current style is the auto industry, with its sequels of urban congestion, burning of fossil fuels, etc. However, what could be considered sustainable for business (e.g., more fuel efficient, catalytic vehicles) would not necessarily be from the point of view of society (e.g., efficient public transportation). The same reasoning applies to natural resources. For the furniture industry or exporters of wood products, it could be considered sustainable forest activities that promotes substitution of natural forest for homogeneous species, since the market responds and promotes competitiveness based exclusively on the economic profitability of the resources. Meanwhile, for the country as a whole sustainability may in fact require the preservation of these same forest resources, guaranteeing their diversity for genetic research, for cultural integrity of indigenous populations, etc., thereby assigning smaller rates of return to timber extraction or furniture exports.

A rather formal approach to the question of "actors" behind a strategy of sustainable development would be to make use of the economic foundations of production: Capital, Labor and Natural Resources. Historically, two of these, Capital and Labor, have enjoyed a social base directly linked to their evolution, in many ways as "holders" or guardians of the specific interests of these factors. So much so that the accumulation of capital, financial, commercial or industrial, can be nurtured and, in turn, sustain the invigoration of a capitalist class, while the incorporation of the nature through relations of production may be strengthened and, in turn, favor the consolidation of a labor class. To render a long argument short, it is apt to recall the historical clash between socialism and capitalism, even when some authors confuse the exhaustion of the authoritarian State and the victory of the democracy with the end of the history of social struggles.

Consequently, the current dilemma of sustainability may be summed up to the nonexistence of an actor whose social identity lies on natural resources and environmental services, the foundations at least of the ecological and environmental sustainability of development. This becomes even more complex when considering that, with regards to Capital and Labor, specific actors hold the property of the respective factors, while the property of some of the natural resources and of most of the ecological processes is, at least in theory, public.

We definitely still live in two opposite realities. First, all actors seem to agree that the current style of development has been exhausted and it is definitely unsustainable, not from an economic and environmental point of view but mainly in what refers to social justice. Despite that, changes are not adopted for the transformation of the economic, social and political institutions that upheld the current style. At most, sustainability is used as a restriction to the process of accumulation, without confronting the institutional and political processes that regulate the property, control, access and use of natural resources and of environmental services. Never materialize either the indispensable decision to change consumption patterns in the industrialized countries, those, which, as it is known, determine the internationalization of the style.

Until now, what one can see are only cosmetic changes to "green" current growth, without in fact enforcing those changes that governments committed themselves to in Rio. A phenomenon well known for sociologists and political scientists, alluded to as dynamic conservatism (Schon, 1973). Before being a conspiratory theory of groups or social strata, it represents the inertial tendency of the social system to resist change, in fact promoting the acceptance of a revolutionary or innovative discourse precisely to guarantee that nothing changes, in postmodern "gatopardism" of sorts.

It is also true that sustainable development is suffering from a pathology common to any formula to change society too loaded with meaning and symbolism. In other words, behind all that unanimity there are real actors that hold very particular visions of sustainability, Let us take an illustration very close to the hearts of the proponents of sustainability: the Amazon (Guimaraes, 1997b). What is just suggested here would enable us to understand that a timber businessman can decide on the need for "sustainable management" of the forest and be referring to the replacement of the forest cover for homogeneous species in order to guarantee the "sustainability" of returns in wood extraction activities. Meanwhile a leader of a preservationist entity would ardently defend the means to ban any type of economic exploitation and even human presence in extensive primary forest areas, so as guarantee the sustainability of natural biodiversity.

All of the above could be happening while a union leader is arguing, just as emphatically and sincerely as the businessman and the preservationist, in favor of extractive activities in the Amazon as a means to guaranteeing the "socioeconomic sustainability" of his community (such as in the so called "extractivist reserves" that were made famous by the struggle of Chico Mendes in Brazil). Finally, in some place close by we can also find an indigenist talking about the importance of the Amazon for the cultural sustainability of practices, values and rituals that give a sense of identity to all the diversity of indigenous population groups.

In short, businessmen may promote sustainable development in the Amazon founded on images of the forest as a warehouse, the preservationist may see the Amazon as a laboratory, the union leader as a supermarket, and the indigenist as a museum. To make matters worse, all of these images reveal approaches and interests which are absolutely legitimate with respect to sustainability! The main challenge both for government and society, for decision makers and actors who define public agenda, is precisely to make sure there is a transparent, informed and participatory process for the debate and decision making process in pursuit of sustainability. This in order to be able to foster development policies which, ideally, should promote a socially, culturally, politically, ethically and environmentally sound model of natural resource use, both to meet basic needs and to improve quality of life of the current population, as well as to increase opportunities of future generations to improve their own quality of life. At the very least, and taking into account that social interests are, by definition, differentiated and many times contradictory, to allow for development policies that project a future for society and, based on this vision of the future, establish priorities and criteria to justify the selection of an alternative that meets certain needs of specific actors and not of others.

Consequently, it seems apt to outline operational approaches for public policy formation in accordance to the definition of sustainability suggested beforehand. Such a procedure would bring the paradigm of sustainability to the concrete kingdom of politicians and policy makers which, in turn, allows for the differentiation of actors and interests more accurately. Due to space limitations, the presentation will be limited to the non-exhaustive enunciation of criteria applicable exclusively to the ecological and environmental dimensions of the sustainability (for other dimensions sees Guimaraes, 1997a).

The ecological sustainability of development refers to the physical base of the process of growth and aims at the conservation of natural resources incorporated in productive activities. Making use of the initial proposals made by Herman Daly (1990, see also Daly and Towsend, 1993), it can be identified at least two approaches for their operationalization through the public policies. For the case of renewable natural resources, the use rate should be equivalent to the rate of recomposition of the resource. For non-renewable natural resources, the use rate should be equivalent to the rate of substitution of the resource in the productive process, for the period of time foreseen for its exhaustion (measured by current stock and use rate). Taking into account that their non-renewable character prevents an indefinitely sustainable use, it is necessary to limit the pace of use to the estimated period for the appearance of new substitutes. This requires, among other aspects, that the investments carried out for the exploitation of renewable natural resources renewable should be proportional to the investments assigned for the search of substitutes, particularly investments in science and technology, in research and development.

The environmental sustainability relates to the maintenance of the ecosystems carrying capacity, nature's ability to absorb and recover from anthropic aggressions. There are two obvious criteria that illustrate the concept operationally. First, waste emission rates as a result of economic activities should be equivalent to regeneration rates, which are defined by the ecosystem's capacity to recover. For example, the domestic sewerage of a two hundred thousand inhabitant city produces dramatically different effects if its is discharged and dispersed into a water body such as the Amazon or if it were deviated to a lagoon or estuary. If in one case waste water could be submitted only to primary treatment, and may well represent additional nutrients for the aquatic life, in the other scenario waste discharges would cause serious disturbances, and it would have to undergo more complex, more burdensome and costlier treatment systems. The second environmental sustainability criterion would be industrial restructuring emphasizing the reduction on entropy, i.e., and giving priority to the conservation of energy and the use of renewable sources.

It must be stressed, still referring to the environmental sustainability, the importance of using market mechanisms such as taxes and tariffs that incorporate into private expenditures the costs of environmental preservation as a key mode of putting into practice the "precautionary" and "polluter-pays" principles. Among many mechanisms, it is worth mentioning "waste markets" where industries of an specific area trade the wastes of their activities, most of the time converting these as inputs for other industries. Falls in this same category of market instruments for environmental management the "negotiable rights of pollution". Although there are important constraints in many of these instruments--among which the uncertain character of future externalities and the difficulty of determining property rights on many environmental resources and services-"emission tradable permits" have the advantage of allowing, through intra-industry transfer, for the State to reduce regulation via emission limits per production unit, and to regulate instead regional limits based on ecosystem's recovery rates.

Thus, a significant part of the preservation of the environmental quality is thereby transferred to the market, to the extent that the trading of such rights stimulate technological modernization and stop penalizing industries that at the present technological level do not have the required conditions to reduce levels of emissions. In the current system, where the inspection per productive unit and the application of fines are privileged, in addition to making the costs degradation of the environment difficult to enforce, enterprises are penalized if, even when using state of the art technology, still exceed the established limits, while those still operating within these, but yet refrain from improving their productive processes, are rewarded.

The above means that both "recomposition rates" (for natural resources), and "regeneration rates" (for ecosystems) should be treated as natural capital. The inability to sustain these in time should thus be treated as capital consumption, as non-sustainable. The fact remains that one of the major pitfalls of neoclassic economy derives from the assumption that natural capital (natural resources and environmental services) can be easily replaced by man-mad, physical or "productive" capital--technology, machinery and equipment (Guimaraes, 2000). It is mistakenly assumed, for example, that if a community can refurbish its ships or buy more vessels, they will catch more fish. However, this is only a half-truth because once the limit of fish available is reached, the enlargement of a fishing fleet or the incorporation of new technologies will only deteriorate the maritime ecosystem faster, until it is finally exhausted. Therefore, the alleged "substitution" is useless for it would have led in fact to the economic ruin of the community. This is why a sustainable policy for exploring natural resources must limit extraction rates to the ecosystem's recovery rates. It will be more effective and efficient from an ecological viewpoint to strengthen, for instance, the so-called economic clusters in order to limit the extraction of resources by promoting industrial and service activities that add value to the resource and promote inter-sector and personal distribution of wealth.

If the criteria just mentioned can be easily understood insofar as renewable resources (forests, marine resources, water, soil, etc.), an even more specific priority taking those into consideration is required with respect to non-renewable resources. Using Chile as a case in point, it would not be advisable to take the extraction of copper (accounting for roughly 40 percent of Chile's exports) to its limit, if perfectly suitable substitutes for all the uses of copper were available. In this instance, the country's sustainability would be partly measured by the ability to make copper production more efficient and make available reserves last longer. More important, however, what will eventually ensure the sustainability of an economy like Chile's, in this particular aspect, will be the ability to "sow copper". In other words, Chile will be sustainable in copper to the exact extent in which, for example, it is able to invest in research and development of copper substitutes (e.g., fiber optics), amounts equivalent to the investments made to improve and make the current extraction of copper more efficient and profitable. Thus, by "sowing copper", Chile will continue to develop its economy even when, in the worse scenario, the resource is exhausted.

Roberto P. Guimaraes

United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

Environment and Human Settlements Division

Biographical Sketch

B.A. in Public Administration, M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science. Permanent staff member of the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), currently at its Environment and Human Settlements Division in Santiago, Chile. Author of several publications on political development and the formulation of social and environmental policies in Latin America, including The Ecopolitics of Development in The Third World: Politics and Environment in Brazil (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, 1994). In 1991, was seconded from ECLAC to the Brazilian Government as Technical Coordinator of the Brazilian National Report for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED-92). In 1997, was seconded to the Forum of Brazilian NGOs and Social Movements as member of the technical coordinating team responsible for the preparation of the National Report to the Rio+5 Conference from Agenda to Action. Currently assigned to drafting the Regional Assessment on Progress since UNCED that will be reviewed in Rio de Janeiro on October 2002, during the Regional Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean Preparatory to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, September 2002). Postal Address: Naciones Unidas, CEPAL, Casilla 179-D, Santiago, Chile, Phone (56-2) 210-2000, Fax (56-2) 208-0252, E-mail: [email protected].

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Title Annotation:	THE POLITICS AND ETHICS OF "SUSTAINABILITY" AS A NEW PARADIGM FOR PUBLIC POLICY FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
Author:	Guimaraes, Roberto P.
Publication:	International Journal of Economic Development
Geographic Code:	1USA
Date:	Jul 1, 2001
Words:	4881
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