Abstract
The terms 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' have been
widely used in the context of environmental issues since the 1987
Brundtland Report, but there has been controversy about what they
mean, if anything. This thesis examines how a concept like sustainability
is used to attempt to change the world and how, conversely, its meaning
is changed by the political context in which it is used. Some people have
seen sustainable development as an attempt to co-opt environmentalist
concerns, rather than a genuine shift in approach.
This thesis examines the contemporary debate about sustainability and its
historical origins in wider concerns about Progress that have been present
since the beginning of the modern age at the end of the eighteenth
century, but were largely dormant from the middle of the nineteenth
century until the 1970s. Following a review of literature, many of the key
players in the debates of the last twenty years were personally
interviewed. Sustainability is shown to be a concept coined by
environmentalists in the 1970s to counter criticism that concern about
the environment was unimportant relative to social problems like
poverty. It also had the advantage that it placed opponents of
environmentalism on the rhetorical defensive.
The thesis explores the sharp debates in recent years as environmentalists
and economists have struggled for control of the concept. It shows how
adoption of the concept of sustainability requires a rethinking of the
utilitarian philosophy that has been the ethical basis for economic theory
to date. It also shows that environmentalists have retreated from
simplistic neo-Malthusian thinking about economic growth.
The uptake of the idea of sustainability is seen as marking a loss of
confidence in the modern age's identification of Progress with crude
domination of nature. There is growing acceptance of the idea of physical
limits in view of the increasing evidence. Paradoxically, the concept of
sustainability is based on criticism of modernity's approach to nature but
retains modernity's optimism about the rational control of society. The
recent collapse of confidence in socialism has underlined scepticism
about that aspect of modernity just as much as the environmental crisis
has undermined its goal of the domination of nature.
