Explain the concept of sustainable development. Discuss its principles of Intragenerational equity and Justice.

 The concept of sustainability first appeared in the first World Conservation Strategy published by the World Conservation United 1980. The proposed definition of sustainable development was Sustainable Development: Maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems, the preservation of genetic diversity and the sustainable utilisation of species and eco-systems.

The Brundtland Report: These early definitions emphasised the concepts of critical natural capital and biological diversity and made little or no reference to the economic and social pillars of sustainability. Seven years later, in 1987 the Brundtland Report described sustainability as:

“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Deliberately, the Brundtland definition was not very strict. Nevertheless, it introduced important key concepts that have continued to influence the use of the concept. The Brundland definition thus addresses inter-generational and development issues and builds on a recognition of the concept of limitations on the environment’s ability to met present and future needs.  Following the Brundtland Report, the term sustainable development started entering the vocabulary of policy planners and policy-makers.

Reflecting this, by the mid-1990s, the definitions of sustainable development began to involve the simultaneous pursuit of economic, social and environmental objectives. However, this move was not accompanied by criteria and guidelines on how to handle the three dimensions. Rather, a win-win approach was increasingly advocated in which all three dimensions are comprehensively integrated and trade-offs are avoided to the extent possible. The three-dimensional conceptualization thus offered various actors and institutions the opportunities for a fairly wide scope of interpretation and use of the sustainability dimensions.

As a consequence, various academic disciplines, in particular environmental economics, sought to set up more binding and measurable definitions of the sustainability concept. Traditional economic disciplines tend however to focus most on the relation between environment and economics.  Along with the development of the definition of sustainable development, procedural aspects gained prominence as well. In terms of process, sustainable development is perceived less as an ultimate outcome and more as a pathway to change.

Thereby, more emphasis is put on factors that influence decision making such as organisational culture, availability of information, the rationality of decision-making, and the use of impact assessment tools. The EU SDS is, in fact, a good example of a document with much emphasis on the procedural aspects. Groundwater is an example of renewable resources. These resources are replenished by nature as in the case of crops and plants.

However, even these resources may be overused. For example, in the case of groundwater, if we use more than what is being replenished by rain then we would be overusing this resource. Non-renewable resources are those which will get exhausted after years of use. We have a fixed stock on earth which cannot be replenished. We do discover new resources that we did not know of earlier. New sources in this way add to the stock. However, over time, even this will get exhausted. Intra-Generational Equity and Justice (Global, Regional and Country Levels)

Intra-generational equity is concerned with equity between people of the same generation. This is separate from inter-generational equity, which is about equity between present and future generations.  Intra-generational equity includes considerations of distribution of resources and justice between nations. It also includes considerations of what is fair for people within any one nation. Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change.

An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol. Post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e. within a generation.

We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions. There are various conventions for dividing up the world into groups of nations of similar wealth and degrees of industrialisation. None of them are particularly satisfactory. One way is to speak of the first world (high-income, industrialised nations with a capitalist economy), the second world (communist nations) and the third world(low income nations).

While much of the so-called second world no longer fits this category, the term ‘third world’ is still widely used. Some people divide the world into developed nations and developing nations, depending on how advanced they are towards the goal of industrialisation. But since development can have a variety of meanings, and since industrialisation is not the only possible goal of development, these terms are somewhat inadequate.

An attempt to use terms that are less political and less value-laden has involved the division of the world into north and south. Most of the affluent countries are in the northern part of the globe, including Japan, the USA, Canada and the countries that make up Europe; and most low-income countries are south of them, including those in Asia, Africa and South America. While Australia is geographically located in the southern hemisphere, it is considered to be a part of the ‘north’, which makes the division confusing.

The Greenhouse problem raises many equity issues, including the unfair distribution of the impacts of global warming, the question of which countries should remedy the situation and the distribution of impacts arising from measures taken to reduce greenhouse emissions. Even the elevation of the greenhouse warming problem above other environmental problems has come under criticism for being a manifestation of how the inte people dominate those of low-income nations. Third-world activists argue that desertification and resulting famines in Africa are neglected issues because they do not impact upon people in high-income countries the way greenhouse warming might:

“The millions of deaths in dozens of countries did not make the tragedy global, because it took place in the Third World. It remained ‘local’.

Thermometers registering a few degrees more in the United States, however, succeeded in turning climatic change into a ‘global’ issue for all the governments of the industrialised North and the entire scientific community was immediately mobilised.” More importantly, people in the less industrialised low-income countries do not feel that they should share in the costs of reducing greenhouse emissions when they have played such a minor role in creating them. Ironically, it could be some of the poorest nations that suffer the worst consequences of doing nothing.

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