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August 23, 2002
Rio + 10 Series: The Rhetoric of the World Summit on Sustainable Development
by William Baue
Sustainable development's amorphous definition may prove a difficult hurdle to gaining consensus on
concrete action plans at the Johannesburg Summit.
SocialFunds.com --
The various names of the upcoming United Nations Summit encapsulate the tension between the diverse
agendas that are on the table. Calling it the "Rio + 10 Summit" stresses an historical assessment
of progress and regress in the decade since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development. The "Johannesburg Summit" label orients the event geopolitically to a complex set
of associations, from the overthrow of apartheid to the diverse crises facing the world today, such
as climate change, poverty, and the AIDS epidemic. The "Earth Summit" designation suggests a
priority on the environment, while the official title, the "World Summit on Sustainable Development," introduces
the pivotal term that attempts to reconcile economic growth with environmental conservation and
social equity. This disparate nomenclature may reflect a lack of precise goals for the Summit.
Perhaps this should temper expectations for the outcome of the Summit.
 The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future,
introduced the theory of sustainable development, which seeks to meet present needs without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Semantically, the term fused
two words derived from verbs with contradictory connotations. The word "sustain" connotes
perpetuation and balance, while "develop" is a dynamic word that connotes expansion and
transformation. If the two words together cannot accommodate their paradoxical meanings, then the
term's relevance is subverted.
The Brundtland Commission, chaired by Dr. Gro Harlem
Brundtland, the first woman prime minister of Norway, coined the term by grafting capitalist
terminology onto environmental concepts. Johannesburg Summit organizers have adopted a market
vernacular to express the social and environmental goals of the Summit.
"I would describe
[sustainable development] as taking an asset management perspective to development directly," said
Summit Secretary-General Nitin Desai, who sat on the Brudtland Commission, in a recent edition of
the UN Chronicle. "As in a household or an enterprise, you would basically hope that it is
possible for you to sustain your consumption without eroding your capital. You live in a house,
you don't want that house to deteriorate. You have a garden, you don't want that garden to
deteriorate."
It can be argued that the duality of sustainable development extends the
breadth of possible interpretations to the breaking point. Environmentalists and social activists
accentuate the "sustainable" component of the term, emphasizing ecological conservation and
equitable resource distribution. The corporate community tends to focus on how free market growth
can encourage "development," though it often elides the environmental and social costs of such
expansion.
Critics of sustainable development charge that this duality allows corporations
to promote their practices as being sustainable without demonstrating so quantifiably. The United
Nations' "Building Partnerships" initiative, which is supposed to create synergies between the
public and private sectors to help solve environmental and social problems, is also criticized as
the corporate infiltration of the UN. Extending this line of reasoning, critics argue that
business has hijacked the Summit's agenda.
Ironically, the term sustainable development
implicitly assumes that development is unsustainable by definition, and must be altered or tempered
to perpetuate growth. Real progress at the Summit will require clearer definitions of sustainable
development, specific plans of action, and provision of a means for verifying performance. Only
then can the breadth of sustainable development be reigned in, removing the cloak of sustainability
from those whose actions do not match their words.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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