SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - SOME INTERPRETATIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND USES

This paper attempts to go beyond the fashionable interpretation of sustainable development and to present, instead, an emerging third world perspective on development and its relevance to the poor and their needs. The paper seeks first to characterize the Western idea of development and to describe briefly the dominant development strategy based on the Western ideology. Then the evolution of the concept of sustainable development is traced as an outgrowth of mainstream efforts to integrate social and environmental concerns within the prevailing idea of development. With the appearance of Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), sustainable development is argued to have achieved political and scientific respectability. The fourth section describes two interpretations reflecting the anxieties and priorities of the third world on development strategy. Comparing these interpretations with the WCED framework is the subject of the fifth section. A critique of the WCED is presented in this section. -from Author