THE CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: AN EVALUATION OF ITS USEFULNESS TEN YEARS AFTER BRUNDTLAND by

Few concepts appear to have captured the public and political imagination more than that of ‘sustainable development’. The concept is intended to embrace the idea of ensuring that future generations inherit an Earth which will support their livelihoods in such a way that they are no worse off than generations today. In economic terms, then, we can equate ‘development’ with increased, or at the very least, constant per capita ‘well-being’ over some time horizon. If this definition can be agreed upon then what matters is what has to be done to secure it. Significant progress has been made in clarifying the many controversial issues that have emerged since the formulation of the problem in the Brundtland Report of 1987. Hence, one decade later there have been great advances in both the theoretical aspects of desirable development and the ways in which that development might be indicated. Much of the ongoing debate has focused on the need to manage sustainably a portfolio of diverse assets and within this portfolio which assets merit ‘special attention’ with regard to the conservation of critical stocks. Many of these issues are embodied by the continuing weak versus strong sustainable development controversy. More recently, a number of additional, but in many ways familiar, concerns have been raised. In particular, there have been timely reminders of the role of technological progress in ‘taking care of the future’ and the role of social capital in the development process. The latter is particularly interesting as it motivates what many have instinctively felt regarding the implications of current social issues for sustainability. Many of these contributions, however, have yet to permeate the measurement and indicator debate. This has up to now largely been characterised by the concept of ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ national income. More recently, this accounting inform-ation has been reformulated in terms of ‘genuine’ savings the value of the aggregate change in the portfolio of assets held by an economy. Nonetheless, crucial measurement issues remain; in particular, the costs incurred by additional depreciation of many environmental assets. Nevertheless, to the extent that the scientific community can offer evidence regarding what constitute critical natural assets, the key indicators for an economy will be twofold: are stocks of critical natural assets declining? and are genuine savings rates persistently negative? A positive answer to either of these questions would be an indication of unsustainability.