Mapping out fuzzy buzzwords ‒ who sits where on sustainability and sustainable development

MAPPING OUT FUZZYBUZZWORDS ± WHO SITSWHERE ON SUSTAINABILITYAND SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENT

Jason Palmer1* , Ian Cooper1, and Rita van der Vorst2

1Eclipse Research Consultants, Cambridge, UK2Imperial College Centre for Environmental Technology, London, UK

Environmentalism has spawned a newvocabulary. Even frequently used wordsare still poorly de®ned. Different groupsuse the same words to express differentideas; often de®nitions are coloured by thegroups' incompatible core value systems.This leads to fuzziness andmisunderstanding.

Such tendencies mean that a commonvocabulary does not necessarily make forbetter communication. Quite the contrary:the use of fuzzy buzzwords preventsdifferent groups from working together tode®ne a shared agenda. Terms like`sustainable development' and`sustainability' are widely used but rarelyde®ned by consensus. They succeed insustaining dialogue but bring with itconfusion.

Here, the constituent elements ofsustainable development are mappedgraphically using the principles said tounderlie the concept. This not only has theadvantage of visually discriminatingbetween so-called weak and strong forms

of sustainability but it also opens up thepossibility of comparing and contrastingother formulations. # 1997 by John Wiley& Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Sust. Dev. 5: 87±93, 1997

No. of Figures: 2. No. of Tables: 0.No. of References: 32.

VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainable development is one of a dozen keyconcerns for researchers and policy makers toemerge over the last decade. Whilst its most

widely cited meaning is `meeting the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability of futuregenerations to meet their own needs' (WCED, 1987),the term has evolved in several directions toencompass the concerns of people working in awide range of disciplines: from sociology to engi-neering, geology to mathematics.

The term was originally coined to pinpoint the(sometimes) con¯icting objectives of economicdevelopment and environmental protection. DavidPearce (1989) believed `sustainable development' tobe an oxymoron; that development as currentlyde®ned contradicts sustainable existence. This hasprompted some commentators to revert back to theoriginal term `sustainability' instead. Yet, while thechoice of label between sustainability and sustain-able development sometimes gives a clue as to thelikely viewpoint of the commentator, this is notalways the case: some people use the terms as per-

* Correspondence to: Jason Palmer, Eclipse Research Consultants,The Eden Centre, 47 City Road, Cambridge, CB1 1DP.

CCC 0968-0802/97/020087±07 $17.50# 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

Sustainable Development, Vol. 5, 87±93 (1997)

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

fect synonyms. So, for the sake of convenience, inthis analysis the two terms are examined together.

In much current usage, sustainability and sus-tainable development are fuzzy buzzwords: termsthat appear to encapsulate a discrete notion butwhich actually have multiple interpretations. Sus-tainability has come to mean different things todifferent people yet appears to unite them underwhat is actually a (falsely) shared banner. Likehappiness, it is something everyone wants, butprecisely what it encompasses varies betweenindividuals, and even changes over time.

The time frames for reaching a sustainable societyare rarely de®ned. However Ekins (1993) provideda pointer: because of the predicted doubling ofglobal population, he said that humanity mustreduce its consumption by 75% by 2030 to becomesustainable. Friends of the Earth (FoE Scotland,1995: p. 5) is another exception. They set an ambi-tious target:

Sustainability should be achieved by theyear 2050.

Yet the Brundtland Report's emphasis oninter-generational inheritance suggests that the ideawas ®rst conceived to operate over a very longperiod. This is still implicit in most contemporarydiscussion of sustainability and sustainable devel-opment.

Sustainable development, when used by policy-makers and ambitious (or ill-informed) organisa-tions as part of a `greening' initiative, conveys thenotion of trying to maximise economic wealth,while ensuring that exploitation of environmentalresources does not translate into a lower overallstandard of living (however measured). This is notonly a human-centred viewpoint but is also basedon the assumption that quality of life is inextricablytied to wealth creation and consumption. Thewealth and resources available to future generationsare given special concern. In most cases the `devel-opment' side dominates the equation. The `sus-tainable' quali®er only comes into play whenresource shortages or the side effects of consump-tion pose a threat to the economy or health. Thisconception of sustainable development is madeexplicit in the phrase sustainable economic growth (forexample, Bartelmus, 1994: p. 69).

Gordon Mitchell et al. (1995) have identi®ed fourmain components, or principles, that underlie sus-tainability in the literature, see Figure 1. This is theframework for analysis which we use here. Natu-rally, because of the holistic nature of sustainabilityissues, the four principles are very closely inter-

linked. The arrows of the chart re¯ect that eachcomponent inter-relates with all others.

RESOURCE-BASED SUSTAINABILITY

Futurity

In view of the original `Brundtland' de®nition ofsustainable development (WCED, 1987), we wouldanticipate that early work in the ®eld should focuson futurity, the notion that present generationsshould leave to the future the ability to maintainpresent standards of living. Some schools ofthought, notably the UK government, hang on tothis principle without picking up the newer asso-ciations of the term.

The UK government has adopted the term sus-tainable development enthusiastically, even to theextent of publishing a strategy document (DoE,1994a) looking at the challenges we face over thenext 20 years, but the government (DoE, 1994b: p. 8)is clear that:

sustainable development does not meanhaving less economic development: on thecontrary, a healthy economy is better able togenerate the resources to meet people'sneeds.

The government line on sustainability embraces(ibid.):

� human health

� conserving natural resources

� scienti®c (and risk) analysis

Figure 1. The principles underlying sustainable devel-opment (adapted from Cooper, 1995)

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88 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

SUST. DEV. VOL. 5: 87±93, 1997 # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

� precautionary action

� consideration of ecological impacts, and

� the `polluter pays' principle.

While the solutions proposed in the strategycentre on ways of improving the ef®ciency withwhich we use resources, and at the same minimis-ing the waste society generates and leaves for futuregenerations to deal with. That is, the emphasis is onfuturity, with environment in softer focus; equity andparticipation are out of the picture.

This emphasis on the future is ironic, giventhat governments have been heavily criticised(for example, by Johnson, 1991: p. 299) for takinga short-term stance on environmental issues. Per-haps the real achievement of the debate aboutsustainable development will be in extending gov-ernment horizons beyond the next general election.

Plus Environment

The ecology movement has been concernedabout sustainability for longer than other groups(Tisdell, 1993: Ch. 10). One of its greatest victorieshas been to begin to draw this frameworkfor environmental improvement into the portfoliosof policy makers and the business community.Yet unlike these groups, the ecology movementhas historically assigned more weight to theintegrity of eco-systems than to worrying aboutfuture (or indeed present) human generations.Typically, when ecologists use the term sustain-ability, they avoid using a human-centred frame ofreference.

This ecological perspective has been distortedas their vocabulary has been adopted andmoved into government and business circles (Pal-mer and van der Vorst, 1996). As outlined above,the UK government has adopted a much narrowerview of sustainable development. In the past, theyhave been guided by David Pearce to see it aseconomic growth that does not deplete natural`capital assets' (Bowring, 1994). This economicsorientation is not foremost in ecologists' minds.Indeed, the UK Department of the Environment'sde®nition only meshes with part of the older sug-gestion, from the World Conservation Strategy(IUCN, 1980), that sustainable economic develop-ment requires:

(1) maintenance of essential ecological processes(2) preservation of genetic diversity, and(3) sustainable utilisation of species and eco-

systems.

The overlap here is in the futurity principle:`maintenance . . . , preservation . . . , sustainable . . . ' allimply concern for the well-being of future genera-tions. Moreover, there is little to split `sustainableutilisation' from `resource management'. Yet theIUCN failed to club together futurity and environ-ment in a manner that would satisfy rigorousenvironmental and ecological requirements. Geneticdiversity and ecological processes are not `resour-ces' in the conventional sense of the word, nor canthey be `managed' in the same way.

Although the IUCN con®ned their requirementsto purely environmental factors, they providedfootholds for governments and others whose®rst priority is the economy. Tisdell (1993) hasenlarged these footholds by making explicit, andemphasising, the economic orientation. Thisemphasis, along with his omission of geneticdiversity, dilutes the environment component stillfurther in his perspective on sustainability. Heasserted that genuine sustainable economic devel-opment requires:

(1) sustainable ecological systems (on which eco-nomic production is based)

(2) sustainable patterns of economic exchange, and(3) sustainable utilisation of species and eco-sys-

tems.

This appears to match the government's view, but issharply differentiated from that of ecologists.

As Rob Gray has pointed out (1994: pp. 14±15),some elements of sustainability are at odds withcurrent business and accounting orthodoxy. Inparticular, the social side of sustainability, equity andparticipation, are not key business concerns and theyare hardly ever addressed in current industryattempts at improving environmental performance.Indeed, among the low numbers of leading edgeorganisations that have published environmentalreports, few even mention sustainability or sus-tainable development. One exception to this isThorn EMI. This group of companies were recog-nised by the Chartered Association of Certi®edAccountants (ACCA, 1995; 1996) as having the bestreporting mechanism in use two years running.

The company's 1995 environmental report (ThornEMI, 1995) has added even more improvements inthis direction. It opened with a statement from thechairman saying that the group aims to `demon-strate how [its] operations can be conducted moresustainably'. He also recognised that in order tocover ground towards sustainability, the businesscommunity needs `the incentive of a high level ofpublic and governmental commitment'.

MAPPING OUT FUZZY BUZZWORDS

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 89

# 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. SUST. DEV. VOL. 5: 87±93, 1997

The report de®ned policy principles for incor-poration in the operating companies' environmentalpolicies. In addition to the ubiquitous referencesto legislation, communication, energy and wasteminimisation was one more innovative commit-ment (p. 36):

to `develop, design and operate facilitiestaking into account . . . the sustainable useof renewable resources . . . '.

The report also contained wide-ranging environ-mental performance data and detailed objectivesand targets for improvement. Yet even this jewel inthe crown of UK environmental reporting failed tomake explicit a commitment to futurity, there wereholes in its treatment of the environment component,and it completely failed to address the two otherprinciples underlying the sustainability agenda,equity and public participation.

THE SOCIO-TECHNICAL SIDE OFSUSTAINABILITY

In addition to the widely accepted inclusion ofresource-based components in sustainability andsustainable development, some groups now use theterms to encompass broader, social aspects also.

Futurity plus environment plus equity

Thus Friends of the Earth Scotland (1995: p. 5), forexample, have added to concerns about environ-mental quality and the resources available to futuregenerations a concern for equity:

If there is a ®nite amount that we mayconsume or use beyond which we cannotgo . . . then we must share what we alreadyhave far more than is currently the case.Equality of access to the world's globalresources therefore must be the guidingprinciple.

Strong and weak sustainability

Daly and Cobb (1989) have used social concerns likethis to highlight another sharp division in perspec-tives on sustainability. They differentiated betweenstrong and weak sustainability ethics. Here thestrong sustainability ethic dictates that a society isonly sustainable if quality of life is equally dis-tributed among all people, and if the biosphere isnot over-exploited by people as a resource. The

weak ethic, on the other hand, allows for individualopportunity, and permits the use of the biospherefor the good of society (Mitchell, 1994: pp. 6-7).Thus weak sustainability excludes resource degra-dation and inter-generational equity; it is concernedonly with `environment' principle of sustainabledevelopment. Proponents of weak sustainabilitytypically have greater faith in technology for pro-viding solutions (for example, Faucheux andO'Conner, 1995). In addition, they rarely distinguishbetween human-made capital, and natural capital.

Faucheux and O'Conner (1995: p. 2) said thattechnology was at the root of divisions between thestrong and weak sustainability perspectives:

The con¯ict between advocates of weaksustainability and of strong sustainability isfounded . . . on a divergence in the con-®dence placed in technical change.

Science and technology are often considered to bethe primary factors shaping society in the post-industrial age. A clear expression of this view is theUK Engineering and Physical Science ResearchCouncil's Clean Technology Initiative (CTU, 1994).Technology is seen to be capable of providingsolutions to environmental and other resource-based sustainability problems. According to thisview, new resources will be found to replace thosethat are exhausted, new methods of energy gen-eration will remove human dependency on fossilfuels, and cleaner methods of production willresolve problems of pollution. Technological inno-vation will save the day and the planet. Futuresociety will be similar to today's, but more techno-logically advanced, and the historical pattern ofeconomic growth since the industrial revolution willcontinue.

Some see technological change as a way intoindustrial ecology: mirroring natural processeswhere all the wastes from one organism becomeraw materials for others. Indeed, were such a re-design of production possible, it would side-stepmany of the problems of pollution and waste. Sadly,this will not solve problems on the energy side ofthe equation. As Jackson (1996) observed, we sharewith the non-human world the thermodynamicconstraints which make it unsustainable to usemore energy than what we can collect from the sun.However, unlike our non-human counterparts, ourpresent industrial system avoids these constraintsby relying on fossil fuel resources. To move industryaway from fossil fuel dependency, towards renew-able fuels, is seen as inconceivable from today'sstarting point.

J. PALMER ET AL.



Technological innovation may also be seen as away to resolve environmental problems, if it isaccompanied by changes in ways of living thataddress broader social problems and issues offuturity. In some situations, as Faucheux andO'Conner (1995: p. 14) noted, `Social or organisa-tional changes should precede and anticipate majortechnical change . . . '. Alternatively, technologicalinnovation may simply be viewed as a stop-gap, asa means of helping us manage the transition into anew socio-economic pattern, one that is moreresource ef®cient than at present. This is a view thathas underpinned UK energy policy since at least themid 1970s (Cooper, 1982).

Gray (1994 p. 14) and Stone (1994: pp. 3-5) sharedwith Daly and Cobb the strong sustainability per-spective, though they reformulated its components.They divided sustainability into two dimensions:

� eco-ef®ciency (`not demanding more from theplanet than it can provide in the long-term,using the world's resources ef®ciently, within itscarrying capacity'), and

� eco-justice (`recognising both inter-generationaland intra-generational fairness in the use anddistribution of resources').

Their phrase `eco-ef®ciency', which maps per-fectly on to von WeisaÈcker's notion of ef®ciency(above) meets the environment principle under-pinning sustainable development, while `eco justice'welds together both futurity and equity.

Mitchell (1994) felt that the range of differentlevels of equity and quality of life across the sus-tainability spectrum vary according to ethics andthat, ultimately, `whether we want a weakly orstrongly sustainable society is decided through thepolitical system'.

Plus public participation

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Develop-ment (UNCED, 1992) outlined wide-ranging prin-ciples aimed at ensuring sustainable development.It recognised each of the previously discussedprinciples, futurity, environment and equity, andadded a fourth: concern that the public should beaware of, and participate in, the process of change.Thus Principle 10 of the Declaration stated (ibid.:p. 10):

Environmental issues are best handledwith the participation of all concernedcitizens . . . each individual shouldhave . . . [information], and the opportunityto participate in decision-making processes.

This additional social aspect of sustainability iscritical to ensuring widespread support for theprocess of change (see Palmer and Cooper, 1995),and making sure that the way society develops inthe future is acceptable, and hence sustainable, forall members of a society and not just those who canmanipulate the global or local political system mosteffectively.

Many UK local authorities have accepted and areattempting to act on this wider de®nition of sus-tainability (UNA-UK SDU/CDF, 1995: p. 22).Moreover, prompted into action by Local Agenda21, they are running with the principle of publicparticipation. Their ®rst steps towards change havecentred on consulting with their populations tobuild a consensus for community action (ibid.).

MAPPING COMMITMENT

As this brief review has made clear, different groupsaspire to and put widely differing emphases uponthe four principles which Mitchell et al. have iden-ti®ed as underpinning sustainable development:

� futurity� environment� equity, and� public participation.

Applying these principles is helpful when tryingto situate where particular groups or individualsstand on sustainability issues (after Cooper, 1995).We have mapped their relationship to these princi-ples graphically below, in Figure 2.

The multitude of competing de®nitions for sus-tainable development goes some way towardsexplaining the term's attraction for the widely dif-fering groups and individuals cited above. Theprecise meaning of the term is still contestedground, still worth ®ghting over. As Pezzey com-mented seven years ago (Pezzey, 1989: p. 1),

a large selection of quotations from recentwriting on sustainability shows that there isno agreement on what exactly sustain-ability means. This fuzziness is useful inforging a consensus to promote sustainabledevelopment . . . .

The critical point to draw from the analysis pre-sented in this paper is that, as the meaning of sus-tainability has changed over time, it has broadened.Some groups have been slow, or are unwilling, toadapt to the newer, wider interpretation. Some maywish to keep running with their original inter-




pretation because it suits their own, more circum-scribed, purposes better. But this lack of consensusleads to confusion and is a real barrier to inter-group dialogue.

One solution, we suggest, is for all those withsomething to offer the continuing debate aboutsustainability to make explicit where they stand inrelation to the four principles that underpin theterm. One way for them to do so is by identifyingwhere they currently ®t on our sustainability chart,(see Cooper, 1996).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is supported by a Parnaby DoctoralStudentship from the EPSRC. The authors aregrateful to the Centre for Environmental Strategy atthe University of Surrey and to other researchers onthe Engineering Doctorate (Environmental Tech-nology) Programme for hosting and participating ina workshop held early in the paper's gestation. Wewould also like to thank Sebastian Macmillan for hissupport and guidance, and Steve Platt for inspiringFigure 2.

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Figure 2. Charts mapping different kinds of commitment to sustainability.

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BIOGRAPHY

Jason Palmer works as part of Eclipse Research Con-sultants and is pursuing an industrially-based Engineer-ing Doctorate through Brunel University. The core of hisresearch focuses on techniques for improving smallorganisations' environmental performance.

Ian Cooper is a partner in Eclipse Research Consultantsand currently visiting professor to the Research andGraduate Centre at Salford University. Eclipse keeps awatching brief on the expansion of `green consciousness'in both the private and public sectors in the UK and isparticularly interested in mapping convergence/diver-gence between leading edge exponents of environmentalmanagement and sustainable development.

Rita van der Vorst recently departed Brunel University totake up a position in Imperial College's Centre forEnvironmental Technology. Her research interests cover abroad range of environmental issues and include: envir-onmental management, life cycle planning, engineeringeducation and continuing professional development.

Jason Palmer and Ian Cooper,Eclipse Research Consultants,The Eden Centre, 47 City Road,Cambridge CB1 1DP.Tel. 01223 351 485Fax. 01223 351 487.

Rita van der Vorst,Centre for Environmental Technology,Imperial College,48 Prince's Gardens,London SW7 2PE.Tel. 0171 589 5111Fax. 0171 581 0245.




Mapping out fuzzy buzzwords ‒ who sits where on sustainability and sustainable development

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