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Creating values for sustainable development

Over 20 years ago the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) brought together two hitherto separate global discourses, the discourse on global justice and the discourse on the growing long-term risks stemming from the scarcity of natural resources. The basic idea behind the suggested new role model, ‘sustainable development’, was quite unambiguous: societal development should allow for substantial improvements in global justice without compromising the opportunity for future generations to achieve a good life. The correlative major risks were identified from overexploitation of natural resources. Neither addressing poverty alleviation (i.e. justice) nor addressing global ecological problems was innovative in itself in the 1980s. However, merging these two global issues and bringing long-term perspectives in terms of intergenerational justice into the global mind-set was innovative and has led to a huge variety of global processes under the new umbrella term ‘sustainable development’. If we, however, examine mainstream sustainability research, we might gain a picture of sustainable development issues that seems to contradict the above statements. For a long time, research on sustainable development has been strongly focused on environmental topics. We have a huge amount of literature on water, soil, climate, biodiversity, ecotoxicology, landscapes, etc. from an environmental science perspective as well as from a technological perspective (cleaner production, more eco-efficient technologies, etc.). Moreover, we also have a huge amount of economic literature on costs and benefits, risks, how to monetarize ecological values, discounting, etc. More recently, debates on corporate sustainability or on corporate responsibility have drawn attention to both the possible and the expected contribution of business to sustainable development and to corporate responsibility to achieve a just society. Astonishing, however, social issues, particularly issues concerning justice, are not seen as major topics within sustainability research. The best evidence to support this claim stems from the fact that there is almost no mutual relation between what is known as a capability approach (Sen 1990; Nussbaum 2000) in development policy and the sustainability discourse. In particular, there are two problems that greatly indicate the need for more adequate representation of social topics within sustainability research. First, it has become generally accepted that progress in dealing with long-term environmental risks will not be exclusively achieved by technological innovations or cleaner production approaches alone. Accordingly, research has more recently started to pay attention to agents, structures, action spaces, cultural frames, and especially values, both in the sense of actionguiding settings and advantages gained from sustainable development innovations. In addition to, and in accordance with, research on governance, sustainability policy is increasingly analysed in terms of top-down and bottom-up policies (networks, grassroots, public–private initiatives, etc.), hence addressing societal agents. Moreover, concerns on justice become increasingly relevant in different fields. We not only have a worldwide discussion on fair distribution of emission rights, but justice also draws substantially on questions regarding sustainability strategies, e.g. for high wage countries in contrast to low wage countries. Second, challenges in sustainability assessment are increasingly attracting scientists for at least two reasons. On the one hand, it has become evident that even assessment of the ecological domain does not rely on a single generally accepted base. Although the four basic environmental management rules might function as a common foundation, we have different types of systems for assessing them on an empirical basis. By striving not only for environmental, but also for societal sustainability assessment, we additionally face a number of difficulties concerning social, political and other important aspects. Accordingly, there exist numerous proposals for sustainability assessment methodologies and systems.Moreover, sustainability assessment is not primarily conducted for scientific reasons, but also for practical reasons. Sustainability assessments are thought to provide information for societal agents. They should function as steering instruments for decision-making. However, they will only be able to fulfil this task if they are adjusted to the action spaces of relevant stakeholders. In other words, sustainability assessments not only face difficulties concerning assessment criteria – what type of values should be considered – but also need to be adjusted to what stakeholders are actually able to decide upon. Hence, agents, structures, action spaces, cultural frames, and especially values enter the field not only in analysis of means to achieve more sustainable societies but also within the domain of establishing tools and methods for sustainability assessments. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology Vol. 17, No. 1, February 2010, 1–3