Chapter 1Our Common Journey

Ch 1. Contents

• Sustainable Development: Common Concerns, Differing Emphases– What Is To Be Sustained– What Is To Be Developed– The Links Between– For How Long?

• Sustainable Development: The First Decade– Environment and Development– Funds and Financing– The View from Below– Knowledge* and Know-How**

• Goals for a Sustainability Transition– Meeting Human Needs

• Providing Food and Nutrition• Nurturing Children• Finding Shelter• Providing an Education• Finding Employment

– Targets for Meeting Human Needs– Preserving Life Support Systems

• Ensuring the Quality and Supply of Fresh Water• Controlling Emissions into the Atmosphere• Protecting the Oceans• Maintaining Species and Ecosystems

– Targets for Preserving Life Support Systems– Reducing Hunger and Poverty– Targets for Reducing Hunger and Poverty

• The Transition to Sustainability as Social Learning

Key Goals and Questions

• "Sustainable development"—the reconciliation of society's developmental goals with its environmental limits over the long term

• SD attempts to reconcile the real conflicts between economy and environment and between the present and the future

• There is agreement that SD is "to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“

• However, key differences in the specific issues:1. what is to be sustained2. what is to be developed3. how should sustained and developed entities be linked4. what is the extent of the future envisioned

Development-Sustainability Consumption-Environment

• While Population growth rates continue to decline, the number of people living in poverty has increased.

• While globalization has presented new opportunities for sustainable development, the income inequality between the richest and poorest countries have all increased.

• While some countries have significantly reduced pollution and slowed resource depletion, the state of the global environment has continued to deteriorate.

Goals for a Sustainability Transition

• The approach to managing SD is partly captured in the metaphor of Compass and Gyroscope.

• Science can provide compass direction, while the gyroscope of politics can maintain some steadiness of course across often-uncharted seas.

• In light of the trends of population growth, consumption, .. and environmental stress, a sustainability transition (ST) appears necessary.

• ‘The goals of ST over the next two generations should be to meet the needs of a much larger but stabilizing human population, to sustain the life support systems of the planet, and to substantially reduce hunger and poverty’.

• Preserving life support system will include– Ensuring the Quality and Supply of Fresh Water– Controlling Emissions into the Atmosphere– Protecting the Oceans– Maintaining Species and Ecosystems

Learning, Knowledge and Know-how

• Successfully navigating the transition lies in conceptualizing sustainable development as a process of social learning and adaptive response amid turbulence and surprise.

• There is little guidance on how to identify and create the knowledge and know-how for SD.

• * Knowledge [Webster's Dict.].. the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association...or the acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique."

• ** Know-how here refers to the Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary definition, "knowledge [conveyed by expertise] of how to do something smoothly and efficiently."