Sustainable development and the nics: Cautionary tales for the South in the New World (Dis)Order (original) (raw)

Sustainable development and t he NICS: cautionary tales f or t he South i n t he New World (Dis)Order JOHN F DEVLIN & NONITA T YAP Sustainable development has achieved wide currency as a policy objective integrating environmental and developmental concerns. It adds an environmental decision to an already politically and theoretically contested development debate. Representatives of the low-consumption countries of the South have long questioned the validity of existing distributions of economic development and have demanded some form of redistribution of assets, income and markets to redress the balance. Representatives of the high-consumption countries of the North have long resisted such pressures. In the current conditions of weak growth, increasing unemployment, large trade imbalances, mounting debt and continuing conflicts over international trading relationships there is little political space for a serious consideration of international redistribution. Now environmentalists are arguing that the levels of material consumption achieved in the high-consumption countries are not biophysically supportable and cannot be diffused more widely without potentially disastrous results. To make matters worse the linkages between environmental sustainability and economic growth are 'wicked' problems where neither behavioural nor environmental outcomes can be anticipated with any confidence.' There are deep theoretical and technical problems which make the 'facts' highly contestable. This makes the political conflicts even more difficult to resolve. Sustainable development thus presents itself not simply as one of the major challenges of the late 20th century but as a focal point for debate over many of the problems that contribute to the current era of global disorder. Sustainable development implies that some middle ground can be found which satisfies both environmental concerns and developmental aspirations. Unfortunately, as S M Lele suggests, there is no "Metafix" that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk-minimizing subsistence farmer to the equity-seeking social worker, the pollution-concerned or wildlife-loving First Worlder, the growth-maximizing policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat, and therefore, the vote-counting politician.2 The dominant neoliberal approach to sustainable development assumes that the pursuit of market efficiency and free trade can achieve the necessary balance