URBP7005 Chap.1 Sustainable Development: Meaning, Pillars and Limits
Sustainable Development: Meaning, Pillars and Limits
The definition has two halves and most arguments drop one
Development is sustainable when it supplies what people need now without taking away what later generations will need.
The commission that produced that sentence names two ideas inside it: needs, with overriding priority given to the essential needs of the world's poor, and limitations, meaning the constraints that the state of technology and of social organisation place on the environment's ability to meet needs now and later.
An argument that satisfies one half and ignores the other is the commonest weak move in this subject.
The pillars are a failure diagram, not a theory
Environment, society and economy are drawn as overlapping fields precisely because any two can be satisfied while the third is not, and each pairing has a name.
A scheme can be bearable and equitable and still not viable; it can be viable and bearable and still inequitable.
Naming which overlap a proposal sits in is a cheap way to sharpen it, and it is why the course keeps asking for multi sectoral strategies rather than single sector fixes.
Where the limits are drawn, and how firmly
The planetary boundaries framework proposes a control variable for each of nine Earth system processes and sets a boundary inside a zone of uncertainty, well before the point at which the system is thought to change state.
Three processes are reported as already beyond their proposed boundary and two parameters carry no proposed boundary at all.
The framework also separates processes with global scale thresholds from slow processes that aggregate up from local and regional scale, and it is the second group, including freshwater use, land use change and biodiversity loss, where planning actually has leverage.
Means and ends
The second required reading pushes in a different direction.
Sustainability, it argues, means changing how we live so that the conditions around us, environmental and social alike, go on supporting security, wellbeing and health indefinitely. Energy efficiency, urban design and transport are means; autonomy, opportunity, security and health are the ends.
The same paper names four disciplines whose failure to talk to each other it treats as an obstacle, and urban planning sits at the intersection of all four.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The standard definition and the two commitments inside it
- 02
Needs, limitations, and why an efficiency gain settles neither
- 03
The three pillars and the names for each pairwise gap
- 04
Intergenerational and intragenerational equity
- 05
Planetary boundaries as targets placed below estimated thresholds
- 06
Global threshold processes against aggregated local processes
- 07
Threshold, target and boundary as three different objects
- 08
Sustainability as an outcome for people rather than a set of means
Separate an efficiency claim from a sustainability claim
- 2State what the efficiency figure establishes.
- 3Test the claim against the needs half of the definition.
- 3Test it against the limitations half.
Key terms
- Needs
- The first of the two commitments inside the standard definition, giving overriding priority to the essential needs of the world's poor.
- Limitations
- The second commitment inside the definition, naming the constraints that the state of technology and social organisation place on the environment's ability to meet needs.
- Planetary Boundary
- A proposed limit on a control variable for an Earth system process, set inside a zone of uncertainty and deliberately below the level at which the system is thought to change state.
- Safe Operating Space
- The region of a control variable that lies inside the proposed boundary, where an outcome does not depend on the uncertainty resolving favourably.
- Carrying Capacity
- The load an environment can bear without losing the capacity to bear it. The footprint literature redefines it as maximum load rather than maximum population.
- Threshold
- A level that should not be exceeded, usually scientifically determined and sometimes carrying regulatory status, such as an air or water quality standard.
Sustainable Development: Meaning, Pillars and Limits FAQ
Why is the definition of sustainable development criticised if everyone uses it?
The editors of the reader used in this course set out three criticisms alongside the text. It takes ordinary assumptions about continued growth as the way to better welfare; it leaves the global distribution of power largely unexamined; and it is strongly human centred, resting on a notion of needs that is hard to pin down.
Those criticisms are useful rather than fatal, because they mark the openings where a paper can say something the sources do not already say.
Does crossing a planetary boundary mean disaster is imminent?
No, and claiming so misreads the framework. A boundary is set inside a zone of uncertainty, deliberately below the level at which a system is thought to change state, so crossing it means the outcome now depends on the uncertainty resolving favourably. The framework also reports two parameters as not yet quantified, and an unquantified process is not a safe one, so silence in the table is not reassurance either.
Which planetary boundaries can a planner actually act on?
Mostly the ones classed as slow processes without known global scale thresholds, which aggregate up from local and regional scale: freshwater use, land use change, biodiversity loss and chemical pollution. Those are exactly the variables a development plan decides.
The systemic processes such as climate change and ocean acidification are rarely acted on directly by a planner, and they are also the ones with a clean global number that can be hidden behind.
Assessment move
Write the definition from memory and then annotate it: underline the needs clause, underline the limitations clause, and against each write one thing your case city could do that would satisfy it. Do the same for any proposal you meet during the term. Most of the marks available in the first block of this course come from noticing which half of the definition a piece of evidence speaks to.
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