Unit 2: Emergence of sustainable

development

Lecture 5:Sustainability emerging

1970’s Doomsday syndrome
UN Conference on the Human
Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972

• Damage that pollution from other European countries was doing to

their lakes

• Developing country governments: argued that the environments of

people in the developing world were blighted by poverty
Indira Gandhi’s
speech
• The only Prime Minister to address the first UN
Conference on the Human Environment at
Stockholm in June 1972
• Her speech a milestone in the global
environmental discourse
• Three cabinet ministers accompanied the prime
minister—Karan Singh; C. Subramaniam, the
minister of planning and science and technology;
and I.K. Gujral, the minister of works and
housing.
‛Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? The environment
cannot be improved in conditions of poverty. Nor can poverty be
eradicated without the use of science and technology. For instance,
unless we are in a position to provide for the daily necessities of tribal
people and those who live in and around our jungles, we cannot keep
them from combing the forests for their livelihood, from poaching and
despoiling the vegetation. When they themselves feel deprived, how
can we urge the preservation of animals?’

It was an over-simplification to blame all the world’s problems on

over-population. Countries with a small fraction of the world’s
population consume the bulk of natural resources […]
Results of the
conference
• Placed environmental problems on the
international agenda for the first time
• Establishment of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP)
• First executive director Maurice Strong,
the Canadian who had chaired the
Stockholm Conference.
• ‘ecodevelopment’ as a way of verbally
reconciling the desire for development
and environmental protection
 Appropriate technology
• concern about pollution and depletion of natural
resources to development issues.
• conventional development promoted islands of
modernity in the cities, while doing nothing for the
vast majority in the countryside.
• Development projects were dependent on
imported technology and experts.
• Solution was rural development that would be on a
‘human scale’, based on ‘appropriate technology’.
• Small-scale technology that could be understood
and controlled by ordinary people, rather than
dependent on experts.
• Ecodevelopment’s link with Schumacherian views
 The concept of a ‘sustainable society’- 1974
• Study Conference on Science and Technology for Human Development of the World
Council of Churches
• First, social stability cannot be obtained without an equitable distribution of what is in
scarce supply or without common opportunity to participate in social decisions.
• Second, society will not be sustainable unless the need for food is at any time well below
the global capacity to supply it and unless the emissions of pollutants are well below the
capacity of the ecosystems to absorb them.
• Third, the new social organization will be sustainable only as long as the use of non-
renewable resources does not out-run the increase in resources made available through
technological innovation.
• Finally, a sustainable society requires a level of human activities which is not adversely
influenced frequent natural variations in global climate.
• Equitable distribution, democratic participation, physical sustainability used today.
• ‘a just, participatory and sustainable society’- slogan
‘Sustainable development’ emerged in the
World Conservation Strategy of 1980
• IUCN
• Sustainable development : integration of conservation and development to
ensure that modifications to the planet do indeed secure the survival and
well-being of all people
• Development was defined as ‘the modification of the biosphere and the
application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy
human needs and improve the quality of human life’
• Development had to be combined with conservation, which was defined as
‘the management of human use of the biosphere so that it may yield the
greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining its
potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations’
World Conservation Strategy
• Emphasized the importance of incorporating conservation into
development planning
• Causes of habitat destruction as poverty, population pressure, social
inequity and terms of trade that worked against poorer countries.
• Northern environmentalists concern for habitat conservation
• Did not discuss political and economic changes that would be needed
to bring about the goal of sustainable development
1983, the UN General Assembly set up the
World Commission on the Environment and
Development (WCED)

Report in 1987
Sustainable development
Many present development trends leave increasing numbers of people
poor and vulnerable, while at the same time degrading the
environment. How can such development serve next century’s world of
twice as many people relying on the same environment? This
realization broadened our view of development.

We came to see that a new development path was required, one that
sustained human progress not just in a few places for a few years, but
for the entire planet into the distant future
The definition….
Both simple and vague
• Imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the state
of technology and social organization and by the ability of the
biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities.
• But technology and social organization can be both managed and
improved to make way for anew era of economic growth.
Equity
Meeting essential needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations in which the
majority are poor, but an assurance that those poor get their fair share of the resources required
to sustain that growth.

Such equity would be aided by political systems that secure effective citizen participation in
decision making and by greater democracy in international decision making.

Sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles
within the planet’s ecological means – in their use of energy, for example. Further, rapidly
growing populations can increase the pressure on resources and slow any rise in living standards;
thus sustainable development can only be pursued if population size and growth are in harmony
with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.

Sustainable development must rest on political will

Equity both between and within generations
• ‘Even the narrow notion of physical sustainability implies a concern
for social equity between generations, a concern that must logically
be extended to equity within each generation.’
Why was the Brundtland report so
influential?
• Not very intellectually innovative, but politically innovative

• How to reconcile concern for environmental protection with the desire

for economic development in the South and economic growth in the
North?

• Drew on thinking in environmental economics and argued that there was

a mutual interlinkage between the economy and the environment. A
healthy economy required a healthy environment:
Poverty-environment nexus
Healthy environment was not possible in a world marked by the
existence of extreme poverty.
Extreme poverty often forced people to practise environmentally
destructive activities as a desperate means of ensuring short-term
survival necessary but not sufficient.
Condition for the elimination of absolute poverty is a relatively rapid
rise in per capita incomes in the Third World.
Unintended consequences of some forms of
economic growth
• Economic growth has led to improvements in living standards, it has
sometimes been achieved in ways which are globally damaging in the
longer term. Much of the improvement in the past has been based on
the use of increasing amounts of raw materials, energy, chemicals and
synthetics and are not adequately accounted for in figuring the costs
of production processes.
Inconsistencies
• it is critical of the way that income as currently measured fails to take
account of the depletion of natural capital, but uses current measures
of GNP growth as real measures of increasing income.

• Raising living standards in the South requires growth in GNP per capita
of at least 3 per cent. For enough capital to be available, the economies
of the North must grow at a minimum of 3–4 per cent a year.

• Equity between North and South

 What sustainable development would mean for
the North?

Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential,

and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places
where such needs are not being met. Elsewhere, it can be consistent with
economic growth, provided the content of growth reflects the broad
principles of sustainability and non-exploitation of others… Hence
sustainable development requires that societies meet human needs both by
increasing productive potential and by ensuring equitable opportunities for
all.
Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond
which lies ecological disaster. Different limits hold for the use of energy,
materials, water, land. Many of these will manifest themselves in the form of
rising costs and diminishing returns, rather than in the form of any sudden
loss of a resource base. The accumulation of knowledge and the
development of technology can enhance the carrying capacity of the
resource base. But ultimate limits there are, and sustainability requires that
long before these are reached, the world must ensure equitable access to the
constrained resource and reorient technological efforts to relieve the
Pressure.
Question of consumption
• little careful in its formulations on the issue of consumption
• need to maintain consensus among members of the Commission.
• Northern members had been wary of a more explicit discussion of the
consumption issue.
Why was it appealing to all?
• Environmentalists- accepted the idea of environmental limits.

• Governments and industry could accept the idea of environmental

limits because these limits were not seen in the report as a brake on
economic development or growth ( ‘ecological modernization’)
‘It’s a very attractive message. You can have your cake and eat it too,
there’s not a conflict… But it’s a very tricky message because I think it
was jumped on by all sorts of politicians who didn’t like confronting
people with choices or trade-offs and wanted to pretend they could
have everything’
In the right place at the
right time

• Post Cold War: environmental

problems became seen as a new
global threat to survival.
• 1985 ozone hole in Antarctica
• Chernobyl nuclear accident in
1986 and radioactive fallout
across Europe
Global South
• Dismiss environmental concern as merely a Western or ‘bourgeois’
luxury.

• By emphasizing the connections between the environment and

economic development, the Brundtland report forced governments
and international agencies such as the World Bank to begin to think
and talk about the issues
From Rio to Kyoto
Earth summit-1992

• largest international
conference with over a
hundred heads of
government
• global concern about the
environmental and
development crises
Maurice Strong’s agenda
1. Conventions on climate, biodiversity and forests;
2. an Earth Charter;
3. Agenda 21, a global action plan outlining the sustainable
development priorities for the 21st century;
4. an agreement on new financial resources to implement Agenda 21,
5. progress on agreements to transfer environmentally sound
technologies from North to South; and
6. a strengthening of UN institutions, including an Earth Council
1. The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)

• 1990 report of the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change (IPCC)
• if carbon dioxide emissions continued to
rise, a global average temperature rise of
1.5–4.5°C could be expected over the next
century
• 60 per cent reduction should take place by
2040 to avoid dangerously rapid climate
change
• Inspired by 1987 Montreal Protocol
Climate change
• Governments of industrialized countries would set a target to return
carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2000, while there would be
no target for Southern countries.
• US refused to accept a binding target even for stabilizing carbon dioxide
emissions, saying that it would be economically damaging.
• President Bush said: ‘The American way of life is not up for negotiation’
• No binding targets or dates, although it indicated that a first step would
be for industrialized countries (the ‘Annex 1’ countries in the
convention) to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by 2000
 •The conservation of biological
Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020. diversity
•The sustainable use of the
components of biological diversity
•The fair and equitable sharing of the
benefits arising out of the utilization of
genetic resources

COP-10 at Nagoya
2. The Convention on Biological Diversity

• Countries have ‘sovereign rights’ over biological resources in their

territory, which should be shared internationally on mutually agreed
terms. These terms included recognition of indigenous knowledge as
intellectual property due royalties
• Countries which signed the convention had to develop plans to
protect biodiversity and submit information on them.
• no international action plan for the preservation of biodiversity.
• US refused to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity.
3. The Statement on Forest Principles
• Western countries concerned about tropical deforestation
• Countries with tropical forests, particularly Brazil, regarded the idea of
international intervention in their use of forests as intolerable.
• A document based on the lowest common denominator was agreed,
emphasizing national sovereignty over forests.
4. The Rio Declaration on Environment
and Development (Earth charter)
• The first principle ‘Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable
development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with
nature
• The second principle affirmed the sovereign right of states to exploit resources
according to their own environmental and development policies.
• The third principle asserts the ‘right to development’
• The fourth principle makes environmental protection ‘an integral part of the
development process’
• Precautionary principle (Principle 15) and the ‘polluter pays’ principle (Principle 16).
• Rio Declaration emphasized development and national sovereignty, while the
Stockholm Declaration had emphasized environmental protection and international
cooperation
Agenda 21
• Framework of action for achieving sustainable development
• bottom-up approach, emphasizing the role of citizens (particularly
women), communities and non-governmental organizations
participation
• emphasizes the role of the market, trade and business in bringing
about sustainable development (death of socialism)
• Missing- consumption patterns, population, international debt and
militarism.
• Population growth, had to be called ‘Demographic Dynamics and
Sustainability’.
• The growth of world population and production combined with
unsustainable consumption patterns places increasingly severe
stress on the life-supporting capacities of our planet
 • Agenda 21 cost US$600 billion a year, of
which about US$125 billion a year should
be aid from industrialized countries.
• Equivalent to the unmet UN target for
official development aid of 0.7 per cent of
GNP
• eventually came up with US$2 billion over
three years, directed through the World
Bank-controlled Global Environment
Facility
• about 0.5 per cent of the sum asked for
• Agenda 21 failed because it was perceived
as too expensive
• Fact: US$600 billion is only about half of

Finance?
what the world spends on
environmentally damaging perverse
subsidies each year.
The Commission on Sustainable
Development
• implementation of Agenda 21 was to be overseen by the Commission
on Sustainable Development

• The CSD is one of many subcommittees that report to the UN

Committee on Economic and Social Affairs (ECOSOC)
The South at UNCED
• failure because the funds and technology transfer they had hoped for from Agenda
21 did not materialize

• Two strategic considerations should guide the South’s negotiating position… (a)
ensuring that the South has adequate ‘environmental space’ for its future
development, and (b) restructuring global economic relations in such a way that the
South obtains the required resources, technology, and access to markets…

• Issues on which the South should receive firm commitment from the North are: (i)
debt relief; (ii) increased ODA [official development aid], (iii) access to international
liquidity; (iv) stabilisation and raising of commodity prices; and (v) access to markets
in the North
Debt crisis
• South was making larger debt repayments than it was receiving in aid
and loans: Poor subsidizing rich.
• Cuts in education and health meant that for South, the 1980s were a
‘lost decade’ for development
• Pressure for exports to pay the debt encouraged the unsustainable
exploitation of the environment
• With the idea of ‘environmental space’ they found a bargaining chip to
get a better deal
• Greenmail: threaten to destroy their own environments with
unsustainable development
The North
• the three conventions negotiated at UNCED were all dealing with
issues that the North was more concerned about than the South
• dominated by concern about global environmental issues.
• Desertification (African countries) only in 1994
Business Council for Sustainable
Development
• Swiss billionaire Stephen Schmidheiny
• Total Quality Management (TQM): revision of the business approach to the
environment.
• TQM focuses on the customer and the idea of looking at the overall production
process from a product’s conception until it ends up at the customer.
• low quality is a sign of organizational inefficiency and so is pollution
• Environmental efficiency built into the production process from the start.
• Business should regulate itself to avoid government intervention which would
ultimately be more rigid and less efficient.
• Economic instruments, like ecotaxes, over more rigid regulation.
Rio+5 and Rio+10
• 1997 ‘Earth Summit II’ met in New York: no progress
• World Summit on Sustainable Development Johannesburg in 2002
• Target to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by
2015.
• Countries were urged to stop overfishing by 2015 and establish
marine protected areas by 2012.
• A non-binding aspiration to significantly reduce the rate of loss of
biodiversity by 2010 was agreed
World trade
• World Trade Organization (WTO): international free trade tends to
encourage a lowering of environmental standards for short-term
competitive advantage, greater environmental impacts from transport

WTO- countries cannot discriminate against imported products on the

basis of the way in which they were produced
Shrimp turtle case

• India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand brought

a joint complaint against a ban imposed by the
US on the import of certain shrimp and shrimp
products
• had to impose on their fishermen
requirements (Turtle excluder devices)
comparable to those borne by US shrimpers if
they wanted to be certified to export shrimp
products to the US
• WTO ruled against US
• developed countries did agree to discuss
phasing out agricultural subsidies and reducing
fishing subsidies
US influence
• Biodiversity convention was not ratified in Senate
• first Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on
Climate Change (COP-1), held in Berlin in 1995, the Americans
continued to oppose binding targets or timetables
• Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Norway and US- JUSSCANNZ
• could not be expected to agree to binding targets while emissions
from Southern countries were uncontrolled
COP-1 Berlin (1995)
• Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)- 20 per cent reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions from industrialized countries by 2005.

• In 1992, it had been thought that stabilizing emissions by 2000 would not
require much effort : Shift to natural gas in UK, merging of Germany, fall
of Soviet bloc etc..

• ‘Berlin Mandate: protocol or some other legal instrument containing

commitments beyond 2000, set targets for the reduction of greenhouse
gas emissions by ‘Annex 1’ (industrialized) countries.
COP-2 Geneva (1996)
• Clinton administration accepted these findings and changed
• Position to accept the principle of binding targets, other JUSSCANZ
also except Australia.
• 1995 Second Assessment Report of the IPCC
• Warming of 0.5°C over the past century, mostly since 1980
• Pattern of warming indicated that it was huma induced rather than
natural.
• They predicted a warming of 1.5–3.5°C over the next century
 COP-3 , The Kyoto protocol , 1997….(i)
To establish a legally binding agreement among the
What was its objective ? participating countries to reduce GHG emissions

Adopted in Dec 1997 and came into effect in 2005

When did it come into
effect?
As of Dec 2011, 191 countries have signed and
ratified the protocol ;the only signatory not to have
What has been the ratified is the U.S.A
participation ? 37 ‘Annex I’ or rich countries have committed to a
5.2% reduction of 4 GHGs below their 1990 levels by
2012 and 80 % reduction by 2050
Common but differentiated responsibility:
developed countries must bear the major
responsibility on the basis of historical cumulated
What does it require ? emissions ; Developing countries must therefore be
allowed to continue to be net emitters

49
 The Kyoto protocol , 1997
International Emissions Trading, Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation are
Flexible mechanisms for three vehicles for emission reduction and
avoidance ; Of these, CDM is targeted at developing
meeting targets countries with the objective of catalyzing
investments in clean technologies

Keeping the economic needs of developing countries

How are developing in mind, they are exempt from emission targets.
Economic principle countries’ needs Adaptation fund set up to minimize impact on
that carbon should be addressed ? developing countries
mitigated where it is
least expensive The protocol is under the aegis of the UN
How is the protocol Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC) which has
administered ? set up mechanisms for accounting, review and audit
EU insisted that joint
implementation should be
Are the targets aligned As per IPCC, the Kyoto targets are not aligned with
‘supplemental’ to domestic the 450 ppm peak target but are aligned with
action. with the underlying around 550 ppm. 450 ppm is the maximum limit if
science ? the planet has to stay within 2 deg rise in temp*
50
No. of CDM projects in India (2016)
Uncertainties with carbon • Difficulties to quantify and ensure a
long-term monitoring of the carbon
sequestered in forest ecosystems
sinks • Carbon uptake in terrestrial ecosystems
is inadequately measured
• Carbon accidentally re-emitted to the
atmosphere as a result of illegal logging
or climate change, sink projects may
result in “fake credits.”
• Disastrous consequences on tropical
biodiversity and ecosystems
• Monocultures of non-native eucalyptus
and pine-‘green deserts’
• local forest dwellers have been denied
access to their former lands and
commons
• “carbon colonialism”
Other issues
CDM lack credibility because there is no cap on emissions from developing countries,

Although there are systems that are supposed to ensure that credits are only to be
available for projects that would not have happened anyway, it is difficult to be certain of
that.

originally intended to boost energy efficiency and alternative energy sources in developing
countries, but the biggest source of credits has turned out to be from factories in China
incinerating waste HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) gases that would otherwise be released

time horizons of the carbon markets are too short because the Kyoto Protocol’s
commitment period only runs to 2012
 IPCC Third Assessment Report 2001

Warming observed was unlikely to be

natural, and gave the predicted range of
temperature increase over the next
century as 1.4–5.8°C.

US, Japan and Australia walk out

55
 The Bonn Agreement

• opposition to making compliance with the agreement legally binding.

• allowed for the counting of up to 3.4 per cent of 1990 Annex 1 emissions
in carbon sinks against the target
• European Union lost its battle for quantitative limits on the use of the
Kyoto mechanisms.
• The agreement stated rather weakly that they should be ‘supplemental’
and that domestic action should be a ‘significant element’ of
implementation.

56
 Impacts of Kyoto
• By the time the Protocol came into force, there were less than three
years left before the beginning of the commitment period running from
2008 to 2012
• The only members of the EU-15 that are expected to meet their targets
domestically are Germany, the UK, France and Sweden

57
 A muddled response to Kyoto

58
 Kyoto’s failure is ‘structural’…not necessarily in ‘implementation’

Trying to solve too many problems with ‘one’ policy :

Biodiversity loss, Developmental inequity,Trade
restrictions, Violation of indigenous rights, IPRs etc

The ‘centralized’ model – UNFCC as the global climate

emperor with IPCC as the sole ‘Science’ advisor –
cannot be effective in the long run

Hyperbolic multi-lateralism : OECD, Annex I, BRIC and

other emerging economies, LDCs….cannot result in any
serious coherence

Treating Climate Change as another ‘environmental

problem’ …and trying to ‘solve’ the problem
( See next slide)

59
 How is Climate Change different from other ecological
challenges ?

Climate Change Other ecological issues

Causes may be local but effects are Issues of pollution – land, water, air – are
global i.e there is no local climate typically local with localized solutions
change
Climate Change is a ‘wicked’ problem – Issues of environmental pollution are
comprising open, complex and normally ‘complicated’ but tame problems
imperfectly understood systems – with defined and achievable end states
which cannot be ‘technologically’
resolved
Climate Change can be better Most other environmental issues can be
understood as a persistent condition solved through a combination of technology
that needs to be coped with and that investment and good governance e.g.
can only be partially managed– it is polluted lakes can be restored, toxic landfills
axiomatically as much an economic can be reclaimed…most of these are not
development problem and a land use ‘epistemic’ problems
problem as it is an Energy problem

60
61
 Predicted outcomes of Climate Change ( IPCC)

Increase in average Widespread melting of Rising global average

global air and ocean snow and ice sea levels
temperatures

Increased frequency of Retreat of major glacier Increased acidification

heavy precipitation and systems of oceans with resultant
extreme weather events loss of ‘sink’ capacity

Increased in frequency Increased in vector Decreased food

of forest and bush fires borne diseases – productivity for > 3 deg
Malaria, Dengue – and rise in temp
related deaths

Malnutrition Migration and Conflicts Loss of species

Key caveat : The above are predictions with a range of probabilities and it is
near impossible to state how they will actually play out
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Copenhagen •Developed and developing countries pledge to reduce emissions by 2020
2009 under the 'Copenhagen Accord'
•Set goal of limiting global temperature rise to below 2°C
Cancun 2010 •'Cancun Agreement' formalises Copenhagen Accord pledges
•Agreement to develop new reporting rules – significantly improving the
transparency of developing country emissions and actions
Durban 2011 •Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) created to negotiate by 2015 a
new global agreement applicable to all Parties to take effect from 2020
•Agreement to establish a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol
(2013-2020)
Doha 2012 •thirty-seven countries, including Australia, commit to binding emissions targets
under the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period
•Agreement on a timetable for delivering the 2015 agreement
Warsaw 2013 •Countries agree to announce nationally determined contributions for the post-
2020 period well in advance of the Paris COP, and by the first quarter of 2015
by those Parties ready to do so
Lima 2014 •Progress towards a 2015 agreement expected
Paris 2015 •Deadline to complete negotiations of the 2015 Agreement, to be implemented
from 2020