Chapter 9 – Sustainable Development

“We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.”
– Terry Swearingen, Nurse & Winner of Goldman Environmental Prize in 1997

“Our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that seems abstract – sustainable development – and turn it into a reality for all the world’s people”

– Kofi Annan – Former secretary general of the United Nations

Responsible management integrates concepts of sustainability into its principles. The IPCC report described in the example above is an outcome of global concern with the state of our climate which is the result of sustainability efforts (or lack of them) by global human society.

Remember that words and terms used in the sustainability literature have roots that may impart meaning a multitude of meanings. However, our social constructivist approach to responsible management means that we need to consider the meaning of sustainability within today’s context and its relevance to societal thinking. In this chapter we look at the environmental considerations relating to sustainability with the constant awareness that responsible management holistically integrates principles covered in corporate social responsibility, in ecological sustainability, and social purpose actions. We will start with a broad view of our impact on the planet’s ecology, discuss the reports underpinning our awareness of our own anthropogenic impacts, and drill down to collective considerations often found trough indigenous considerations and our own individual considerations.

It is widely reported that we have reached the Anthropocene age where our human actions (or inactions) create permanent change to the planet ecology. In the past 100 years, human activity along industrial, agricultural and societal dimensions have impacted the complex environment and relationships of the globe to a point that threatens its resiliency (1)(2).

In the colonial viewpoint, human economic development is a zero-sum contest when contrasted to ecological considerations (3). Human activities in this context used resources extracted in some way from the planet to better the well being of society. It is debatable as to when this activity materially impacted the earth, but one could consider the example of the tragedy of the commons (4) where mono-agricultural and farming activities exhausted the local availability of certain foodcrops and denuded landscapes to benefit the farming of sheep. As an isolated incident in the geologic timescale of the earth’s development, the tragedy of the commons could have been healed over the long term through natural forces. However, the struggle to gain greater resources and human ingenuity accelerated the need for more planetary resources to the point where the transition from an agrarian economy exploded into the industrial revolution – the ‘discovery’ of new worlds by Western colonials, and possibly worst of all, the subjugation of local indigenous societies by these colonials in their effort to acquire more resources and ‘riches’ for themselves.

It is argued that in the past 100 years, more damage has been done to the planet than in the previous 200,000 years of human evolution. Part of human evolution includes the globalization of communication and the increasing awareness of our impact on the planet. It could be argued that the severity of our impact was brought to light most universally when nations realized that we were actually creating holes in our ozone layer due to our polluting air-borne fluorohydrocarbons. Global conferences generated agreements such as the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to address ozone depletion, the Rio Agenda 21 of 1992 to address sustainable development which included environmental concerns, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 to rein in and provide regulatory constraints on greenhouse gas emissions, and various global conferences to address what we view as an existential crisis to human survival (more about these Conferences of Parties – COP later).

In the same time frame, the United Nations, commissioned a report by the Brundtland Commisision into sustainable development which resulted in an oft-quoted definition of sustainable development as development “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (5). At the Rio Conference in 1992, nations discussed and agreed to efforts in promoting goals that would remedy economic and social disparities along with what was becoming viewed as environmental challenges and promoted this Agenda. In 1997, Secretary General Kofi Annan led a Millennium Assembly towards reforming the UN mission towards environmental and societal positive changes resulting in the Millennium Goals in 2001. These goals as described in the list below address human needs (goal 1, 4, 6), societal needs (goals 2, 3, 5), environmental needs (goal 7) and partnerships towards economic development (goal 8). Hulme and Scott (6) provide a summary of the development of the Millennium Development goals and how their lack of specificity made them difficult to assess their success. The full list of Millennium Development Goals can be seen below and more information can be found at (https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).

The 8 Millennium Development Goals are to:

1. 1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
   2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
   3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
   4. Reduce Child Mortality
   5. Improve Maternal Health
   6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
   7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
   8. Global Partnership for Development

Through the experiences of the Millenium Goals, the UN with the guidance of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon created working groups to improve the effectiveness of the goals and to provide measurable indicators towards their achievement. This resulted in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 which was composed of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (see Figure 1) described through 169 targets and over 232 measurable indicators. These SDGs were meant to act as supra-national objectives that would be monitored by national governments to be reported back to the UN on a yearly basis. The responsibility for achieving the goals was not defined to any single entity but instead was a collective ‘task’ which resulted in activist organizations putting pressures on institutions and corporations, on standard setting organizations providing guidances, norms and standards to voluntarily or regulatorily control the achievement of the goals – enforcing principles of transparency and accountability.

In a more existential vein as described by this chapter’s example the UN also has a working group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that was tasked with reviewing and sharing knowledge about climate change resulting from human impact. They provide scientific documenting of the state of the planet. Since 1988, the IPCC has released periodic reports that have been the guiding documents for UN Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings dealing with environmental concerns and climate change. The COP 21 conference in Paris in 2015 was famous for its global unanimity in agreeing to address climate issues by commitments by all participating nations to restrict their carbon equivalent emissions and restrict global warming to an average of less than 2 C by the mid 21st century.  The IPCC report of 2022 and the COP26 conference in Glascow however recognized that this target may not be achieved which resulted in stakeholder activism and demonstrations across the globe. This IPCC report, the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC can be accessed through (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/) in a variety of formats. Some of the key points described in the summary for policy makers are (note that the summary report is over 40 pages long and so only a few of the key points are listed below):

• that climate change has caused drastic impact on ecosystems globally with disproportionate impact on indigenous communities world wide,
• that advances to meet the SDGs are negatively impacted by the severity of climate change outcomes,
• that in the short to mid term (2021-2040) and in the mid to long term (2040-2100), climate change due to increases of 1.5C or higher will increase risks to biodiversity, natural resource availability, and human socio-economic conditions,

However, the IPCC also suggests that:

• adaptation options are possible and that current societal awareness and actions by most countries (“at least 170 countries”) has resulted in policy changes and adaptation policies,
• that multi-sectoral adaptations and conservation measures can be effective in reducing risks,
• but that increasing global warming outcomes may constrain human and natural system adaptation unless institutional and political mobilization of resources are used to increase resilience and improve sustainability.

Throughout this increasing awareness of ecological impact by neo-colonial powers and by emerging nations, there has been a growing awareness of the holistic perspectives of indigenous peoples when it came to sustainability. Although, there are always exceptions to this consideration, it is believed that most indigenous peoples that were colonized or are undergoing colonization, lived traditions that were more in harmony with the planet than current traditions.

Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina (7) describe foundations of indigenous sustainability as part of the relationship and sacred exchanges that happen between human and natural resources. In South America, for example among the indigenous peoples of Peru, their activism has conceptualized them as environmental stewards particularly in the Amazonian jungle where territorial rights are in danger (8).  Quechuan culture in the Andes, also promotes a framework of relationship with nature.  There is a term for the earth which implies a maternal relationship with it – Pachamama; and a thankfulness for its abundance in providing food for its carers. Some of the earliest peoples in Peru practiced sustainable agriculture that leveraged the cultivation of crops along elevations and conditions in traditional ways considered as subsistence farming by neocolonials but that is holistic and integrated with a deep respect for nature and the earth (9).

In North America, the indigenous peoples and their way of synergistically relating to Turtle Island (as the North American continent is known by many peoples) and our awareness of this relationship has led to conflicts, reconciliations, and further conflicts into an awareness of other ways of dealing with the land than in a purely one-way manner or zero sum manner. If you are interested in this perspective, there are a variety of indigenous authors who can provide insights from the ecological viewpoint (Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer) or a societal viewpoint documenting the sundering of this relationship and struggles to re-establish it (Five Little Indians by Michelle Good). As in all societal groups, there are a multiplicity of views regarding sustainability when balanced with economic or health-related well-being. For example, some of the clearest examples are the discussions and challenges when dealing with extractive industries where some indigenous peoples will accept or reject certain capital developments along a spectrum of reasons ranging from traditional to pragmatic economics (for an example of this difference in perspectives read about the conflict with the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory in Western Canada by accessing CBC News at  https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/wet-suwet-en-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-1.5448363).

In our next chapter, we will further explore sustainable development with a focus on human organizations and from the social aspect of this definition.

References used in the text – you are encouraged to consult these references through your institutional library services or through the internet

(1) Steffen, W., Persson, Å., Deutsch, L., Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Richardson, K., Crumley, C., Crutzen, P., Folke, C., Gordon, L., Molina, M., Ramanathan, V., Rockström, J., Scheffer, M., Schellnhuber, H. J., & Svedin, U. (2011). The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship. AMBIO, 40(7), 739–761. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0185-x

(2) Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2007). The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 36(8), 614–621. https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:TAAHNO]2.0.CO;2

(3) Parks, B. C., & Roberts, J. T. (2010). Climate Change, Social Theory and Justice. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), 134–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409359018

(4) Hardin, G. (2009). The Tragedy of the Commons *. Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, 1(3), 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/19390450903037302 [ *Originally published in: Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (13 December 1968), pp. 1243–1248. Reproduced with kind permission of the American Association of the Advancement of Science]

(5) Brundtland, G., Khalid, M., Agnelli, S., Al-Athel, S., Chidzero, B., Fadika, L., Hau, V., Lang, I., Shijun, M., Morino de Botero, M., Singh, M., Okita, S., and Others, A. (1987). Our Common Future (‘Brundtland report’). Oxford Paperback Reference. Oxford University Press, USA.

(6) Hulme, D., & Scott, J. (2010). The Political Economy of the MDGs: Retrospect and Prospect for the World’s Biggest Promise. New Political Economy, 15(2), 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563461003599301

(7) Kealiikanakaoleohaililani, K., & Giardina, C. P. (2016). Embracing the sacred: an indigenous framework for tomorrow’s sustainability science. Sustainability Science, 11(1), 57-67.

(8) Merino, R., & Gustafsson, M. T. (2021). Localizing the indigenous environmental steward norm: The making of conservation and territorial rights in Peru. Environmental Science & Policy, 124, 627-634.

(9) Sumida Huaman, E. (2016). Tuki Ayllpanchik(our beautiful land): Indigenous ecology and farming in the Peruvian highlands. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 11(4), 1135–1153. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-014-9622-z