Wednesday, January 27, 2010

sustainable development

i think this is why this phrase kind of fell out of favor (for me at least):
In short, [sustainable development] is a "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 wildlifeloving First Worlder, the growth-maximizing policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat, and therefore, the vote-counting politician.
if you try to please everyone, you please no one.

here's an image from the article depicting the complex relationships between consumption and environmental harm considering explicit north-south disparities:

Lele, Shanarchchandra M. 1991. ”Sustainable Development: A Critical Review.” World Development 19(6):607-21.