IB Global Politics Understanding Sustainability: Definitions, Interpretations, and Perspectives Notes

Sustainability as a Contested Concept

1. Sustainability is the principle of meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This canonical definition comes from the 1987 Brundtland Report (Our Common Future), published by the World Commission on Environment and Development.

1. Sustainability and sustainable development are not the same thing. Sustainability refers to a long-term goal - a state in which human activity stays within ecological and social limits indefinitely. Sustainable development is the process and pathways undertaken to reach that goal. Two actors can agree on the goal while disagreeing entirely on the pathway.
2. The concept is contested because its meaning shifts depending on which dimension you prioritise, which time horizon you adopt, and whose needs you centre. The IB Global Politics syllabus identifies three components: environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Whether these three are equally important, or whether environmental sustainability is the foundation upon which the others depend, is one of the central debates.
3. Sustainability carries an intergenerational dimension that makes it inherently political. Decisions made today about fossil fuel extraction, deforestation, and debt accumulation impose costs on people who have no voice in the decision. This is why sustainability debates often invoke justice - asking not just what is efficient but what is fair across time.

Environmental Sustainability

1. Environmental sustainability means staying within planetary boundaries - the biophysical thresholds that keep Earth's systems stable. The Stockholm Resilience Centre identifies nine of them, including climate change, biosphere integrity, land-use change, freshwater use, and ocean acidification. As of 2023, six of the nine have already been breached.
2. Policy in this area means decarbonising energy systems, protecting biodiversity, and restoring degraded ecosystems. The 2015 Paris Agreement is the central instrument, aiming to hold warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework committed states to protecting 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030.
3. China illustrates the tension between economic development and environmental protection. China lifted over 800 million people out of poverty since 1978, but air pollution contributes to an estimated 1.1 million premature deaths every year, and 12 million of the 664 million tonnes of grain produced annually are contaminated by heavy metals. Pollution-related economic losses were estimated at 3.5 per cent of GDP in 2010.
4. Costa Rica represents the opposite approach. It invested significantly in sustainable development and environmental protection, and now generates nearly 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources annually.
5. Bhutan has a constitutional mandate that at least 60 per cent of its land must remain forested, and it absorbs more carbon dioxide than it emits, making it one of the world's few carbon-negative states.

Economic Sustainability

1. Economic sustainability treats sustainability as an economy that can keep running across generations. It can mean efficient resource use, innovation, and long-term productive capacity, or it can mean carbon pricing, circular economies, and green investment.
2. The global green bond market exceeded 600 billion US dollars in issuance in 2024. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, phasing in from 2026, charges importers for the carbon content of goods like steel and cement, attempting to prevent carbon leakage where production simply moves to states with weaker regulation.
3. There is debate about whether economic growth and environmental sustainability are compatible. Mainstream approaches assume they can be reconciled through efficiency gains, technological innovation, and market mechanisms. De-growth scholars like Andre Gorz, who coined the term in 1977, argue this is incompatible with planetary limits in already-wealthy states, where wellbeing has decoupled from GDP growth.
4. Gorz proposed three principles: abolish growth as an objective, accept that further growth in rich states does not increase happiness, and recognise that Earth has finite resources. The counterargument is that green growth, driven by renewable energy and circular economies, can decouple GDP from resource use.