IB Global Politics Sustainable Development Notes

Defining Sustainable Development

1. Sustainable development was defined by the Brundtland Commission (1987) as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
2. The Brundtland Report, formally titled "Our Common Future," was commissioned by the United Nations and chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, marking the first major international effort to link environmental degradation with economic development.
3. This definition contains two key concepts: needs (particularly the essential needs of the world's poor, which should receive overriding priority) and limitations (imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs).
4. Before Brundtland, the dominant paradigm treated economic growth and environmental protection as opposing forces; the report's revolutionary contribution was arguing that they must be integrated rather than traded off.
5. The concept has been criticized for being deliberately vague, allowing governments, corporations, and NGOs to claim alignment with sustainable development while pursuing fundamentally different - and sometimes contradictory - agendas.
6. Herman Daly, ecological economist, offered a more operational definition: a sustainable economy is one where the rate of resource use does not exceed the rate of regeneration, and the rate of pollution does not exceed the rate of assimilation by the environment.
7. In IB Global Politics, sustainable development connects directly to debates about global governance, inequality between the Global North and South, and whether the current economic system can deliver sustainability without fundamental transformation.

The Three Pillars of Sustainability

1. Sustainable development rests on three interconnected pillars - economic, social, and environmental - that must be balanced for genuine sustainability.
2. Economic sustainability requires systems that generate prosperity without depleting natural capital or creating unsustainable debt. It includes stable employment, fair wages, innovation, and economic diversification that reduces dependency on extractive industries.
3. Social sustainability demands equitable access to education, healthcare, housing, and political participation. It encompasses human rights, gender equality, cultural preservation, and social cohesion across communities.
4. Environmental sustainability means maintaining ecosystem integrity, biodiversity, clean air and water, and stable climate systems. It requires keeping human activity within the regenerative capacity of Earth's natural systems.
5. The triple bottom line concept (John Elkington, 1994) translated the three pillars into business language: people, planet, profit. Companies should measure success not just by financial returns but by social and environmental performance.
6. Critics argue the three-pillar model creates a false impression of equal weighting; ecological economists contend that the environment must take priority because economic and social systems are embedded within, and dependent upon, ecological systems.
7. The Doughnut Economics model (Kate Raworth, 2017) offers an alternative visualization: a safe and just space for humanity exists between a social foundation (below which people suffer deprivation) and an ecological ceiling (above which environmental degradation becomes dangerous).

Strong vs Weak Sustainability

1. Weak sustainability (Robert Solow, John Hartwick) holds that natural capital and human-made capital are substitutable. As long as total capital stock is maintained or increased, sustainability is achieved, even if natural resources are depleted.
2. Under weak sustainability, cutting down a rainforest is acceptable if the timber profits are invested in education, technology, or infrastructure that generates equivalent or greater value for future generations.
3. Strong sustainability (Herman Daly, ecological economists) argues that natural capital cannot be substituted by human-made capital because many ecosystem services - pollination, climate regulation, water purification - have no technological replacement.
4. Strong sustainability requires maintaining critical natural capital - the minimum stock of natural resources and ecosystem functions necessary to support life - regardless of economic considerations.
5. The debate has profound policy implications: weak sustainability allows resource extraction as long as revenues are reinvested (Norway's sovereign wealth fund from oil revenues is often cited); strong sustainability demands leaving resources in the ground if extraction threatens critical ecological functions.
6. Most governments implicitly follow weak sustainability, which critics argue enables continued environmental destruction under the guise of "sustainable development."

Planetary Boundaries and Ecological Footprint

1. The planetary boundaries framework (Johan Rockstrom et al., 2009) identifies nine Earth system processes that have boundaries which, if crossed, could generate abrupt and irreversible environmental change.
2. The nine boundaries include: climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycles), land-system change, freshwater use, and chemical pollution.
3. As of 2023, six of the nine boundaries have been crossed: climate change, biosphere integrity (biodiversity), land-system change, biogeochemical flows, freshwater change, and novel entities (chemical pollution). This suggests humanity is operating well outside the safe operating space.
4. The ecological footprint (Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, 1990s) measures how much biologically productive land and water area a population requires to produce the resources it consumes and absorb the waste it generates.