In Quest of Sustainable Development

Abstract

World leaders met in Johannesburg in late August 2002 to review progress in implementing outputs of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro a decade earlier. They were also asked by the United Nations General Assembly to reinvigorate global commitments to sustainable development . The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), however, faced a seemingly impossible task. In order to be endorsed by UNCED as an overarching global goal, the term sustainable development had to be sufficiently ambiguous to accommodate many widely differing interpretations. Participants had conflicting interests, divergent perceptions, unique historical and environmental contexts as well as often incommensurable values. The Johannesburg Summit provided an opportunity to highlight several of the conflictive political economy issues behind recent unsustainable processes. This paper attempts to contribute to debates about possible policies to ameliorate them by a brief review of research into the social dynamics of environmental change.