PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

62
Kousis et al. 1997) makes the important point that despite (or rather: because of) its
deficiencies as a consistent analytical or normative concept, sustainable development
remains a highly popular and important political concept.
Recent efforts at the United National Development Program (UNDP) have
focused on definitions that approach the concept of development from the perspective of
quality of life improvements (Qizilbash 2001). In pertaining theoretical works, notions of
ethical universalism and of intergenerational equity are of particular importance (Anand
and Sen 2000), as well as new approaches to the concept of living standards (Sen 1987).
To this end, ever more sophisticated indicators are being developed in order to measure
progress in this arena. Most prominent among them is the Human Development Index
(HDI, see e.g. UNDP 1999). Nevertheless, even many economists are well-aware that
the task at hand is not one of taking stock of any particular natural assets on earth. As the
renowned economist Robert Solow noted in a lecture in 1992:
The duty imposed by sustainability is to bequeath to posterity not any particular thing
– with rare exceptions such as Yosemite, for example,-- but rather to endow them with
whatever it takes to achieve a standard of living at least as good as our own and to
look after their next generation similarly. We are not to consume humanity’s capital,
in the broadest sense.
(Solow 1992:15, quoted in Anand and Sen 1994)
Other indicator programs are much less andocentric than the HDI, instead
focusing on the quality of the environment thus partially reverting to more ecological
interpretations of sustainability. The most relevant indicator program for transport and