PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

70
The Vancouver principles are also more comprehensive than most definitions in
that they move beyond the common - but also problematic (see e.g. Campbell 1996) -
threefold definition of sustainability towards a ninefold definition that not only explicitly
includes important aspects such as access, integrated planning and land and resource use,
but also issues such as community responsibility and public participation, which always
risk of being relegated to being afterthoughts rather than integral parts of the sustainable
development principle. Table 2.1 presents an overview of the Vancouver principles.
Evidently, the EU itself also considers the Vancouver principles to be relevant to
decision-making on transport infrastructure investment in Central Europe. This is
indicated by the following noteworthy detail: When the 8-page Phare Multi-Country
Transport Program Newsletter (edited at DG Transport and Energy and published by the
European Commission) ran an entire edition on the topic “Transport and the
environment” in January 2000, these principles were printed on the back page of the
newsletter in their entirety (i.e. including all definitions).
The Vancouver principles have also provided the basis of additional work on
sustainable transport by the OECD in Europe, and most notably for the recently
completed OECD project on Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST) which
produced numerous workshop reports, guidelines as well as case studies. Within the EST
project, the OECD produced the following environmental definition for sustainable
transport (OECD 1996b:54):
Transport that does not endanger public health or ecosystems and meets mobility
needs consistent with (a) use of renewable resources at below their rates of
regeneration and (b) use of non-renewable resources at below the rates of development
of renewable substitutes.