Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
limits to resource use as well as the receiving
environment’s ability to absorb pollutants,
globally, society has been unable to make
the change towards a more sustainable and
ecologically conscious and intelligent future.
The environmental movement, arguably one
of the largest movements in the history of
the world, appears to have had little impact
in driving fundamental changes in world
economics, governance and environmental
justice. One can argue that the movement
has had little impact even in the context where
never before in the history of the planet have
as many resources been applied at any single
time to drive the sustainability agenda.
Much current practice is still based on decades
old concepts, despite advances made in
theory. The ‘three pillars’ model of sustainable
development, despite still being widely
promoted, has long since been discredited
in seeking sustainability – to be replaced by
the ‘cascade of dependencies’ a far more
realistic approach. This shows that human
society is dependent on the environment,
and economics is dependent on both society
and the environment and all three are today
dependent on ‘governance’ to understand
the issues, develop sustainability policies
and enforce them, as depicted in Figure 1
from South Africa’s National Framework for
Sustainable Development and Department
of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT)
(2007), where it has been attempted to bring
this enhanced appreciation of ’cascades of
dependencies’ to the political table.
Figure 1: The interactive model of sustainability and the interdependence model of sustainability
(adapted from DEAT 2007).
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