Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
It is important to stress that current patterns
of economic growth and genuine sustainability
are wholly contradictory concepts - economic
interests usually ride paramount. Further
economic growth implies quantity while
development is a critique and a search
for quality. Sustainable development as
conceived by economist by and large fails to
consider any reduction of material standards
of living and any attempt to slow down the
accumulation dynamics. “In short alternatives
to development are blackballed, alternatives
within development are welcome” (Sachs
1995, 436 as quoted in Selby, 2008). If we
accept the finiteness of the planet – that the
planet is not an inexhaustible cornucopia –
and if we interpret “sustainable development”
as “sustainable growth” then the terms
becomes an oxymoron, a contradiction in
terms. Sustained growth within a planet that
is finite is not possible unless one limits the
timeframe within which the growth intention
applies and/or is selective about where the
growth should happen. We cannot continue
with just enriching the already rich; if only
economic performance counts, trade-offs will
continue!
Within South Africa with Environmental
Impact Assessment practice where different
alternatives and no-go alternatives have to be
explored it is not untypical to get the following
decision: “ the no-go alternative could not
be adopted as the developer would lose his
opportunity for economic investment and
resultant gain” Provincial MEC, 2005
At a plenary address of the International
Association for Impact Assessment conference
in Calgary in 2008 Ian Lowe rattled the cage
a bit and asked the audience how best to
achieve ‘unsustainable development’
He answered this question himself and said by
pursuing:
• Increased per capita consumption
• Rapid depletion of non-renewable
resources
• Over use / extermination of renewables
• Disrupt global climate change
• Produce more waste
• Widen inequalities
• Embrace materialism
• Trash our ‘adaptation insurance’…
[biodiversity]
• Encourage population growth
Arguably this is exactly what we are doing
and the trajectory we are on. We are living
beyond the carrying capacity of the earth – the
assumption of economic growth being able
to continue forever or be somebody else’s
problems is illogical and denialism. We’ve
reached the limits of a ‘FULL EARTH’ – our
economy is too big for our earth (Costanza et
al., 2010).
The rhetoric of sustainable development has
thus been used by environmental organisations
and global economies alike and the conflict
between development and protection was
neutralised – the euphemism reassured us
that we can have our cake and eat it too.
The key issue was how to get a share of the
cake, not the limits to the size of the cake.
While development is made “sustainable” –
able to be continued – capitalist models of
progress and resource exploitation were often
challenged but not notably changed. There
exist staggering statistics such as that the
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