Mathur Ritika Passi

ONE
Sustainable Development:
Emergence of a Paradigm
Vikrom Mathur, Senior Fellow, ORF | RITIKA PASSI, Associate Fellow & Project Editor, ORF
Sustainable development(SD) is a
Trojan Horse of an idea. SD has,
over the years, subsumed within
it multiple meanings advanced by
multiple actors—meanings that
have often masked underlying normative
orientations, worldviews and interests. The
definition of the Brundtland Commission—
development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their needs—is
the most frequently cited definition. No
one can dispute such an aspiration. But an
agreement on the notion of sustainability
often breaks down when we begin thinking
of how to implement development that is
sustainable. With the world having formally
adopted the post-2015 development
agenda, the set of 17 goals and 169 targets
known as the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), developing countries such
as India need to unpack and interpret
the development framework to ensure its
relevance to their development needs and
interests.
It is therefore a critical moment, between
adoption and execution, to underscore
the importance of a national lens through
which to understand and implement these
goals. To this end, this edited volume:
Unpacks the tensions inherent in various
interpretations of SD by eliciting debates
given varied value systems and national
interests (introductory chapter); offers a
framework through which to localise global
goals like the SDGs (Chapter 2); focuses
on 10 SDGs that are India’s primary
concerns (Chapters 3 to 12); and ends
with an evaluation of the strengths and
weaknesses of institutional architecture for
implementing the SDGs in India (Chapter
13).
This introduction sets the stage.
First, we situate the concept of SD by
briefly looking back at its emergence
in local environmental movements to
the globalisation of ‘sustainability,’ its
spread in public discourse and eventual
institutionalisation. Second, we discuss
three sets of normative tensions the
SD framing engenders: 1) Poverty and
environment degradation as two ends of
a mutually reinforcing cycle on the one
hand, and consumption-based lifestyles
in developed nations depredating the
environment on the other; 2) collective
response through promotion of efficiency
gains and improvements in technology
versus changes in social attitudes and
value systems to counter environmental
degradation; and 3) global processes
and institutions versus local voices
and knowledges. We make current the
discussion on each of these tensions
by unpacking the norms implicit in the
SD Trojan Horse, i.e., we ask which
interpretations have been favoured in the
SDG agenda that has been adopted. We