LCDS and Sustainable Development

Jul 06, 2009 Editorial

The success of the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) that was launched by President Jagdeo last month is ultimately premised on the acceptance by the developed nations of the concept of “sustainable development”.

The phrase and the ideas that it encompassed had become a veritable mantra of those countries and the institutions through which they interacted with the rest of the world over the last three decades. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when “The Economist”, a veritable bastion of the establishment that mirrors the perspective of the ruling elites of those countries, in its latest edition launched a debate about whether “sustainable development” is sustainable or not.

While we hope this foray does not mean that sustainable development as a paradigm to guide our utilisation of the resources of our planet is going to be abandoned, it might signal a new tack the developed countries may adopt in the upcoming negotiations in December at Copenhagen on the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. Since such a position would impact rather negatively on funding for our LCDS, we ought to take cognisance of the debate.

The ideal of sustainable development basically came out of the consciousness raised by the environmental movement which flowered in the wake of the publication by Rachael Carson of her classic “Silent Spring” in the 1960’s.

The “flower power” generation of that decade exposed the damage done to the environment by the operations of big business. The long-term implications of such activity were slowly accepted by establishment types after several major disasters were precipitated by such behaviour.

In the 1970’s, the Club of Rome that gathered movers and shakers of the developed world published “The Limits to Growth” which outlined the other side of the argument about the resources of our planet by pointing out that such resources were also being depleted at such a rate that many could run out in the next century.

Countries, therefore, had to consider within their models of development their impact on resources from two perspectives, first on the impact of the activities industries and secondly on their depletion through consumption.

In 1987, Gro Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway as chair of a commission on development and the environment, offered a succinct definition of what by then has coalesced as “sustainable development”: that which “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Global warming which threatened the viability of our entire planet to sustain life, much less “future generations” was soon after recognised as a consequence of the excessive production of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels and also through deforestation. And we arrive as proposals such as the LCDS that addresses the latter directly by seeking to conserve our forests and indirectly by developing non-fossil fuel “clean energy” sources such as hydropower.

The argument against “sustainable development” however condemns the notion as serving to deny future generations the continuing rising standard of living that were enjoyed by their forefathers up to now. The see it as moving us backwards or at best a leading to a stagnation of living standards, especially in developing countries.

While they concede that some resources are being rapidly depleted, they point out that this is not a new phenomenon and that the ingenuity of man has always discovered or invented alternative resources that took care of the threatned need.

Similarly, they placed great faith on that same ingenuity to deliver alternatives to the present identified danger of global warming caused by utilisation of fossil fuels, which would not only cut carbon dioxide emissions from this source, but would allow forested countries to exploit their timber resources. In other words we can have our cake and eat it too.

As we pointed out earlier, we do not know how persuasive the latter argument will prove, but it does suggest that maybe we ought to diversify our development eggs in some additional baskets to the LCDS.

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