Topic 1: Economic Growth and Sustainable Development

Introduction

Sustainable Development [SD] is ultimately a frustrating idea (when one tries) to turn it into a useable concept…. and to apply it to investment decisions or national accounts. This exercise that exposes some of its weakness, but as a broad goal, SD is useful in a sense. Like many important ideas, it is better than nothing. Sometimes, many call SD “Alternative Economics” not “An Alternative to Economics”.

“ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS” – The concept has four benefits:

(1) SD has to crisscross economist and ecologists to look much more carefully at their models and their definitions;

(2) SD has to get some specific tools to measure the effects of human activity on the environment. Economic indicators, such as GNP have to include the depletion of natural resources and their degradation through pollution;

(3) SD has to develop a set of criteria into a development project to analyze and review wider policy implications and choices in terms of the ECONOMY, SOCIETY & CULTURE, ECOLOGY, and the ENVIRONMENT; and

(4) SD is on its way to becoming a philosophical concept that will infuse all work related to development, whether in developed or developing countries!

Overall, never have these two words (SD) been used so much with so much inconsistency!!…. It is fast becoming a landfill site for every environmental idea. For the most part, few seem to care about what the words mean, or whether they even have any real meaning!