The powerful vagueness of sustainability

What does sustainability mean? Is it so vague a term that it has no real content, and can be high-jacked by anyone in the service of greenwashing unsustainable practices or policies?

In thinking about this issue, I would like to suggest that the appropriate model is not science, but the humanities. On this view, sustainability is not a scientific concept that can be precisely defined but instead is a normative ethical principle that should be based on our best scientific understanding, but cannot be reduced to a single unambiguous definition. Instead it represents a provisional judgement about the most appropriate action, given environmental, social and economic goals and constraints. It needs to be thought through and decided upon in any given situation. Sustainability as process.

A parallel from diplomacy seems relevant. Those who write international treaties know that it is often desirable to leave a little wiggle room in the language of a given treaty, which will allow different signatories, with perhaps very different agendas, circumstances and constituencies, to be part of the process. We might call this constructive ambiguity. A procedural approach to sustainability allows different interests to stay at the table, instead of walking away.

But does this amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Won’t this just open the door to endless procedural wrangling in which those that have typically had most power and influence will simply ride roughshod over the very real environmental and social concerns that sustainability is supposed to be about.

Another parallel might help us out here. There are no precise and universally agreed-upon definitions of truth, democracy or justice. They need to be grappled with and articulated over time, by each society for whom they are important. Yet they have served as crucial concepts in the development of societies around the world, and provide the conceptual underpinnings of many political and legal systems, not to mention—in the case of truth—science itself. I think the history of these concepts provides pretty good evidence that, despite their vagueness and the ever-present influence of powerful interests, constructively ambiguous principles of this kind are more useful than precisely defined concepts would be. I would be happy to see the idea of sustainability playing a similar role.