Mitcham, Carl. 1995. "The Concept of Sustainable Development: its Origins and Ambivalence." Technology in Society 17(3): 311-326.

Thesis:

The strength and weakness of sustainable development lies in its ability to be an ambivalent bridge of pro-growth development and no-growth environmentalist concerns. It must span the realities of both limits to growth and the need for development (p.324).

Summary:

Mitcham traces the historical and philosophical roots of sustainability and the creation of the 'sustainable development' concept. Over time, humans moved from a cyclical view of time and space, to one of 'progress'. In early modern theories, progress was seen as recovering the state of perfection, i.e. the Garden of Eden (p.312). With the move from theology to scientific ideology, progress became movement toward a future of worldly happiness and satisfaction by controlling nature. But as scientific theory was seen to never be final, but always open to change, reaching perfection was replaced with the idea of indefinite improvement. Finally, in the era after The Limits to Growth, the notion of the desirability of progress itself is in question. Today our theory of progress "which compares the present with the past, and does not consider the future except as an open-ended possibility for further growth and improvement, is a source of increasingly intractable problems" (p.314).

Out of this historical context has emerged the concept of sustainable development. Two reports shifted the emphasis from what should not be done (Limits to Growth) to what should and can be done. The World Conservation Strategy (1980) and Our Common Future (1987) redefined conservation in terms of meeting the needs of people through development that is sustainable for generations to come. Thus the framework has progressed from unlimited growth, to no-growth to sustainable growth. (p.317) The concept itself holds substantial "creative ambiguity," which has the potential to be useful as a bridge between no-growth environmentalists and pro-growth developmentalists.

To clarify this ambiguity, Mitcham traces movements which have connections to the sustainable development concept (pp.317-322). These include the movement for 'soft-energy paths', scientific agriculture, organic farming, intermediate technology, and the sustainable society and voluntary simplicity movements. Mitcham argues that the term 'sustainable' has become so inflated that it can mean almost anything. Inflation of the term can have two types of results: (1) it can dilute the concept, changing it in the process and/or (2) it can insinuate its core principles into new areas (p.323).

The ambiguity of sustainable development has led to critiques of the term and its usages from both the left and the right. To conservative critics, sustainability denotes stasis. They argue that stasis is not enough to meet the demands of growing populations. To critics on the left, the question is "What exactly is to be sustained, and for whom?" The fear is that it is simply employed to sustain the Western consumptive way of life at the expense of the rest of the world, "...to sustain the contemporary separations between developed and underdeveloped" (p.323). Mitcham observes that the ideal of sustainability reflects an "addiction to management that looks upon the world...as a space ship in need of an operating manual" (ibid). This, at the very least is "at odds with much of traditional culture" (p.323).

The author concludes by reiterating the paradoxical responsibility of sustainable development. It must balance the limits to growth and the need for development. In this sense, it can serve as a useful bridge. However, the parameters of this function are unclear. Sustainable development is "an attempt to save development from itself" (p.324).

Keywords: sustainable development, progress, modernity, limits to growth