PDF《Epilogue—Beyond Pollution Control》

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within, and are connected to, wider concerns of competitiveness and employment. A. THE UNSUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIAL STATE Those who argue that the industrialized state, whether developed or developing, is currently unsustainable emphasize several problems. These are depicted schemati- cally in ?gure 14.1. In the '

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realm, there may be a failure of a society to provide adequate goods and services to all of its members. This of course places enormous pressure on an economy to produce more, but this in turn may increase the ecological footprint of that society. Environmental problems stem from the activ- ities involved with agriculture, manufacturing, extraction, transportation, housing, energy, services, and information and communication technology (ICT)―all driven by the demand of consumers, commercial entities, and government. In addition, these activities have signi?cant e¤ects on the amount, security, and skill of employ- ment, on the nature and conditions of work, and on the purchasing power associated

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14 (AutoPDF V7 5/2/08 09:58) MIT (NewMaths 7x9 ) TimesM J-1799 Ashford HC1: WSL(W) 02/08/2007 AC1: WSL 05/10/2007 AC2: WSL 29/01/2008 pp. 1043C Figure 14.1 The sources and drivers of unsustainability, resulting problems, and solutions. Epilogue―Beyond Pollution Control and Prevention: Sustainable Development

1045 (AutoPDF V7 5/2/08 09:58) MIT (NewMaths 7x9 ) TimesM J-1799 Ashford HC1: WSL(W) 02/08/2007 AC1: WSL 05/10/2007 AC2: WSL 29/01/2008 pp. 1043C with wages. An increasing concern is economic inequity stemming from inadequate and unequal purchasing power within and between nations and for the workers and citizens of the future. Policies to increase employment are often fashioned in terms of producing (and consuming) more, again with adverse environmental consequences. On the other hand, reducing production to accommodate environmental pressures may create undesirable consequences for growth and employment. Is there a way out of this seeming dilemma in which one social goal must be compromised to satisfy another? Is it a question of achieving the proper balance among competing social goals? This may be the case only if a society remains technologically static. Whether education, industrial initiatives, government intervention, stakeholder involvement, and ?nancing will be able to solve these problems will depend on whether a number of fundamental characteristics of the modern industrial state can be corrected or overcome: (1) the fragmentation of the knowledge base, which leads to a myopic understanding of fundamental problems and the fashioning of single- purpose or narrowly fashioned solutions by technical and political decision makers, (2) the inequality of access to economic and political power, (3) the tendency toward '

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―governance of industrial systems by old ideas, (4) the failure of markets to correctly price the adverse consequences of industrial activity, and (5) the inherent failure of even '

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markets to deal adequately with e¤ects that span long time horizons (for which correct pricing is not likely to be the answer). B. CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Whether one views sustainable development as just an environmental issue or as a multidimensional challenge in the three dimensions―economic, environmental, and social―makes quite a di¤erence. We argue that competitiveness, environment, and employment are the operationally important dimensions of sustainability. Together these three dimensions drive sustainable development along di¤erent pathways and lead to di¤erent places than does a singular concern for environmental sustainabil- ity. The latter will almost invariably lead to tradeo¤s, e.g., between environmental improvements and jobs or economic growth, that will ultimately be counter- productive. The interrelatedness of competitiveness, environment, and employment is depicted in ?gure 14.2. A sustainable development agenda is, almost by de?nition, an agenda of system change. This is not to be confused with an environmental policy agenda, which is, or should be, explicitly e¤ects-based: a program of policies and legislation directed to- ward environmental improvements and relying on speci?c goals and conditions. The sustainable development policy agenda focuses on products and processes (e.g., re- lated to manufacturing, transport, energy, or construction), but extends to changes in technological and social systems that cut across many dimensions.