Sustainable development: conceptual, ethical, and paradigmatic foundations

Eric Neumayer ()

Chapter 2 in Weak versus Strong Sustainability, 2025, pp 8-49 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter explores conceptual, ethical, and paradigmatic issues of sustainable development (SD). It defines SD as maintaining the capacity to provide non-declining per capita utility indefinitely and discusses the ethical justifications for this commitment, drawing on Kantian and Rawlsian principles. The chapter highlights a time-inconsistency problem, where future generations may not adhere to SD, and resolves misunderstandings about SD locking society into poverty or demanding inferior utility paths. It contrasts weak sustainability (WS), which assumes natural capital is substitutable, with strong sustainability (SS), which views natural capital as non-substitutable. Using climate change as a case study, it argues that the real debate should focus on the substitutability of natural capital rather than the discount rate used in cost-benefit analyses.

Keywords: Sustainable development; Weak sustainability; Strong sustainability; Natural capital; Substitutability; Climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035327881
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