The Brundtland link between poverty and environmental degradation, and other questionable opinions

Leif Bratt

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2009, vol. 4, issue 1, 74-92

Abstract: The United Nations (UN) is a key multinational institution that has the formidable task of forming politically acceptable solutions in response to environment and development issues that resonate amongst the entire international community. When it comes to sustainable development, the UN has published Our Common Future, the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The Commission's definition of sustainable development is widely known – to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Mainstream development and environment academics and practitioners prefer to dwell and give preference to the 'necessity of economic growth to meet the needs', but far less to the view articulated in the Report of the imperative that this occur within ecological limitations and that developing countries should be the beneficiaries of growth. Moreover, what is not so widely discussed are the causes attributed in the Report for global environmental degradation and, therefore, the attendant risk of unsustainable development. The Commission unequivocally states that a major cause is poverty. This paper will test how defensible this position is and identify the possible explanations as to why this perspective has been adopted.

Keywords: World Commission on Environment and Development; WCED; Brundtland Report; poverty; institutional gap; environmental degradation; UN; United Nations; Our Common Future; sustainable development; sustainability; ecological limitations; developing countries. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=24857 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijisde:v:4:y:2009:i:1:p:74-92

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().