Sustainable Development and the Concept of a Good Life

Anup Sinha ()
Additional contact information
Anup Sinha: IIM Calcutta

Chapter Chapter 1 in Essays on Sustainability and Management, 2017, pp 3-17 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter analyses the relationship between sustainable development and the general consensus about what constitutes the idea of good living in the material sense of the term. If sustainable development is viewed as a new and desirable approach to economic transformation then what implication would it have for changes in production technologies of businesses and consumption patterns of households? Sustainable development has to be seen as a process that can be replicated over time and space for future generations of people who will inhabit the earth. It relates to a fair distribution of resources and access to productive resources, across generations, keeping natural resource constraints in mind. The ‘business as usual’ pattern, as it is often referred to, is the practice of treating natural resources as a free (and perhaps even inexhaustible) gift, and would have to undergo substantial change. What then would be the new set of rules of the game of business? Would it be local rules for local games as against the overwhelming dominance of the large multinational corporation? Finding a harmonious balance with nature for the present and future generations throws up radically complex problems that warrant radical solutions beyond the institutional structure of market-based capitalism. The charm of the good life in a sustainable future would be very different from the seduction of an ever-growing collection of goods and services that constitutes the good life in the age of global capitalism.

Keywords: Sustainable Development; Future Generation; Good Life; Natural Capital; Fund Manager (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:isbchp:978-981-10-3123-6_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811031236

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-3123-6_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().