"The History of Development" by Gilbert Rist

The word "development," as discussed in our most recent posts, embodies a wide range of speculations and ideologies muddled together to represent an ongoing phenomenon based upon differing social, economic, and environmental encumbrance.  As of such, we as the dominating species, hold certain responsibilities regarding the future of our planet and the contingencies involved in sustaining life and achieving abundance for all beings on a fair, consistent level.  Poverty, after all, is one of the greatest challenges we face, even in an age of modernity, technology, and ever-increasing interdependence.  Obstacles such as poverty rely heavily on the term development and its encompassing archetypes.  Moreover, the emphasis of the word itself appears to evoke a sense of progression, expansion, or improvement.  Yet, according to Gilbert Rist, the wide discrepancies regarding the actual meaning of the word "development" has created a troubling paradigm, one that embodies a fixed way of thinking without actually resolving the real issues at hand. 

Rist begins his argument by relaying three different definitions of “development,” one from a dictionary, another from the Report of the South Commission, and the last from the Human Development Report of 1991 (published via the United Nations.) He comments on their central motifs of social evolutionism, individualism, and economics, yet questions their ability to epitomize the true meaning of such a widely used expression.  He attributes such fallacies to the tribulations of perception and personal belief (something he calls “imagined words,”) where each individual defines development according to his or her idea of the ideal life.

          
The reader is thus left to wonder, does development actually exist then?  Rist compels the reader to instead reconsider development as “a set of practices, sometimes appearing to conflict with one another, which require—for the production of society—the general transformation and destruction of national environment and of social relations.  Its aim is to increase the production of commodities (goods and services) geared, by way of exchange, to effective demand.”  From this definition, he slowly unravels all misconception and rhetoric associated with the term and replaces such fallacies with the idea of a phenomenon based on conflict and interaction in society, where economic needs are sanctioned at the expense of the majority.  It is this misinterpretation throughout the course of history that has thus allowed the suppression and exploitation of various levels of society.  Rist’s fundamental argument is that little progress can be made without disregarding mainstream economics and the paralyzing effects of prototype thinking.  Ultimately, it is this type of disillusionment through expression and skewed views that will continue to cause discrepancies among the modernized world and greater humanity in the name of "development."

Evolution of Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development: Definitions

Brundtland Report: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
The Brundtland Report's definition of sustainable development is considered a very strong definition, although it does use the world development in it.  This definition supports economic and social development, while emphasizing the need to protect our natural resources and environment.  

3 Pillars of Sustainable Development: 

The three pillars of sustainable development are used to present a visual of what is ultimately achieved by sustainable development.  Sustainable development evenly promotes social development, environmental protection, and economic development. The social pillar focuses on human inequality, social injustice, and poverty amongst the vast populations inhabiting Earth. Since resources are inherently limited and our environment is valuable, we must make sure we are protecting the natural resources our planet has supplied.  Examples of this type of "preserving behavior," so to speak, include renewable energy sources, recycling, reductions in fossil fuels and the harmful effects of processes such as deforestation.  While taking initiatives to support both social equity and environmental protection, we must also equally promote economic growth.  Economic development means creating a system in which our resources are allocated efficiently and fairly.  Sustainable development thus requires that the needs of these three pillars are properly met.  


World Bank: World Bank defines sustainable development as "basing developmental and environmental policies on a comparison of costs and benefits and on careful economic analysis that will strengthen environmental protection and lead to rising and sustainable levels of welfare."

Textbook definition:  An Introduction to Sustainable Development believes that the three components of sustainable development (as stated above) are of equal importance and are critical for achieving sustainable development. The textbook provides three operation criteria for sustainable development:

1. Economic objectives should not be maximized without satisfying environmental and social constraints.
2. Environmental benefits should not necessarily be maximized without satisfying economic and social constraints.
3. Social benefits should not maximized without satisfying economic and environmental constraints.

These three criteria reiterate the idea that economic, environmental, and social benefits must all be maximized under the constraint of the others. 


Our own definition: As you can see above, the term "sustainable development" is interpreted in many ways and has many different components. After researching and discussing the above definitions, we believe sustainable development to be a fundamentally dynamic phenomenon in which we, as human beings, strive to balance competing needs on the basis of understanding a world of opportunity costs and irrefutable limitations (whether socially, economically, or environmentally.)