Hola

Sustainable Cities Research Institute, University of Northumbria, Newcastle on Tyne, UK
ABSTRACT
Sustainable development, although a widely used phrase and idea, has many different
meanings and therefore provokes many different responses. In broad terms, the
concept of sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns
about a range of environmental issues with socio-economicissues. (es un intento de combinar las crecientes preocupaciones
sobre una serie de cuestiones ambientales con las cuestiones socioeconómicas) To aid understanding
of these different policies this paper presents a classification and mapping
of different trends of thought on sustainable development, their political and policy
frameworks and their attitudes towards change and means of change.Sustainable
development has the potential to address fundamental challenges for humanity, now
and into the future. However, to do this, it needs more clarity of meaning, concentrating
on sustainable livelihoods and well-being rather than well-having, and long
term environmental sustainability, which requires a strong basis in principles that link
the social and environmental to human equity.Received 31 July 2002; revised 16 October 2003; accepted 3 December 2003
Sustainable Development: A Challenging and Contested Concept
THE WIDESPREAD RISE OF INTEREST IN, AND SUPPORT FOR, THE CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE
development is potentially an important shift in understanding relationships of humanity with
nature and between people. (desarrollo es potencialmente un cambio importante enentender las relaciones de la humanidad con
naturaleza y entre las personas.) It is in contrast to the dominant outlook of the last couple of hundred
years, especially in the ‘North’, that has been based on the view of the separation of the environment
from socio-economic issues.
For most of the last couple of hundred years the environment has been largely seen as external to
humanity, mostly to beused and exploited, with a few special areas preserved as wilderness or parks.
Environmental problems were viewed mainly as local. On the whole the relationship between people
and the environment was conceived as humanity’s triumph over nature. This Promethean view (Dryzek,
1997) was that human knowledge and technology could overcome all obstacles including natural and
environmental ones. Thisview was linked with the development of capitalism, the industrial revolution
and modern science. As Bacon, one of the founders of modern science, put it, ‘The world

Mapping Different Approaches 39
man, not man for the world’. Environmental management and concern amongst most businesses and
governments, apart from local problems and wilderness conservation, was at best based on naturalresource management. A key example was the ideas of Pinchot in the USA (Dryzek, 1997), which recognized
that humans do need natural resources and that these resources should be managed, rather
than rapidly exploited, in order to ensure maximum long-term use.
Economics came to be the dominating issue of human relations with economic growth (Economía llegó a ser el tema dominante de las relacioneshumanas con el crecimiento económico), defined by
increasing production, as the main priority (Douthwaite, 1992). This was the seen as the key to humanity’s
well-being and, through growth, poverty would be overcome(bienestar y, a través del crecimiento, la pobreza superarse:): as everyone floated higher those at
the bottom would be raised out of poverty.
The concept of sustainable developmentis the result of the growing awareness of the global links
between mounting environmental problems, socio-economic issues to do with poverty and inequality
and concerns about a healthy future for humanity( que ver con la pobreza y la desigualdad
y preocupación por un futuro saludable para la humanidad). It strongly links environmental and socio-economic
issues. The first important use of the...