The report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland report) was published in April 1987. It was hailed as a major contribution towards analysing the interrelationship between people, resources, environment and development. Its message that continued economic growth is essential to achieve sustainable development contrasts strongly with the “limits to growth” philosophy of the 1970s.
The Government has now published “a perspective” to the Brundtland report(*). The response is supportive and favourable.
“Development without distruction” and “careful husbandry” of the world’s resources are the main Brundtland themes. The report defines sustainable development as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The report rejects the “preserve everything” approach to conservation, recognising that growth and development involve changes — every ecosystem everywhere cannot be preserved intact. The Government accepts this approach: “This emphasis on selectivity — on taking steps to protect where there is cause to — is the most realistic course.”
Brundtland argued that since environment and development issues are interlocked, governments and international organisations must take a broader view of environmental problems and policies by integrating environment and development in the decision-making processes through changes to the institutional and legal framework. The Government agrees, but maintains that in Britain we have already gone a good way down this road.
Our public inquiry and comprehensive land use planning system ensures that environmental considerations are given due weight in decision-making. And the creation of the Department of the Environment in the early 1970s arose from the recognition of the need for a new framework to co-ordinate the consideration of environmental issues and the environmental implications of government policies. “Accordingly, we are not convinced of the need for changes to the machinery of the UK Government.”
The day is never likely to dawn when it will be possible to say that sustainable development has been achieved, the Government response report concludes. “The challenge of matching policies and technologies to the concept of sustainable development is a continuing one which will stretch well into the future. Indeed, advancing technology has an important contribution to make to the pursuit of sustainable development. It is synonymous with more efficiently performing products, ever-improving production processes, and increasingly effective methods for tackling pollution and resource depletion.
“Increasingly frequently the only way of tackling many major problems is through painstaking and concerted international effort over a lengthy time-scale, with results consequently slow to appear. So patience as well as wisdom and understanding will be required by those who are looking for immediate solutions.”
(*) Our Common Future — A perspective by the United Kingdom on the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Obtainable (free) from Department of the Environment, A305 Romney House, 43 Marsham Street, London SW1P 3PY.
