5 timothy a wise overview essay in jonathan m harris

4 Brundtland Commission Report, 1987.
5 Timothy A. Wise: Overview Essay. In Jonathan M. Harris et. al. (eds.) A Survey of Sustainable Development: Social and Economic
Dimensions, Washington DC: Island Press, 2001, p. 47.
6 Connor and Dovers, p. 203.
7 Wise, p. 47.
8 ibid.
9 ibid. p. 49.
10 UNDP cited in Wise: 49.
11 Cited in Jennifer A. Elliott: An Introduction to Sustainable Development, London and New York: Routledge, 2006: 238.

INTRODUCTION TO THE CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
9
Given that, if we are to talk about sustainable development we have to realize that ‘economic
growth alone is not enough: the economic, social, and environmental aspects of any action
are interconnected’; ‘economic, environmental and social systems must all be kept in relative
equilibrium, and also balanced with each other, to be sustainable’. ‘The well being of the
environment, of economies, and of people is inextricably linked. … Considering only one of
these at a time leads to errors in judgment and “unsustainable” outcomes’ . 12
So, what do we need to do to have sustainable outcomes? According to EU’s 5th Environmental
Action Programme and the Maastricht Treaty, to achieve sustainable outcomes all these
dimensions should be integrated into other policy sectors and in particular into economic
policy. This is an ambitious aim that implies a policy-making process, which involves ‘constant
strategic planning and concerted effort by a variety of different actors’, 13 which in turn requires
institutional change. This was exactly what the Brundtland Commission’s report has called
for. Institutional change was needed as the economic and political institutions of the time,
both in national and international level, had failed to address the challenges that should be
overcome to attain sustainable development.
It seems not much has changed in the mean time. Almost 20 years after the report, Connor
and Dovers wrote, ‘past patterns of production and consumption; settlement and governance
have been unsustainable and have evolved to be so over a long period of time’. Therefore ‘the
problems are structural rather than superficial and not amenable to marginal organizational
or policy change … there is a prima facie case that the deeper institutional system of modern
society is not suited to the different and difficult social goal of sustainable development’.
Consequently, ‘(t)here is a strong consensus in the theoretical and empirical literature, and
even in official policy, that sustainable development requires significant institutional change’.14
This brings in the fourth dimension, which is politics. Obviously, beyond its economic, social,
and environmental dimensions, sustainable development is basically a political concept, 15 as
the legal and institutional change required cannot be achieved without the involvement of
governments.