Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 - (Page 10)

SLDT FINANCE SUSTAINABILITY Origin of Sustainability Movement Leads to Current Challenges Individual components of sustainability have come together, but were initiated and promoted by separate advocates and frames of reference. By Chris Moore I t’s 9:30 in the morning and I am at another sustainability conference. The speaker started his PowerPoint presentation with the same slide as the previous speaker by defining sustainable development (SD) as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Next comes the great sustainable compromise - we must simultaneously address economic, environmental, and social issues in all our endeavors. Everyone claps in agreement. It makes us feel good to be working for such a noble cause. Later, I walk around the exhibit hall talking to environmental groups, developers and policymakers, hearing their take on SD. Environmentalists speak in terms of biodiversity and carrying-capacity, cringing at the thought of a backhoe decimating Mother Earth. Many developers struggle to accept sustainability initiatives, faulting stringent bureaucratic processes and additional costs. Policymakers wish to either increase regulation or hold more planning charrettes to find the elusive “common ground.” This provides a snap-shot of the wideranging opinions on how to achieve SD and reveals a decidedly difficult truth – while we all acknowledge the famous definition of SD created by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 (equity between economic, social and environmental concerns), and work passionately to promote it, but the sustainability movement continues to struggle. Since the United Nations (UN) adopted Brundtland’s celebrated framing of SD into its bylaws in 1992, the economic gap between developed and developing nations has increased, the global environmental condition has worsened, and total global poverty persists. In the United States, sustainability initiatives being drafted into growthmanagement policies are typically met with resistance by one faction or another, asserting that their interests are being circumvented somewhere in the local decision-making process. Why the disconnect? The main issue lies in the fact that most people perceive the goals of sustainability through different lenses. That is, we tend to focus on those features of SD As the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot pioneered forest conservation in the U.S. that suit our needs while disregarding those that do not. The early debates could be seen in this fashion. Pioneering environmentalists like Aldo Leopold promoted ecological preservation through a “land ethic” that served to fulfill the innate need to connect with nature. As such, Leopold’s framing of environmentalism championed “things natural, wild, and free.” On the other hand, Gifford Pinchot promoted the “conservation ethic” to advance economic development through planned use of the environment. As such, Pinchot’s framing of environmentalism championed a utilitarian view through “the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man.” As with the historical debates over the ethics of Leopold and Pinchot to where the environmental movement was to take us, the sustainability movement has also been marked with disagreement over where SD needs to go. Perhaps a more critical review of the history of SD from the viewpoint of “where we come from” instead of the traditional approach of “where we need to go” can reveal a commonly shared experience that offers hope in finding the everelusive “common ground.” Birth of the Movement Following an oil spill off California’s Santa Barbara coast and the spontaneous combustion of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River in 1969, a ground swell of support to protect America’s air and water began to take precedence. The primary sociopolitical challenge in the late sixties was in creating a legislative balance between 10 February 2009 Sustainable Land Development Today

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 Contents Our Voice Modern Flood Disasters Origin of the Sustainability Movement SLDI in Focus Calendar Build Smart Product Innovation Takeoff and Cost Management Industry News Products & Services Advertiser Index Editorial Board SLDT Resources Last Word

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

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