sustainable development as freedom (mcdonald, 2006)

Sustainable development as freedom

Robert McDonald

Graduate School of Design Harvard University Cambridge USA

Key words Amartya Sen biodiversity protection development as freedom poverty alleviationsustainable development

SUMMARYThere has been considerable debate about how best to define sustainable developmentIn this commentary I argue that Amartya Senrsquos concept of lsquodevelopment as freedomrsquo isthe appropriate theoretical framework for understanding sustainable developmentEnvironmentalists should consider defining their goal as lsquosustainable development asfreedomrsquo the achievement of the greatest possible level of freedom without restrictingthe access of future generations to these same freedoms The adoption of this frameworkhas implications for the work of environmental NGOs which are briefly discussed

From its beginning the concept of sustainabledevelopment has been contentious and there hasbeen a constant battle between those who put theemphasis on sustainability (eg Robinson 1993Willers 1994) and those who put the emphasis ondevelopment (eg Holdgate and Munro 1993)Indeed the term emerged as a sort of truce be-tween the agendas of First World environmentalistsand Third World development advocates a com-promise lsquodevelopment that meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability of futuregenerations to meet their own needsrsquo (World Com-mission on Environment and Development 1987)Furthermore within the environmental commu-nity there has been considerable debate over whatexactly lsquosustainablersquo means with various lsquoweakrsquo andlsquostrongrsquo interpretations (Beckerman 1994) andhow exactly one would measure it (eg Wen et al2005) This has been mirrored by a debate amongeconomists about what exactly lsquodevelopmentrsquomeans Environmentalists need to be aware of thisdebate and in particular understand how thebroad definition of lsquodevelopmentrsquo offered byAmartya Sen and others changes how we conceiveof sustainable development In this paper I offer a

perspective on what those changes are and how itaffects the mission of environmental NGOs

Early definitions of development tended to focuson the creation of material goods whether infra-structure housing or dams To make this easier tomeasure development was often defined simplyin monetary terms such as the per capita grossdomestic product (GDP) In the last several decadesthere has been a shift toward including social con-cerns in the concept of development (eg Ray1998) Some of this shift has been recorded in thetext of international environmental treaties as theso-called three legs of the stool of developmentthe economic the social and the political (cfDawe and Ryan 2003)

The most powerful statement of this broad con-ception of development can be found in AmartyaSenrsquos famous book Development as Freedom (1999)Money or material goods do not matter to peopleSen argues except to the extent that they providefreedom from different sorts of deprivation alsquocapabilityrsquo for people to improve their life Accessto food andor the money to buy it provides free-dom from hunger A social safety net such as un-employment insurance or universal healthcare

International Journal of Sustainable Development amp World Ecology 13 (2006) 445ndash447

Correspondence Robert McDonald Graduate School of Design Harvard University 48 Quincy Street CambridgeMA 02138 USA Email rmcdonaldgsdharvardedu

445

Sustainable development as freedom Robert McDonald

446 International Journal of Sustainable Development amp World Ecology

provides freedom from insecurity The ability toparticipate meaningfully in governmental decisionsprovides freedom from a sense of powerlessness InSenrsquos view development properly construed isabout strengthening all of these freedoms

This broad definition of development has notbeen accepted by all economists (eg Navarro 2000Prendergast 2005) It has been attacked as vaguedifficult to measure compared with something likeper capita GDP Some have argued that it watersdown the concept of development distracting fromthe important task of increasing incomes in theThird World Moreover some have claimed it isdangerous to include political freedoms so cen-trally in the concept of development for fear ofturning off authoritarian governments to the ideaHowever I believe that Senrsquos concept of lsquodevelop-ment as freedomrsquo is exactly what most environ-mentalists have in mind when they use the termlsquosustainable developmentrsquo not simply an increasein monetary income or consumption but a substan-tial increase in the quality of peoplersquos lives IndeedSenrsquos idea fits well into the three legs of develop-ment already accepted by most advocates of sustain-able development He just states his broad conceptin powerful human terms not as some abstractprocess of development but as tangible freedomsin the lives of real people

It is time for conservation biologists to thinkabout lsquosustainable development as freedomrsquo theachievement of the greatest possible level of free-dom ndash from poverty from want from insecurityfrom repression ndash without restricting the access offuture generations to these same freedoms Utiliz-ing this language makes clear that sustainabledevelopment is about people those alive today andthose that will live in the future Perhaps mostimportant for many of the desperately poor in theworld is freedom from material want such as a lackof food or water or shelter Ecologists can restatethis as being freedom from the consequences ofecosystem services degradation The loss of cleandrinking water because of pollution or in the caseof South Africa (Richardson 1998) invasive exoticspecies is a loss of freedom from thirst The loss ofpotentially arable land due to erosion affects globalfood production potentially impacting the abilityof humanity to be free of the scourge of hungerThe same might be said of the loss of the naturalclimate regulation capacity of the Earthrsquos atmo-sphere due to increased atmospheric CO2 which

could also decrease global food productionBiodiversity loss negates the freedom of futuregenerations to experience the marvelous varietyof life and to profit financially intellectually andspiritually from its study While this way of talkingmay seem somewhat cumbersome ecologists arealready quite comfortable with its message asexemplified by the anthropocentric focus of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessmentrsquos focus onecosystem services (MEA 2003)

Freedom from poverty is another important goalof sustainable development More than 13 billionpeople currently live on less than US$1 per day(World Bank 2005) and so alleviating their plight isessential At the same time any actions to achievethis goal must not inhibit the freedom of futuregenerations to be free from poverty In effect devel-opment today should not draw down the naturalcapital ndash ecosystem services broadly construed ndash somuch that those yet to be born suffer Environ-mental economists are already comfortable withthis idea (eg Costanza and Daly 1992) and havemade considerable progress toward quantifyingnatural capital (Goodland and Daly 1996)

However viewing sustainable development asfreedom also means that political freedoms nowand in the future are important Foremost amongthese is the freedom of people to actively partici-pate in decisions made by their own governmentand the freedom to peacefully dissent when theydisagree with these decisions The process of devel-opment must then include people in the decisionsthat affect them while attempting to avoid actionsthat might remove the freedom of future genera-tions to make their own decisions about the courseof development Ecologists are generally much lesscomfortable with this latter political componentof sustainable development There is a fear it makesthe concept of sustainable development too vaguedifficult to measure compared with somethingconcrete like tons of carbon dioxide emitted (Lele1991) Some argue it dilutes the concept of sus-tainable development making it too easily appro-priated as a tool for other agendas (Willers 1994)Most significantly some argue it runs the risk ofmaking sustainable development too political thushampering the ability of conservationists to pushfor environmental sustainability (cf Newton andFreyfogle 2005) These concerns are valid andadvocates of sustainable development must becareful about over-emphasizing this political

component I believe two things can mitigate someof these concerns

First abstract concepts are often part of thevision and mission statements of organizations andare usually operationalized in order to make themmore useful For instance the Millennium Eco-system Assessment took the broad idea of lsquoeco-system servicesrsquo and came up with a specific list ofdifferent types of services Each item on the list canbe assessed for changes over time and if desiredtheir sum scores will give some sense of changes inlsquoecosystem servicesrsquo in general In the same waylsquofreedom from povertyrsquo is already defined in tract-able terms by agencies such as the United NationsDevelopment Programme which has created aHuman Development Index The extent of lsquopoliti-cal freedomsrsquo is routinely assessed by organizationssuch as Freedom House using a large checklist ofcriteria These kinds of checklists make the settingof concrete targets possible and permit monitoringof performance over time

Second environmental groups can explicitly saythat they promote a broad conception of sustain-able development as freedom without losing theirfocus on conservation Clearly environmentalNGOs cannot achieve this broad goal on their ownand they should not try to lest terminal missioncreep set in Nevertheless it is part of our vision forthe world and we should say so Most advocatesof sustainable development would not supportauthoritarian governments or empires even anenvironmentally responsible one How decisionsare made matters to us Moreover describing ourvision of sustainable development in terms of thefreedoms of people now and in the future canmake our ideas much more compelling to the laypublic Environmental NGOs can leave the day-to-day work of poverty alleviation and championingdemocracy to other groups while still making sureour conservation actions are consistent with andindeed support these lofty goals

REFERENCESBeckerman W Sustainable Development ndash Is It a Use-

ful Concept Environmental Values 19943191ndash209Costanza R and Daly HE Natural Capital and Sustain-

able Development Conservation Biology 1992637ndash46

Dawe N and Ryan K The faulty three-legged-stoolmodel of sustainable development ConservationBiology 2003171458ndash1460

Goodland R and Daly H Environmental sustain-ability Universal and non-negotiable EcologicalApplications 199661002ndash17

Holdgate M and Munro D Limits to Caring AResponse Conservation Biology 19937938ndash40

Lele SM Sustainable Development ndash a Critical ReviewWorld Development 199119607ndash21

MEA Ecosystems and Human Well-Being A Framework forAssessment Washington DC Island Press 2003

Navarro V Development and quality of life A critiqueof Amartya Senrsquos Development as Freedom Inter-national Journal of Health Services 200030661ndash74

Newton JL and Freyfogle ET Sustainability a dissentConservation Biology 20051923ndash32

Prendergast R The concept of freedom and itsrelation to economic development ndash a critical

appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen Cam-bridge Journal of Economics 2005291145ndash70

Ray D Development Economics Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1998

Richardson DM Forestry trees as invasive aliens Con-servation Biology 19981218ndash26

Robinson JG The Limits to Caring Sustainable Livingand the Loss of Biodiversity Conservation Biology1993720ndash8

Sen A Development as Freedom New York Knopf 1999Wen Z Zhang K Huang L Du B Chen W and Li W

Genuine saving rate An integrated indicator tomeasure urban sustainable development towardsan ecocity The International Journal of SustainableDevelopment and World Ecology 200512184ndash96

Willers B Sustainable Development A New WorldDeception Conservation Biology 199481146ndash8

World Bank World Development Report 2005Washington DC World Bank 2005

World Commission on Environment and Develop-ment Our common future Oxford Oxford Univer-sity Press 1987


International Journal of Sustainable Development amp World Ecology 447


446 International Journal of Sustainable Development amp World Ecology

provides freedom from insecurity The ability toparticipate meaningfully in governmental decisionsprovides freedom from a sense of powerlessness InSenrsquos view development properly construed isabout strengthening all of these freedoms

This broad definition of development has notbeen accepted by all economists (eg Navarro 2000Prendergast 2005) It has been attacked as vaguedifficult to measure compared with something likeper capita GDP Some have argued that it watersdown the concept of development distracting fromthe important task of increasing incomes in theThird World Moreover some have claimed it isdangerous to include political freedoms so cen-trally in the concept of development for fear ofturning off authoritarian governments to the ideaHowever I believe that Senrsquos concept of lsquodevelop-ment as freedomrsquo is exactly what most environ-mentalists have in mind when they use the termlsquosustainable developmentrsquo not simply an increasein monetary income or consumption but a substan-tial increase in the quality of peoplersquos lives IndeedSenrsquos idea fits well into the three legs of develop-ment already accepted by most advocates of sustain-able development He just states his broad conceptin powerful human terms not as some abstractprocess of development but as tangible freedomsin the lives of real people

It is time for conservation biologists to thinkabout lsquosustainable development as freedomrsquo theachievement of the greatest possible level of free-dom ndash from poverty from want from insecurityfrom repression ndash without restricting the access offuture generations to these same freedoms Utiliz-ing this language makes clear that sustainabledevelopment is about people those alive today andthose that will live in the future Perhaps mostimportant for many of the desperately poor in theworld is freedom from material want such as a lackof food or water or shelter Ecologists can restatethis as being freedom from the consequences ofecosystem services degradation The loss of cleandrinking water because of pollution or in the caseof South Africa (Richardson 1998) invasive exoticspecies is a loss of freedom from thirst The loss ofpotentially arable land due to erosion affects globalfood production potentially impacting the abilityof humanity to be free of the scourge of hungerThe same might be said of the loss of the naturalclimate regulation capacity of the Earthrsquos atmo-sphere due to increased atmospheric CO2 which

could also decrease global food productionBiodiversity loss negates the freedom of futuregenerations to experience the marvelous varietyof life and to profit financially intellectually andspiritually from its study While this way of talkingmay seem somewhat cumbersome ecologists arealready quite comfortable with its message asexemplified by the anthropocentric focus of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessmentrsquos focus onecosystem services (MEA 2003)

Freedom from poverty is another important goalof sustainable development More than 13 billionpeople currently live on less than US$1 per day(World Bank 2005) and so alleviating their plight isessential At the same time any actions to achievethis goal must not inhibit the freedom of futuregenerations to be free from poverty In effect devel-opment today should not draw down the naturalcapital ndash ecosystem services broadly construed ndash somuch that those yet to be born suffer Environ-mental economists are already comfortable withthis idea (eg Costanza and Daly 1992) and havemade considerable progress toward quantifyingnatural capital (Goodland and Daly 1996)

However viewing sustainable development asfreedom also means that political freedoms nowand in the future are important Foremost amongthese is the freedom of people to actively partici-pate in decisions made by their own governmentand the freedom to peacefully dissent when theydisagree with these decisions The process of devel-opment must then include people in the decisionsthat affect them while attempting to avoid actionsthat might remove the freedom of future genera-tions to make their own decisions about the courseof development Ecologists are generally much lesscomfortable with this latter political componentof sustainable development There is a fear it makesthe concept of sustainable development too vaguedifficult to measure compared with somethingconcrete like tons of carbon dioxide emitted (Lele1991) Some argue it dilutes the concept of sus-tainable development making it too easily appro-priated as a tool for other agendas (Willers 1994)Most significantly some argue it runs the risk ofmaking sustainable development too political thushampering the ability of conservationists to pushfor environmental sustainability (cf Newton andFreyfogle 2005) These concerns are valid andadvocates of sustainable development must becareful about over-emphasizing this political


























sustainable development as freedom (mcdonald, 2006)

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