ABSTRACT
In its report Our Common Future (WCED, 1987), the Brundtland Commission drew attention to the monumental political and institutional changes that would need to be made if the principle of sustainable development was to be implemented at all scales, from the local to the international. This chapter summarises some of the political and institutional changes which would have to be made to implement sustainable development in the UK. The stronger versions of sustainable development are politically contentious, and moves to a strongly sustainable society will be resisted by many powerful groups. We introduce the concept of ‘institution’ and explain why institutional change is believed to be a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for sustainable development. This is followed by an attempt to explain why the institutions of government in the UK fail to coordinate public policies in ways which are compatible with all but the very weakest forms of sustainable development. Some of the moves that have been made by the UK Government to address these problems are described; namely, the attempt to ‘green’ the machinery of government and to prepare a national sustainable development strategy.
