ABSTRACT
Sustainability has played an increasing role in the efforts of international society to deal with global environmental problems. Sustainability was emphasised by the report of the Brundtland Commission, ‘Our common future’ (Brundtland 1987), and the term became a keyword on the international political agenda of the UN’s conference on environment and development, the so-called Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. When deconstructed, one can say that the term has become a critical political category on the one hand, and a regulative strategic tool within public planning on the other. It is implicitly critical in political terms because of its questioning of the aggregated consequences of utility maximisation in terms of the destruction and exploitation of natural resources, and in terms of social and economic inequalities, and poverty. The regulative strategic dimension of sustainability concerns its orientation which is supposed to contribute to better and more holistic regulation, not only dealing with the natural aggregated consequences of human behaviour but also with the driving forces behind such human behaviour. Since the beginning of the 1990s, sustainability has been a central feature of several international conventions and agreements. The Convention on Biological Diversity is but one example of how sustainability has become a keyword within nature conservation policy
… the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, including by appropriate access to genetic resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies, taking into account all rights over those resources and to technologies, and by appropriate funding. (UNEP 2000)
In the Convention, sustainability is often used to describe the strategic focus of the Convention. The introduction of the concept has challenged the more classical approach to nature conservation by emphasising that the protection of our natural resources must be achieved by a large-scale change in how we use the resources. Aspects other than biological ones have to be taken into consideration – factors such as production, the use of technology, the economy, equality and justice all have to be integrated into a conceptualisation of biodiversity. Politicians and planners are forced to search for new planning strategies due to the broad public and political recognition that we as modern societies have not so far been able to deal properly with environmental problems. In view of this recognised inadequacy and the pressure from the public, ‘participation’ has been central in the search for new strategies within the last 15–20 years. It was highlighted at the Earth Summit and explicated in the ‘Local Agenda 21’ (LA21) programme. From then on, the concept of participation has been combined with sustainability and played a key role around the globe. However, when we examine contemporary policies and public planning related to environmental issues, it seems that politicians and public planners in all parts of the world have major difficulties integrating participation and sustainability within public planning. In this chapter, we will argue that a new and more profound democratic understanding of sustainability is needed to provide the necessary changes in society. This understanding includes a utopian dimension which contrasts with a more strategic and risk-oriented approach. To illustrate our point we will use a case taken from the field of nature conservation, namely the recent development of the concept of national parks in Denmark. This is used to demonstrate some of the structural issues at stake when dealing with participation and sustainability within public planning.