ABSTRACT

This chapter contributes to the setting of an appropriate theoretical background, grasping the very nature of environmental issues and its implications for the debate on ways to bring Sustainable Development (SD) to reality. It explains the concept of a system-environment (S-E) relationship, and introduces controversial universes in which environmental issues have to be thought and tackled. The context of scientific controversies actually reflects the inability of present states of ecological objects to establish guaranteed equivalence with future environmental states. With roots in the structure of the S-E complex and in the plurality of orders of justification, environmental issues are touched by critical uncertainty and long-lasting scientific controversies. Unless the modern society is ready to turn the axiomatics supporting its justification orders upside down, theoretical limits as well as practical difficulties to finding appropriate and workable tests imply that SD should not be considered an alternative justification principle.