ABSTRACT
Sustainability, equity and liveability are clearly terms strongly loaded with value judgements. All have to do with the distribution of goods, services and with the more qualitative aspects of living in the present generation, but also with trade-offs between the present and future generations. These terms also require specification of the desired environmental quality, of the substitutions that are allowed between envi-ronmental resources and human-made resources, and the position one takes with respect to a number of other aspects of life on earth, eg the anthropogenic acceleration of the extinction of species. The question then arises: are ‘hard’ constraints on sustainable development paths present or is any desired outcome realizable on the basis of the presently existing resource base, whatever value judgements are made?
