ABSTRACT
The search for a paradigmatic alternative to the mainstream economic idioms of development, which began in the 1970s, has found an axiological basis in the growing scientific understanding of the ecological principles of biological communities and the environmental consequences of development. The concept of sustainability, developed and contemplated upon over decades following the lead of the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, UNEP and WWF 1980), is multifaceted. Looking beyond the conservation goal to ensure continuance of the human use of the biosphere, the sustainability movement aims to establish a global society in which economic and ecological systems are integrated and all benefits thereof equitably distributed across time and space. With this conceptual goal of social and environmental justice, a comprehensive theory of sustainability has evolved and gained clarity in Green texts. Nevertheless, the practical way forward to attaining sustainability is not clear-cut. This is not because the idea itself has any methodological lacuna or ethical weakness, but because it is empirically difficult to test. Most problems of the environmental damage that the programme of sustainability movement seeks to prevent – species extinction, habitat loss, resource exhaustion and global pollution – are of a scale that is historically unprecedented, and therefore no time-tested model of alternative to the neoclassical economy may be proffered as the road to sustainability.
