China’s sustainable development
The concept and theory of Sustainable
Development
Guo Ru Ph.D.
CESE, Tongji University
ruguo@tongji.edu.cn
Outline
 Ice-breaking game
 Why sustainable development?
 What is sustainable development?
 Sustainable development in China
 Critiques on sustainable development
Ice-breaking game
An Interview (5 minutes)
 Work in pair and ask your partner the following
questions(3 minutes):
 Do you always use sustainable mode of
transportation ( such as public transport ，
bicycle and walking)？
 Have you participated in community (or
campus) activities？
 Do you always eat local food？
 Discuss with your partner the reason of your
choices(2 minutes)
We are now faced with the fact
that tomorrow is today.
--- Martin Luther King
Why Sustainable Development?
Something New Under the Sun：
Criticism on Growth Worship
 Historian J.R. McNell
 The meaning: the place of humankind within the
natural world is not what it was
 Growth worship as the mainstream ideology in
Socialism and Capitalism
 After the Great Depression of the 1930s:
nature figured as a storehouse of resource
waiting to be used
The Earliest Ecological Economics:
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
 An England Priest, Principle of Population (1798)
 Population growth is exponential while food supply
growth is linear.There exists the trend that the growth of
population will exceed that of food supply
 Different comments on Malthus
 Failure anathema prophet (失败的诅咒先知)
 The first economist who combine the economy
with ecology
 His idea implied: economy as subsystem of
ecosystem; population carrying capacity
Efficiency Only Buys Time
 Infinite growth in a finite system is an impossible
goal and will eventually lead to failure
 Two approaches of growth worship
 Market Economy (the West): decentralized
markets; greater efficiency
 Planned Economy (USSR, China ):
centralization; low efficiency
 Because of its greater efficiency, the West can
kept going for a bit longer in its impossible quest
 But efficiency only buys time, the infinite growth
is impossible.
The Development Gap
100
%
80
OECD
60
Middle-income
40
Low income
20
0
% of world
population
% of world
GNP
% of world
trade
Share of resources
% of
com m ercial
lending
The Development Gap
OECD
(19% population)
• 50% global grain
production
• 60% of artificial
fertilizers
• 92% private cars
• 75% of energy use
• 80% of iron & stell
• 81% of chemical
production
• 86% of copper &
aluminium
Middle-income
Countries
(60% population)
•30-40% foodstuffs
Low-income
Countries
(21% population)
• 500-800 million
chronically
undernourished
• Limited access to
fresh water
1.5 billion persons with no household electricity
or telephone
• Around 10-15% of
world energy and
industrial production
Christie, I and D. Warburton, 2001, p.7, Table 1.1
• Mainly meeting
energy needs by
cutting fuel wood at
higher than
replacement levels
• 100 million without
adequate fuel
The development gap
 The geography of the development gap is more complex than a
simple ‘North-South divide’
 Latin America has HDI levels similar to eastern Europe; China’s HDI and some others in SE Asia
are relatively high
 South Asia has a concentration of levels below 0.6
 Level in the Middle East are relatively high, although not in Yemen, Syria and Iraq
 The picture for Africa is very complex, with the extreme north and south having decent HDI
levels
Unsustainable Exploitation of Resources
 Since 1971, global energy use has increased by
70% and is expected to rise 2% per year in the
next 15 years. This will increase greenhouse gases
by 50% over current levels.
 Increased atmospheric nitrogen from fossil fuel
combustion and farming of root crops, which
release nitrogen, has intensified the occurrence in
of acid rain
 Natural resources (e.g. soils, forests, fish aquatic
habitats) continue to decrease in quantity due to
fires, pollution and human influence
Unsustainable Exploitation of Resources
 Loss of biological diversity has resulted from
human activities such as deforestation and
pollution.
 40% of our global economy is dependent on
biologically derived products.
 17 million hectares of tropical forest destroyed
each year
 70-100 species disappear every day
 Water, soil and air have been strained due to high
pollution levels.
The State of the Planet
Climate Change
Diagram from IPCC
The State of Our Planet
Consequences: Four Earths needed in 2100
1900
2003
2050
2100
Viewing The Earth As A Ship
The earth as a ship, gross material
production of the economy as the
cargo
We are navigating unknown seas
and no one can predict the
weather for the voyage
Resources are limited，
What should be the priority?
Our goal is:
To load the ship to the limit
To maintain areas of the ship
for our comfort and enjoyment
To maintain it in excellent
condition for future generations
What is Sustainable Development?
Growth and Development
 Growth（增长） is a quantitative increase in size, or an increase in

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


throughput
Throughput （吞吐量）is the flow of raw materials and energy
from the global ecosystem, through the economy, and back to the
global ecosystem as waste
Development （发展）is the increase in quality of goods and
services, as defined by their ability to increase human well-being,
provided by a given throughput
Carrying capacity （承载力） is the population of humans that
can be sustained by a given ecosystem at a given level of
consumption, with a given technology
Sustainable development （可持续发展）is development
without growth----that is, qualitative improvement in the ability to
satisfy wants (needs and desires) without a quantitative increase in
throughput beyond environmental carrying capacity
Limits to growth ≠ limits to development
Sustainable development
Social
Development that meets
the needs of the present
without compromising the
Environmental
ability of future
generations to meet their
own needs
Economic
History
 Stockholm 1972: UN Conference on the Human
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
Environment
Report of the World Commission on the Environment and
Development: “Our Common Future”,1987.
Rio 1992: UN Conference on Environment and
Development: Agenda 21(a non-binding, voluntarily
implemented action plan of the United Nations with regards
to sustainable development.)
Johannesburg 2002: 2nd World Summit on Sustainable
Development
Rio +20 ,2012:UN Conference on Sustainable
Development, with sustainable development governance and
green economy as the main themes
Far-Reaching Ethical, Political and
Economic Implications
 Raised the environmental issue to a high
level;
 Recognizing the issue of intra-generation
and inter-generation equity;
 While, still allowing for growth and
development;
 And bound all countries to a global effort.
Who does sustainable development?
 The UN and its agencies
 Dozens of environmental conventions and programs(UNDP)
 National, state, local governments, communities
 110 national, over 6000 local Agenda 21s
 Non-governmental organizations
 Thousands involved
 Industry Sectors
 All firms involved in service provision from cradle to cradle
 Companies and other Organizations
 Environmental Management Systems; Corporate social
responsibility/sustainability programs; ethical investing
 Consumers
 Green consumer movements, fair trade
Ecological Definition
 IUCN, WWF and UNEP. 1980.
 Sustainable development - maintenance of essential ecological
processes and life support systems, the preservation of genetic
diversity, and the sustainable utilization of species and ecosystems.
Core Economic Definitions
Robert Haveman. 1989.
 Sustainable development is the maintenance or growth of the
aggregate level of economic well-being, defined as the level of per
capita economic well-being.
John Pezzey. 1989.
 Our standard definition of sustainable development will be nondeclining per capita utility - because of its self-evident appeal as a
criterion for inter-generational equity.
Social Definitions
David Munro,1995.
 Sustainable development is a complex of activities that can be
expected to improve the human condition in such a manner that the
improvement can be maintained.
Nazli Choucri, 1997.
 The process of managing social demands without eroding life support
properties or mechanisms of social cohesion and resilience.
Integrating economic definition with environment
Johan Holmberg, 1992.
 Sustainable development means either that per capita utility or well-being is
increasing over time with free exchange or substitution between natural and manmade capital; or that per capita utility or well-being is increasing over time subject to
non-declining natural wealth.
There are several reasons why the second and more narrow focus is justified, including:
 Nonsubstitutability between environmental assets (the ozone layer cannot be
recreated);
 Uncertainty (our limited understanding of the life-supporting functions of many
environmental assets dictates that they be preserved for the future);
 Irreversibility (once lost, no species can be recreated);
 Equity (the poor are usually more affected by bad environments than the rich).
Integration and Fundamental Change?
Maurice Strong, 1992.
 Sustainable development involves a process of deep and
profound change in the political, social, economic,
institutional, and technological order, including redefinition
of relations between developing and more developed
countries.
World Bank, 1992..
 Sustainable development means basing developmental and
environmental policies on a comparison of costs and benefits
and on careful economic analysis that will strengthen
environmental protection and lead to rising and sustainable
levels of welfare.
Sustainable Development as a Balance
Environment
Society
Economy
Sustainable development in China:
China’s Agenda 21
China’s Agenda 21
 1978 Open Door Policy, rapid industrialization &
urbanization  serious environmental problems
 June 1992: UN Conference on Environment and
Development in Rio de Janeiro
 July 1992: the State Development Planning
Commission (SDPC) & the State Science &
Technology Commission (SSTC) were appointed as
the leading institutions for co-ordinating all
ministries, departments and non-government
organizations to work together to formulate China’s
Agenda 21—’White Paper on China’s Population,
Environment and Development in the 21st Century’
China’s Agenda 21
 SDPC: socio-economic planning
 SSTC: research and development
 ACCA21: The Administrative Centre for China’s Agenda 21—
secretariat set up in May 1994, http://www.acca21.org.cn/
 March 25, 1994: China’s Agenda 21, the first national agenda 21
formulated after the 1st Earth Summit
China’s Agenda 21
 Four parts:
 Comprehensive strategy and policy of sustainable
development
 Sustainable social development
 Sustainable economic development
 Rational utilisation of resources and environmental
protection
 Agenda 21: a guide document for drawing up medium &
long-term plans on socio-economic development: Five Year
Plans & sectoral plans at different levels
Strategic SD Concepts:
 To promote the shift in economic structure & the mode of economic
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development: improving quality of development in growth
Relying on science and technology: integrating science, education & the
economy
To promote moral & ethical development & to strengthen democracy &
legal systems
Control population growth
Policies and laws on utilization & protection of natural resources
Controlling pollution & preventing soil erosion
‘Help the poor’ programmes
National policy, legal system, decision making and management
coordination mechanisms for SD
Understanding Sustainable Development
 There exists the limits to growth since natural resource
is finite. In other words, growth has its ecological
constraints.
 Since natural resource is finite, thus how to distribute
these scarce resources is a very important issue. A more
equal distribution system can relief the contradiction
between intra-generation, intergeneration, and interspecies, which can secure a more sustainable future. In
other words, growth has its moral constraints.
 How to use scarce resources to meet our needs? Under
the ecological and moral constraints, an efficient
allocation mechanism (eg., market mechanism) is
necessary for a sustainable development
Critiques on sustainable
development
 Discussions of sustainable development and
sustainable living are also criticized by some as
overly anthropocentric.
 Arguing against consumption and overpopulation
on the grounds that they are depleting resources
and threatening the well-being of present and
future generations can ignore harms done to the
natural world itself.
Homework
 Give your own view to the
following question（less than
1500 words).
 How does your country(or region)
reflect a history of sustainable
development?
 Deadline：3.26