The Ends and Means of Sustainability

Abstract The idea of ‘sustainability’ received serious attention in the so-called Brundtland Commission Report that has many attractive features. In particular, it highlighted the importance of intergenerational justice while maintaining a concern for the poor of each generation and shifted the focus away from resources to human beings. I argue that this way of understanding sustainability, while a great improvement, is still incomplete. There are important grounds for favouring a freedom-oriented view, focusing on crucial freedoms that people have reason to value. Human freedoms include the fulfilment of needs, but also the liberty to define and pursue our own goals, objectives and commitments, no matter how they link with our own particular needs. Human beings are reflective creatures and are able to reason about and decide what they would like to happen, rather than being compellingly led by their own needs—biological or social. A fuller concept of sustainability has to aim at sustaining human freedoms, rather than only at our ability to fulfil our felt needs. Some empirical examples are given to illustrate the distinctive nature and the reasoned importance of seeing sustainability in terms of sustaining human freedoms and capabilities. Keywords: CapabilitiesEnvironmentSustainabilityFreedomsSustainable consumptionAgencyParticipationDevelopment Notes *This is the text of the Keynote Address at the International Conference on ‘Transition to Sustainability’ (of the Inter Academy Panel on International Issues) in Tokyo, 15 May 2000. I have argued elsewhere that the success of development as a process also depends on the role of people as agents rather than just as patients (Sen, Citation1999a). This occurs in ‘In Memoriam’ (1850). There is a distinctly ‘Darwinian’ feature in the contrast that Tennyson draws. It was, however, published 10 years before ‘The Origin of Species’. In a joint paper with Sudhir Anand, I have explored these issues further, along with discussing the basic demands of sustainable human development (Anand and Sen, Citation2000). An earlier version of this essay (Anand and Sen, Citation1994) was used for the conceptual chapter of The Human Development Report 1995 (UNDP, Citation1995; see ‘Foreword’ and ‘Overview’). See also Harris et al. Citation(2000). Brian Heap also notes in his ‘Introduction’ to the volume: ‘sustainable consumption as a concept is a hotbed of controversy’ (Heap and Kent, Citation2000, p. 4). Disputes can arise from epistemic problems, including difficulties in knowing what the effects of additional consumption would be on the environment, how they can be altered or modified, how technological progress may change the basic empirical relations, and so on. These issues are important also, and they supplement the problems in bringing about changes in consumption habits, with which this paper is particularly concerned. The perspective of freedom can inter alia incorporate the importance of need fulfilment, since the freedom to fulfil certain needs would typically be among the more important freedoms that a person has reason to value (cf. Sen, Citation1985b, 1992). The discussion that follows is more fully developed in Sen (1999a), and more summarily in Sen Citation(1996). See Massimo Livi Bacci Citation(2000), especially Chapter 6, and also the literature cited there. See Easterlin Citation(1980), Caldwell Citation(1982), Cassen et al. Citation(1994), and Lindahl-Kiessling and Landberg Citation(1994), among many other contributions. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAmartya Sen Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA