Book contents
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Peer reviewers
- Editor’s note
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Environmental keystones: Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- SI prefixes
- Unit abbreviations
- Chemical formulae
- Part I Sustainable Development: Theories and Practices
- 1 Asian identities
- 2 On sustainable development
- 3 Sustainability: A scientific dilemma
- 4 Respect and reward: Ecology from the Analects of Confucius
- 5 Sustainable development from an East-West integrative perspective: Eastern culture meets Western complexity theory
- 6 Sustainable urbanism: Measuring long-term architectural merit
- 7 Sustaining wooden architectural heritage
- 8 Green development in China
- 9 Bhutan’s sustainable development initiatives and Gross National Happiness
- 10 A different form of sustainable development in Thailand and Bhutan: Implementation of a sufficiency approach
- 11 The sustainability of food production in Papua New Guinea
- 12 Education for sustainable development: An overview of Asia-Pacific perspectives
- 13 A placemaking framework for the social sustainability of master-planned communities: A case study from Australia
- 14 Poverty, inequity, and environmental degradation: The key issues confronting the environment and sustainable development in Asia
- 15 The challenge of global climate change for international law: An overview
- 16 Sustainable development and climate change negotiations: Perspectives of developing countries
- Part II Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities
- Index
- Endmatter
- References
3 - Sustainability: A scientific dilemma
from Part I - Sustainable Development: Theories and Practices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2021
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Peer reviewers
- Editor’s note
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Environmental keystones: Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Remembering Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- SI prefixes
- Unit abbreviations
- Chemical formulae
- Part I Sustainable Development: Theories and Practices
- 1 Asian identities
- 2 On sustainable development
- 3 Sustainability: A scientific dilemma
- 4 Respect and reward: Ecology from the Analects of Confucius
- 5 Sustainable development from an East-West integrative perspective: Eastern culture meets Western complexity theory
- 6 Sustainable urbanism: Measuring long-term architectural merit
- 7 Sustaining wooden architectural heritage
- 8 Green development in China
- 9 Bhutan’s sustainable development initiatives and Gross National Happiness
- 10 A different form of sustainable development in Thailand and Bhutan: Implementation of a sufficiency approach
- 11 The sustainability of food production in Papua New Guinea
- 12 Education for sustainable development: An overview of Asia-Pacific perspectives
- 13 A placemaking framework for the social sustainability of master-planned communities: A case study from Australia
- 14 Poverty, inequity, and environmental degradation: The key issues confronting the environment and sustainable development in Asia
- 15 The challenge of global climate change for international law: An overview
- 16 Sustainable development and climate change negotiations: Perspectives of developing countries
- Part II Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities
- Index
- Endmatter
- References
Summary
Policy proposals on sustainability or sustainable development (SD) by mainstream economists, on the one hand, and mainstream scientists and engineers, on the other, are sufficiently different for it to be very difficult to find common ground. Approaches of these disciplines to the issue of continuous growth, for example of GDP, provide one obvious example.
In this chapter, the two approaches are shown to be derived from the utility-based and metabolic models of economic activity. These may be broadly described as representing, respectively, the weak and strong sustainability principles. In the opinion of the author, resolution of the apparent dilemma of choice between the two approaches is appropriately addressed not as an either/or dichotomy but as a both/and issue, reflecting an actualization hierarchy between the two models.
It is imperative that the scientific community contributes to identification of common ground and to policy developments in sustainability. Suggestions are made to assist in this process and move towards a holistic policy programme for SD in Aotearoa New Zealand.
(Note: While many aspects of the following discussion refer explicitly to Aotearoa/New Zealand, the overall argument is entirely general and relevant to most, if not all, countries.)
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives , pp. 13 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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