The preceding chapter argues that economic development, to be sustainable, cannot neglect environmental constraints nor be based on the destruction of natural resources; that it cannot succeed without the parallel development of human resources; and that, to be sustainable on a global level, it will require transformation of the existing industrial base and the development and diffusion of more Earth-friendly technologies.
Yet sustainable development remains a difficult, confusing, and even controversial idea. One of the problems is that, quite literally, there are no extant examples of sustainable development on a national level. Neither the industrial countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nor the planned economies of Central Europe nor the newly industrialized economies of Southeast Asia offer adequate models: all achieved rapid industrial and economic growth at the expense of widespread environmental degradation and a continuing record of disasters, from the poisoning of Minamata Bay in Japan in the 1960s to Chernobyl in the Soviet Union and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in the United States in the 1980s. In the absence of explicit, widely recognized models, the concept of sustainable development and the policies needed to put it into practice are still evolving and open to debate.
A second problem is that sustainable development means different things to different people. To a village level official in sub-Saharan Africa, it may mean, first and foremost, dealing with poverty and human misery through health and education services to get development started; to an environmental minister in Europe, it may mean protecting the physical environment by limiting emissions of both greenhouse gases and other effluents that cause acid rain; to an economic planner in Latin America or Southeast Asia, it may mean seeking to invest the income from logging operations in reforestation programs, so that the forest resource can be renewed. The resulting diversity of perceptions does not make coherent discussion easy, and the diversity of actual situations makes generalizations dangerous.
The case studies focus on three groups of countries:
Industrial countries,as exemplified by OECD countries as a group and, in particular, by the United States;
Poor countries, as exemplified by countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas that have been identified by international development agencies as ranking low on indicators of income or human development. For purposes of statistical comparisons, this grouping includes some 40 low-income countries as identified by the World Bank; China and India are included in this group but are shown separately because of their size and extensive industrial sectors.
Rapidly industrializing countries (RICs), as exemplified by three Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia) and three Latin American countries (Mexico, Brazil, and Chile). A number of other countries are also industrializing rapidly or have strong industrial sectors, and much of this chapter may also apply to those countries.
These groupings were chosen to provide examples from the extremes of economic development--both very rich countries and countries that are very poor or have large concentrations of very poor people--as well as examples from countries that are in between these extremes. Some countries--such as China and India--have both large rural populations facing one set of development problems and vigorous industrial sectors facing another set of development problems. The case studies are in no sense comprehensive. Rather, they are intended to further discussion by giving a more concrete sense of what sustainable development might mean and by illustrating in specific contexts both the problems and some starting points for solutions.