This is the introduction to a special issue with Int journal of sustainable development which was launched in 2012.
We start with the motivation that has brought us into this reflexive journey, i.e. the realisation that a concept such as “sustainability” which has been dominating research, activism, global and local policy making, and political agendas, has now become ethos, pathos and logos of ensuing discourses, and eventually a grand narrative on its own right from the 1980’s onwards. Whether presented as objective, framework, metaphor, virtue, ethical issue, paradigm, principle, credo or societal path, we have seen that it has been embraced ad nausea by all sorts of human action, oftentimes to maintain the status quo as far as the causes of the planet’s degradation goes; to legitimise or make credible systems of production, consumption patterns, lifestyles, livelihoods, etc. or outright instrumental to the pursuit of actions otherwise questionable for their value, a feature of megaprojects and many recent hubristic techno-scientific developments (such as GMO’s, geo-engineering, etc.).
Sustainability is a much more general concept than is implied by its adjectival use in sustainable development (Ehrenfeld, 2008), but we would argue that it is undergoing a crisis of fatigue, arising from un-discussed dilemmas and contradictions, which we suggest, can be “cured” if appropriate resources are put into social learning and dialogue about the long taken for granted epistemic and normative assumptions that can no longer be presumed.
We have come a long way on the path of environmental awareness since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” (Carson, 1962), and we agree with Scoones (2007) and Owen (2003) that sustainability has provided a powerful and influential meeting point of ideas and politics, yet it is our responsibility to continuously guard against its banalisation, should we wish to ensure its place as a synchroniser for care, respectfulness, equity and responsibility.
MARTINHO GUIMARAES PIRES PEREIRA Angela;
CURVELO Paula;
2015-12-21
INDERSCIENCE ENTERPRISES LTD.
JRC95794
0960-1406,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC95794,
10.1504/IJSD.2015.073695,
