Questioning sustainable development

The issue of sustainable development has been under scrutiny during the last two decades, precisely since the 1987 Bruntland report and it can be understood as a threefold objective: improving the welfare (economic development), fighting against social inequalities and preserving the environment. These general issues can be accepted as a consensus, and the issue of the paper, without necessarily breaking this consensus, is to introduce the ways through which this concept can be criticized. Many critiques come from different theoretical backgrounds including Marxists, ecologists, feminists, classical economists, antiglobalists… The paper displays three kinds of critiques. A first and introductory set of critiques is not theoretical and is based on the ambiguous character of the concept. This lack of clarity is based on the notion of sustainable development, on the objectives of the concept, and of the means to achieve it. It wonders of what kind of rationality founds the consistency between a defense of environment and orthodox economic approach. The second and third sets of critiques are theoretical. A second set can be named orthodox or ‘optimistic' critique, in the sense of a general trust in economic growth, from Smith to the contemporary mainstream economists, and in scientific improvement, based on Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction. A final set comes from heterodoxy, Marxism in particular, and it can be seen as ‘pessimistic'. The argument is based on a traditional critique of Malthusianism, and a Marxian view proposes that the destruction of environment can be explained by the nature of the relations of production. The discussion will turn into a debate between Marxism and ecologism.