IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/entreg/v9y1997i2p159-174.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable regional development the squaring of the circle or a gimmick?

Author

Listed:
  • Alain Thierstein
  • Manfred Walser

Abstract

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, 179 countries agreed on three declarations including Agenda 21. The concept of Sustainable Development (SD) became a triumph in both speeches and potential concepts. The various meanings of ‘sustainable development’ led to a confusion of Babylonian proportions. The obvious overloading of the term to meet high expectations makes it much more difficult to set into practice. The clever construction of the Rio Declaration allows for opportunities that must not be squandered. The strength of SD as a concept lies in the complexity of the problem and its high degree of commitment among signing members. In this study, SD will be investigated for its applicability; the authors consider the quality of the concept of SD and the handling of the complexity of SD. A two-strategy approach is developed: the difference between the global project ‘SD’ and the short-run mastery of the SD problem. Such statements need to be investigated and measured against the global context of SD. SD can then be integrated into the concept of regional ‘sustainable development’.

Suggested Citation

  • Alain Thierstein & Manfred Walser, 1997. "Sustainable regional development the squaring of the circle or a gimmick?," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 159-174, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:9:y:1997:i:2:p:159-174
    DOI: 10.1080/08985629700000008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985629700000008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08985629700000008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    2. Daly, Herman E., 1992. "Allocation, distribution, and scale: towards an economics that is efficient, just, and sustainable," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 185-193, December.
    3. P Allanson & J Murdoch & G Garrod & P Lowe, 1995. "Sustainability and the Rural Economy: An Evolutionary Perspective," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(11), pages 1797-1814, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. A Thierstein & U K Egger, 1998. "Integrated Regional Policy: Lessons from Switzerland," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 16(2), pages 155-172, April.
    2. Sabine Sedlacek & Veronika Gaube, 2010. "Regions on their way to sustainability: the role of institutions in fostering sustainable development at the regional level," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 117-134, February.
    3. Anna Maltseva, 2016. "System of dynamic norms as a basis for sustainable development management of territories of innovative development," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 6(1), pages 1-27, December.
    4. Marcus Wagner & Stefan Schaltegger & Erik G. Hansen & Klaus Fichter, 2021. "University-linked programmes for sustainable entrepreneurship and regional development: how and with what impact?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1141-1158, February.
    5. Thierstein, Alain & Walser, Manfred, 1999. "Sustainable regional development: interplay of topdown and bottom-up approaches," ERSA conference papers ersa99pa139, European Regional Science Association.
    6. Dara K. Dimitrov & Howard Davey, 2011. "Sustainable development: what it means to CFOs of New Zealand," Asian Review of Accounting, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 19(1), pages 86-108, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davis, Carlton G. & Langham, Max R., 1995. "Agricultural Indistrialization and Sustainable Development: A Global Perspective," International Working Paper Series 237431, University of Florida, Food and Resource Economics Department.
    2. White, Thomas J., 2007. "Sharing resources: The global distribution of the Ecological Footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 402-410, December.
    3. Kohn, Jorg, 1998. "Thinking in terms of system hierarchies and velocities. What makes development sustainable?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 173-187, August.
    4. Gómez-Baggethun, Erik & de Groot, Rudolf & Lomas, Pedro L. & Montes, Carlos, 2010. "The history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice: From early notions to markets and payment schemes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1209-1218, April.
    5. Davis, Carlton G. & Ballayram, 1994. "Challenges to Integrating Economic and Environmental Policies into Anglo-Caribbean Sustainable Development Agenda: The Case of Agriculture," International Working Paper Series 237429, University of Florida, Food and Resource Economics Department.
    6. Markus Milne & Rob Gray, 2013. "W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 13-29, November.
    7. Muhammad Awais & Tanzila Samin & Muhammad Awais Gulzar & Jinsoo Hwang, 2019. "The Sustainable Development of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Synergy among Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-11, December.
    8. Elzbieta Broniewicz & Karolina Ogrodnik, 2021. "A Comparative Evaluation of Multi-Criteria Analysis Methods for Sustainable Transport," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-23, August.
    9. Köhn, Jörg, 1996. "Thinking in Terms of System Hierarchies and Velocites. What makes Development Sustainable?," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 04, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    10. Batoul Modarress & Alexander Ansari & Al Ansari, 2020. "Sustainable Development and Ecological Deficit in the United Arab Emirates," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-19, July.
    11. Richters, Oliver, 2015. "Integrating Energy Use into Macroeconomic Stock-Flow Consistent Models," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 154764, September.
    12. Louis Dupuy, 2012. "International Trade and Sustainability : A survey," Working Papers hal-00701426, HAL.
    13. Davis, Carlton G., 1994. "Integrating Economic Growth, Equity, and Environmental Assets Components of Sustainable Development in Tropical Agriculture: A Conceptual Framework," International Working Paper Series 237428, University of Florida, Food and Resource Economics Department.
    14. Peter Dobers & Rolf Wolff, 2000. "Competing with ‘soft’ issues – from managing the environment to sustainable business strategies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 143-150, May.
    15. Louis Dupuy, 2012. "International Trade and Sustainability: A survey," Larefi Working Papers 201201, Larefi, Université Bordeaux 4.
    16. Xiaoxu Dong & Cheon Yu & Yun Seop Hwang, 2021. "The Effects of Reverse Knowledge Spillover on China’s Sustainable Development: Sustainable Development Indicators Based on Institutional Quality," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-17, February.
    17. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh & Marjan W. Hofkes, 1997. "A Survey of Economic Modelling of Sustainable Development," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 97-107/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Ruitenbeek, H. Jack, 1996. "Distribution of ecological entitlements: Implications for economic security and population movement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 49-64, April.
    19. Hubacek, Klaus & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2006. "Changing concepts of 'land' in economic theory: From single to multi-disciplinary approaches," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 5-27, January.
    20. Rennings, Klaus & Wiggering, Hubert, 1997. "Steps towards indicators of sustainable development: Linking economic and ecological concepts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 25-36, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:9:y:1997:i:2:p:159-174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TEPN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.