A Gandhian Alternative Vision of Sustainable Development

The Brundtland formulation of Sustainable Development (SD) has come to represent mainstream thinking about the relationship between environment and development. It now commands authoritative status, acting as a guiding principle of economic and social development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a framework of 17 goals and 169 targets across social, economic, and environmental areas of SD, which UN Member States have committed to making a reality by the year 2030. According to some perceptive environmentalists and environmental scientists, the inherently contradictory aims of economic expansion, environmental protection, poverty eradication, and the free market are all merged into an awkward, unsustainable policy in the form of the SDGs. In its linking of economic growth, material wealth, and economic progress, SD has failed to atone for the fact that it is precisely such aspirations that put our planet in such a precarious position in the first place. The SD the SDG approach perpetuates and reaffirms questionable policies in its ethnocentric, technocentric, and anthropocentric qualities, thereby exposing its inherently Western biases. While past approaches have failed to meaningfully address the problem of unsustainable development, the current approach repeats these mistakes. Without a Gandhian analysis and reformation of the ideological and foundational underpinnings of SD, the SDGs cannot be easily realised. The Gandhian vision of SD represents a crucial way forward in advancing a revised and reformed project of SD that is simultaneously concerned with well-being, equity, and ecological integrity. While it is not the intention of this paper to provide a specific blueprint to achieve the Holy Grail of SD, it builds a strong case for a Gandhian alternative vision of SD.