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Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Books, Reports, and Studies Resources, Energy, and the Environment

1996

Sustainability and Beyond

Dale Jamieson

University of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

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Citation Information Dale Jamieson, Sustainability and Beyond (Natural Res. Law Ctr., Univ. of Colo. Sch. of Law 1996).

DALE JAMIESON, SUSTAINABILITY AND BEYOND (Natural Res. Law Ctr., Univ. of Colo. Sch. of Law 1996).

Reproduced with permission of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment (formerly the Natural Resources Law Center) at the University of Colorado Law School.

--NatUral·Resources Law·Center University of Colorado School of Law .

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SUSTAJNABILITY AND BEYOND

Dale Jamieson Professor of Philosophy University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado

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Public ~d Policy Discits_sion Pap~rs S~ries SUST AINABILITY AND BEYOND

Dale Jamieson Professor of Philosophy University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado

NRLC Public Land Policy Discussion Paper Series (PL02)

Natural Resources Law Center 1996 This publication is a product of the Natural Resources Law Center, a research and public education program at the University of Colorado School of Law. The Center's primary goal is to promote a sustainable society through improved public understanding of environmental and natural resources issues. Interpretations, recommendations, or conclusions in this Natural Resources Law Center publication are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Center, the University of Colorado,· the State of Colorado, or any of the organizations that support Natural Resources Law Center research. · SUST AINABILITY AND BEYOND

Dale Jamieson 1

Introduction During the decade of the 1980s the phrase "" migrated from an obscure report produced by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1980, through several popular "green" books, to become the central organizing concept of the report. Convened by the General Assembly of the United Nations and known officially as the World Conunission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission identified sustainable development as the criterion against which human changes of the environment should be measured, and defined it as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."2 By joining the words "sustainable" and "development," the Commission sought to reconcile the demands of the environment with concerns about global poverty. Shridath Rampbal, who served on the Brundtland Commission, has recently written that [t]he great achievement of the sustainable development concept is that it broke With the old conservationist approach to natural resources and its tendency to place Earth's other species above people.3 While those who were most concerned with poverty could emphasize the word "development" in the Brundtland formulation, environmentalists could just as well emphasize the word "sustainable."

1Dale Jamieson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and also serves as an Adjunct Scientist in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

1The World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 43.

3Ramphal, Shridath, Our Country, the Planet: Forging a Partnership for Survival (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992), p. 143. The b