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This article provides information about the critique of sustainable development relating to the operational substance of the definition:
While raising doubts regarding the operational substance of the definition, Anil Agarwal. Critically examines: Who is going to ensure the rights of future generations when, given the highly divided world we live in, a large proportion of even the present generation cannot meet all its needs.
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Given such a social and political context, the definitions also fail to say whose future generations’ needs are being sought to be protected and preserved. Are we talking only of the future generations of the rich or also of the poor?
Again, C.R. Reddy comments that, While an entire U.N. machinery has been created around ‘sustainable development’, the world is still waiting for an operational meaning of what is an intuitively appealing but yet fuzzy concept. In a similar vein, William F. Fisher observes that, while widespread commitment to the term ‘sustainable development’ might suggest a growing worldwide consensus on the need for development that is sustainable, there is no agreement about the specific goals of sustainable development or the appropriate means to achieve them.
About the Brundtland Commission’s definition of the term, he further observes that, it…………….. defines an arena of intense debate, not an arena of consensus….Used in so many varying ways, ‘sustainable development’ has broad appeal, but cannot help direct a set of actions toward specific goals, nor can it offer any guidelines about how trade-offs are to be balanced among these goals. Instead, the term obscures, rather than clarifies, the central issue of balancing the need for income redistribution and economic growth with resource limits and population growth.