What stands in the way of sustainable development?
One would like to answer: “political will”, but in fact it is the capitalist system that is causing our development to be unsustainable, as full commoditization leads to (profit-oriented) exploitation of our scarce resources, to the detriment of future generations. Political will is therefore by far not enough.
Should there be a distinction between growth and development, in order to achieve sustainability?
Growth and development are obviously not the same. In the way we define growth now there can be (and sometimes is) less development, while growth can be even “anti-poor”. To achieve sustainability we need to look at the quality of growth, to become broad-based, job-rich, and with a production focused on needs, rather than on profit only. This means that also we should strive to de-growth and development.
