The unsustainable sustainability

Abstract

Over the last four decades, and particularly after Rio-92, discussions on environmental sustainability have expanded and been incorporated in many legal texts, in public policies and in the practices of daily life for a portion of the world’s population. Despite this progress, achieving a more sustainable development is a goal that has yet to be realized, mainly due to economies that favor a predatory development, masquerading as sustainable, which turn a blind eye to the social, environmental and cultural limits of the planet’s many different regions, and ultimately threatening the continued existence of human life on Earth. The guiding question of this paper is the incapacity of the sustainability model adopted in discourse, in business and in contemporary society. This paper is a test study and questions political ownership and the transmutation of the concept of sustainable development in discourse and daily life over the last few decades. Ultimately, we hope to draw attention to some of the hits and misses of this divergent sustainable development which claims to be modern. Overall, this paper is more about asking questions than finding answers.