Introduction

Sustainable development (SD) is widely accepted as a form of development we, as humankind, should but do not have at the moment. Discussing SD, therefore, is not discussing reality but plans for desired changes based on perceived reality. Depending on who does the planning, perceptions of reality as well as desires for change may differ. This chapter discusses some of those plans with regard to the ‘social’ dimension of SD.

The social forms one of the cornerstones of the standard tripartite system of SD, consisting of environmental, economic and social dimensions (Elkington, 1997), often, in Wikipedia and elsewhere, illustrated as a triangular graph, with the three dimensions occupying three corners or overlapping bubbles. Recently, it has been complemented by the cultural dimension (Magee et al, 2012). This concept goes back to the Brundtland Commission (officially World Commission on Environment and Development) and its landmark report Our Common Future, published in 1987. It famously defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987: 43). This often-cited reference to intergenerational justice has shaped the popular understanding of SD, while inter-regional (social) justice has received a lot less attention. As just one case in point, there is no section entitled ‘social’ in a 2014 exhaustive, four-volume publication on Sustainable Development, and topics that could be interpreted as social are conspicuously under-represented (Blewitt, 2014).

This relative neglect is in contrast to the intent of the Brundtland Commission, whose members left little doubt that they considered the social a central component of SD, inextricably linked to economic and environmental concerns. Thus, in a passage cited much less frequently, the report went on to state that this definition entails ‘the concept of “needs”, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given’, as well as the concept of environmental limitations (WCED, 1987: 43). In addition, the report insisted that the times in which human activities and effects could be ‘neatly compartmentalized within nations, within sectors (energy, agriculture, trade), and within broad areas of concern (environment, economics, social)’ were over (WCED, 1987: 4).