Examination of Witnesses (Questions 93-99)
9 JUNE 2004
MR JONATHON
PORRITT, PROFESSOR
TIM JACKSON
AND MR
SCOTT GHAGAN
Q93 Chairman: Thank you for coming along
and listening in on the previous session. You will not be surprised
to know that we would be interested in picking up on some of the
ideas we were discussing with Friends of the Earth. If I may also
thank you for the copies of your report, which we have looked
at with interest[9]Can
we go back to the whole question of the definition, the Government's
definition, of "sustainable building development" and
its adequacy and fitness for purpose, so to speak, and, in particular,
whether you think that the economic objective should be there
at all?
Mr Porritt: On the definition
stuff, it is important that we begin to focus a little bit more
on some of the rigor behind the concept of sustainable development
as well as some of the all-embracing inclusivity, if you like.
It has been interpreted in a very liberal way over the last few
years, and that has probably not been a bad thing because it has
encouraged a lot of people to think they have a stake in that
concept of sustainable development, but we are very keen now to
start moving towards much more rigor in the way it is defined
and in the way in which it is used. In that respect we are particularly
interested in the debate about the four strategic objectives and
the way in which they are interpreted by Government. We actually
attach considerable significance to those objectives and how they
are used, and they are actually used very widely. It might surprise
you, Chairman, to know that lots of organisations have picked
up on those objectives and used them as a guide to their own behaviour;
so there are a lot FTSE 100 companies in the UK that have seen
in those four objectives as good a rendering of what sustainable
development means as they are going to get and plugged it straight
into their own sustainable development reporting strategy, the
same as in local authorities, and so on. So it does have a big
knock-on effect.
Q94 Chairman: It is all the more important,
therefore, to get it right?
Mr Porritt: Indeed, and that is
why the Commission will be addressing the fitness for purpose
of those objectives as part of the review. We have already given
a signal to Government that we particularly want to engage on
the fourth objective, the prosperity objective, and I am going
to ask my colleague, Tim Jackson, to say a little bit about that,
as he is helping us with that piece of work in his role now as
Chairman of our Economic Steering Group on the Commission. So
we are very keen to take that up fairly actively and to pursue
it as part and parcel of how we think those objectives can be
enhanced (or improved) to make them more useful during the next
strategy.
Professor Jackson: Yes, the question
that you ask, "Should it be there at all?", is a kind
of framing issue for a debate that we hope will play a very important
part in enhancing the sustainable development objectives through
the process of this strategy review, and, to be fair, I think
we should go through that process before we finally decide or
commit to a final form of objectives or our allegiance to, in
particular, a form for the prosperity objective—what we
call the prosperity objective—the objective of higher stable
levels of economic growth and employment. Our argument goes something
like this, that there are four quite strong reasons for reconsidering
and perhaps enhancing the language of that objective. One is that
there is evidence to suggest that it raises potential conflict
with the first objective, the objective of social progress. There
certainly is evidence, for example, that over the period that
we have had sustained economic growth we have also had an increase
in income inequality and social inequality, and there is evidence
to the effect that crime levels have risen over that period. So
the suggestion is not that these are necessarily related to the
pursuit of economic growth, but that we cannot categorically say
that it is possible to maintain the high and stable levels of
economic growth irrespective of the demands of social progress.
That is reason one. Reason two is that the same thing can very
much be said about environmental goals; that there is potentially
an inconsistency, an incoherence, in maintaining the goal of high
and stable levels of economic growth and reaching the environmental
goals that are absolutely vital in maintaining the environmental
limits. The third reason is well-known, that economic growth in
itself does not necessarily deliver well-being as shown in the
Cabinet Office's report. The fourth, which has been mentioned
by others, is that growth, far from being an end in itself, is
in some sense a means to an end. So those are four very powerful
reasons, we believe, why it is worth revisiting the fourth objective.
We also acknowledge that there are strong reasons to keep some
allegiance to, some concept of, prosperity within the objectives,
and that is exactly why we are framing the debate around enhancing
a prosperity objective as part of the sustainable development
objectives.
Q95 Chairman: This is a question I asked
Friends of the Earth. Is not the problem that if you start reformulating
the economic or prosperity objective in the sort of way that you
have suggested, you start clouding the whole issue; and is there
not a case for keeping it clear and distinct so that you can focus
more precisely on the other objectives that have been set and
have that one there as well, distinct, separate, obviously different,
but there as well, rather than spreading, with a tendency to become
murky, across all the other objectives?
Professor Jackson: We are not
at this stage saying it should be done away with, but I would
turn your argument on its head and say, no, it does not cloud
the issue. What clouds the issue is having it there in the current
form. It clouds it in terms of credibility, and, coming from an
academic perspective, I am particularly sensitive to this, that
one of the consistent criticisms of the sustainable development
strategy from the academic perspective is that those four objectives
as they stand do not respect or address the trade-offs that lie
between them and that therefore they appear as a sort of rhetorical
discourse rather than a meaningful strategy in pursuit of a very
difficult goal. You used, possibly entertainingly, the concept
that it was pifflingly irrelevant to change and to mess with words
in that way, but I would argue, on the contrary, that it is sort
of pifflingly relevant: it steals bit by bit the credibility of
a strategy which is based on incoherent objectives.
Q96 Chairman: I wonder whether there
is not a tension between trying to develop some sort of overall
strategy to deal with all of this and the natural governmental
desire to break down the concept of sustainable development into
different bite-sized chunks that can easily be identified?
Mr Porritt: I think that is an
issue, but I do not think you could enunciate and work to definitions
of sustainable development that did not have an economic objective
in it. The power of sustainable development when it was first
introduced in the mid 1980s was precisely because it got us through
some of those very narrow vertical policy silos of environment,
social justice or economic growth and said, "You have to
think about all these things in the same frame at the same time."
I would be wholly opposed to any version of sustainable development
that did not have a prosperity objective in, wholly averse, because,
by definition, it would have missed the point about sustainable
development, which is development that is sustainable. There are
some environmentalists, and, I dare say, some social justice campaigners,
who do not see it that way; they think that the key thing is to
go on pressing for a narrower focus on environmental outcomes
or social justice outcomes without acknowledging that you cannot
achieve those without a sustainable prosperity process, an economy
that delivers those things.
Q97 Chairman: But I think you have developed
and certainly used the idea of economic welfare to cover this
aspect?
Mr Porritt: Well-being, yes.
Q98 Chairman: Okay. We know what GDP
is. That is established, easily measurable and out there. How
is it possible to measure well-being? What mechanisms are in place
to do it?
Professor Jackson: There are a
number of mechanisms. Let me go back one step.
Q99 Chairman: There is only one mechanism
for GDP?
Professor Jackson: There is only
one.
9 Shows promise. But must try harder, Sustainable
Development Commission, April 2004. Not printed here, please see
http://www.sd-commission.gov.uk/pubs/index.htm Back
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