The Global Financial Crisis: A Rare Window to Recalibrate the Sustainable Development Discourse and Strategy
Professor Jerry Kolo, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Abstract: The impacts of the current global financial crisis on sustainable development (SD) have been subject to polarized debates. Interestingly, a common denominator of the debates is that there are various lessons for the global community to learn from the environmental impacts of the crisis, be those impacts positive or negative. While there is a tendency across the board to focus on the economic impacts of the crisis, such as longer unemployment lines, declining individual and corporate assets, mounting toxic loans and silent construction cranes, the view in this address is that the crisis offers a rare but slim window for the world, especially environmental advocates, activists and scholars or analysts, to reflect on, rethink and recalibrate the discourse and strategy of how to ensure and maintain a balanced relationship between growth and society’s natural resource base. Following a brief preview of the current debates on the growth-environment relationship, the focus of this address would turn to some of the key dilemma of the relationship. The address will conclude by taking a linear view of SD policy, planning and discourse worldwide since the beginning of the 20th Century. The case will be made that the financial crisis offers an opportunity for the global community to engage in very critical dialogue about key implications of the crisis for SD, implications which should lead to ‘new,’ and more pragmatic SD thinking and dialogue, along with more feasible SD strategies.
