The Policy of Sustainability: Sustainable Development

6.3. The Policy of Sustainability: Sustainable

• Potpurri – Certain sustainability strategies, particularly those of the Eu-ropean Union or its Member States, are elaborated by aggregating or merging existing or planned policy strategies. Here, the actual political content of the label of sustainable development merely consists of the coordination of different policies (climate protection, agriculture, water management, education, transport, etc.) and the use of the language of sustainability.

• Humanistic/utopian Swiss knife – It is typical, particularly of intellec-tuals and some civil society organisations, that they refer to sustainable development as a panacea for all the problems in the world. In this case, the sustainability policy should include an agreed plan for the solution of all kinds of crises and problems. The desired outcome of sustainability policy is a world without conflicts, in which all people (including those who are not yet born) live in harmony.

• The lingua franca of urging North-South financial transfer – One of the constant elements of the international dialogue on sustainable devel-opment is that, under this principle, countries that are less developed and poorer than average should be given continuous and increasing support.

Here, sustainable development becomes a phrase whose different ele-ments become the fixation of groups of countries with different levels of development. Given that, today, countries with richer biodiversity are generally less developed economically, while rich countries have, in many cases, already consumed a large part of their natural capital, the protection of the environment (biodiversity) promoted by rich countries can mainly be attained in poorer countries. The price of achieving this may be financial support. This is how this formula is developed: higher level of environmental protection (e.g. green economy) + financial sup-port for emerging countries = sustainable development.

• The secret code of anti-capitalism – Following the almost total fall of socialism in the 1980–90s, critics of capitalism used the arguments of sustainability to reformulate their views. As a result of intergenerational equity, the issue of intra-generational equity, or rather, that of redistrib-utive equality arises.

• Long-term resource management – It is a response to two key chal-lenges facing the modern market economy and the democratic institu-tional system, i.e. shorter time frames for decision-makers and ineffi-cient management of investments in the future. It focuses primarily on the quantitative and qualitative monitoring of resources and, based on this, makes institutional or strategic proposals for improving

decision-making. (As previously analysed, the authors of this publication consider this interpretation to be efficient.)

Therefore, the policy of sustainability (sustainable development) represents the set of actions of the political community that establish appropriate insti-tutional constraints and rules for the conservation and development of re-sources maintaining their optimum size and proper internal structure.

The National Framework Strategy on Sustainable Development for the pe-riod until 2024, was adopted by the Hungarian National Assembly in March 2013. The Framework Strategy highlights the following theoretical options for ensuring sustainability with institutional means:

‘Therefore sustainability should be defined in a way that any generation while striving to create their own well-being, [does not exhaust the conditions of individual well-being and the public good,] do[es] not deplete their re-sources, but conserve and expand them both in terms of quantity and quality for future generations. The interests of those unborn, and therefore without voting right, may only be protected by current generations limiting their own freedom through moral, constitutional or institutional restrictions. Bounda-ries need to be drawn up, which cannot and should not be crossed, and own freedoms need to be limited in order to not succumb to temptations.’¹⁹⁶ The prevailing international tasks targeting sustainability are defined by the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, i.e. the so-called Sustainable Develop-ment Goals.¹⁹⁷

196 Hungarian National Assembly, National Framework Strategy on Sustainable Development 2012–2024, Resolution 18/2013 (III. 28.) of the Hungarian National Assembly, 2013.

197 United Nations, Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Res-olution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015 (A/RES/70/1), 2015.

The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015–2030)

Bibliography

• Acemoglu, D. (1995): Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, Princeton University Press, 2011 and Barro and Sala-i-Martin, Economic Growth, McGraw Hill, New York

• Bartus, G. and Á. Szalai, Környezet, jog, közgazdaságtan [Environment, Law, Economics], Pázmány Press, Budapest, 2014.

• Brown Weiss (2008): ‘A nemzedékek közti igazságosság koncepciója mára elfogadottá vált’ [The Concept of Intergenerational Equity Has Become Ac-cepted], Interview, Fundamentum, no. 1, pp. 31–36.

• Brown Weiss, E. (1992): ‘Intergenerational Equity: A Legal Framework for Global Environmental Change’, in E. Brown Weiss (ed.), Environmental Change and International Law: New Challenges and Dimensions, United Na-tions University Press, Tokyo

• Diamond J. (2005): Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005.

• Hanley N. and G. Atkinson, ‘Economics and Sustainable Development: What Have We Learnt, and What Do We Still Need to Learn?’, in F. Berkhout, M.

Leach and I. Scoones (eds.), Negotiating Environmental Changes: New Per-spectives from Social Science, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2003.

• Hanley, N. J.F. Shogren and B. White (2007): ’Environmental Economics’, in Theory and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK – New York, N.Y., US, 2007.

• Hungarian National Assembly, National Framework Strategy on Sustainable Development 2012–2024, Resolution 18/2013 (III. 28.) of the Hungarian Na-tional Assembly, 2013.

• Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. S. Brondízio E.S., H. T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. A. Brauman, S. H. M. Butchart, K. M. A. Chan, L. A. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J. Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. F. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A. Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. Roy Chowdhury, Y. J. Shin, I. J. Visseren-Hamakers, K. J. Willis, and C. N. Zayas (eds.), Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem

Services, 2019, IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany,

56 pages, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3553579.

• Kooten, G.C. van and E.H. Bulte (2000): The Economics of Nature: Managing Biological Assets, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK, 2000.

• OECD, Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060: Economic Drivers and Environmental Consequences, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2019, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264307452-en.

• United Nations, Our Common Future. UN General Assembly document A/42/427, World Commission on Environment and Development, United Na-tions, 1987.

• United Nations, Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015 (A/RES/70/1), 2015.

Tamás Pálvölgyi, Olivér Hortay

7. Modelling Approaches in Environmental