Political dimension of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development as a concept for action can be a strong political driver that has (may have) the ability to make politicians with opposing political views cooperate effectively.

When SD is the measure against which political decision making is set, politically unpalatable decisions have a much better chance of being put on the table. When the sense of urgency concerning SD is strong, even when all sides sense that it is not in their direct interest, they will have an incentive to cooperate and move things forward.

This hypothesis, I think not only holds on a local, regional, or national level, but also, maybe especially so for a union as diverse and imbued with his history as Europe. There is simply no logical or reasonable way to agree on important ideological issues following traditional political party lines. Nevertheless, many constituents from all political backgrounds are on the same page concerning globalizing issues as climate change, pollution, global poverty, environmental issues and food security. To bind them, they only need a common theme that completely ignores philosophical dichotomies that have been constructed in a world that was not nearly as connected (not with the same speed, anyway) as the world we live in now.

Another way of terming the greatest challenge that the world is facing is “control from a distance”. Control can be achieved through, amongst others, technological discipline, ideological discipline, logical discipline or ritual discipline. The persuasive point of SD is that it combines many of these elements into a simple coherent concept of ‘being able not only to sustain ourselves, but also those who will be here after us.” The challenge is to translate this concept into practices that are both logically consistent, ideologically tenable (killing people to control population size is not ideologically tenable), devise technology that enables contemporary society to remain functioning while transitioning into a sustainable society. The key to this challenge might be the development of a set of rituals that prepares key people to realize, actualize and carry out necessary measures that will provide the guidelines and constraints of the rest of society to follow suit.

These rituals should not be understood in their traditional semantic sense, but more as a certain set of activities that might not carry any power or effect in themselves but that nevertheless are considered to be significant and necessary for the society in which they are carried out for a continued prosperity. A simple example of such an activity is the production of a Sustainable Development report.