Sustainable Development: Tackling Problems or Sources of Problems?
Norman Myers
Visiting Fellow,
Oxford University
"... no country anywhere is managing to practise sustainable development. It is like teenage sex: everyone says they are doing it, but most aren't, and those that are doing it aren't doing it very well. This applies especially to the many so-called developed countries which are hell bent on retreating from sustainable development."
What's Inside
Dr. Norman Myers is an independent scientist and consultant on environment and development. His interests range from biodiversity to environmental security. He has won numerous prizes including the 2002 Blue Planet Prize, the 1992 Volvo Environment Prize; in 1994, a Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment; and the 1996 UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize. He is a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Kent, Oxford Brookes, Utrecht, Texas and California and he is a Professor at Large at Cornell University.
In the paper Dr. Myers discusses the need to address sources of sustainable development problems by e.g. devising substitutes for GNP as indicators of economic wellbeing, engaging in full-cost pricing, shifting the tax burden, eliminating perverse subsidies, and eliminating other institutional roadblocks that stand in the way of the many eco-technologies that could go far to help us squeeze through the environmental bottlenecks ahead.
This paper was presented as a background document for the WSSD International Eminent Persons Meetin on Inter-linkages, organized by the UNU and its partners last 2 and 3 September 2001 in Tokyo, Japan.
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Dr. Norman Myers is an independent scientist and consultant on environment and development. His interests range from biodiversity to environmental security. He has won numerous prizes including the 2002 Blue Planet Prize, the 1992 Volvo Environment Prize; in 1994, a Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment; and the 1996 UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize. He is a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Kent, Oxford Brookes, Utrecht, Texas and California and he is a Professor at Large at Cornell University.
In the paper Dr. Myers discusses the need to address sources of sustainable development problems by e.g. devising substitutes for GNP as indicators of economic wellbeing, engaging in full-cost pricing, shifting the tax burden, eliminating perverse subsidies, and eliminating other institutional roadblocks that stand in the way of the many eco-technologies that could go far to help us squeeze through the environmental bottlenecks ahead.
This paper was presented as a background document for the WSSD International Eminent Persons Meetin on Inter-linkages, organized by the UNU and its partners last 2 and 3 September 2001 in Tokyo, Japan.
[ Download the whole article... ]
