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Are you interested in where the three pillars of sustainability came from?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins from 2018 by Ben Purvis, Yong Mao and Darren Robinson, published in the Sustainability Science journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the three pillars of sustainability – social, economic and environment – came about. This article investigates the origins of sustainability and the gradual emergence of these pillars due to critics.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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The last 20 years have witnessed a surge in publications on sustainability to the extent where sustainability science is often seen as a distinct field. Yet, despite this, sustainability remains an open concept with myriad interpretations and context-specific understanding. One particularly prevalent descript of sustainability employs three interconnected pillars to encompass economic, social and environmental or ecological factors as goals. Unfortunately, the meaning conveyed by any presentation of these pillars is often unclear, which makes it challenging to coherently operationalise them. Regardless, the three-pillar conception of sustainability is a dominant interpretation within the literature – even though the origins of this concept is far from clear. This paper aims to shed light on the origins of the three pillars with a review on the emergence of sustainability since the 70s and 80s.

Even sustainability has a murky origin. Much of the work whose concepts feed into the narrative predate the language of sustainability. Authors even in the 17^th and 18^th century wrote about sustainable yield in response to dwindling forest resources across Europe. The industrial revolution was criticised due to the limits of economic and demographic growth and the recognised trade-offs between wealth generation and social justice. Natural scientists and ecologists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries wanted to highlight schism between the anthropocentric conservationists on the one hand, prescribing conservation of natural resources for sustainable consumption, and the biocentric preservationists who call for preservation of nature due to its inherent worth. The first language of sustainability however only appeared in the 70s and from there, the concept just snowballs.

The Second World War also made an imprint on the concept through the international efforts to aid the development of less advanced countries. Thus, economic development evolved from specifically denoting the exploitation of natural resources in a colonial context to refer to a rise in material well-being indicated by an increase in the flow of goods and services, and growth in per capita income. Economic development became almost synonymous with economic growth. Meanwhile, the late 60s and 70s witnessed the rise of the modern environmental movement of the West which increased the awareness of the environmental destruction caused by humans. Doubts about economic growth and development in the 70s began to emerge with arguing that the modern growth-based economy was unsustainable on a finite planet. The lack of real progress through economic growth presented itself with gross inequalities and poverties that still existed in societies. This led to a second prominent counter-discourse in the development literature critiquing the focus on economic growth, with calls for a shift from a focus of means to ends to better consider social problems and a basic needs approach.

The 1972 UN Conference on the Human-Environment in Stockholm marked the first global summit to consider human impacts on the environment. It was the first major attempt to reconcile economic development with environment integrity which were commonly regarded as incompatible. This resulted in the environmentally-sound development and then the eco-development terms for an approach to development aimed at harmonising social and economic objectives with ecologically sound management in a spirit of solidarity with future generations. Whilst the environment was being reconciled with economic development, the basic needs approach was rejected by governments in the developing world, especially after the 70s economic slumps.

In the 80s, the early environmental movements had lost momentum and the ecological and social critiques of economic development began to interweave with economic development under the term sustainable development. Thus, in 1987 when the UN World Commission on Environment and Development published its report Our common Future – also known as the Brundtland Report – calling for a new era of economic growth – growth that is forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable, the debate had come full circle. Economic growth was no longer the problem, but the solution. The Brundtland Report is widely credited with popularising the concept of sustainable development. It defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The following years saw an emergence in governments and international organisations pledging to held this sustainable development idea in the core of what they were doing.

However, it is still not clear where the three pillars of sustainability – economic, environmental and social sustainability – came from. This makes it hard to understand what the original intention with these three pillars were, even if they are common practice currently – unfortunately without a clear understanding. Plus, they are not even universal, because some consider other and additional pillars, like institutional, cultural and technical. None of the documents, like the Brundtland Report or the following Agenda 21 and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development give any explanation, clear framework or theoretical background. Even if previous works mention aspects of social, environmental and economic sustainability, they do not give frameworks, judgements and theoretical backgrounds.

The missing origins of the three pillars are concerning due to their murkiness. However, the authors found two distinguished ways in which the three pillars have been conceptualised: individual dimension as distinct yet interacting systems with their own goals and three distinct yet interrelated perspectives or schools of thought. The various approaches handle economic growth differently, for the UN it is imperative while others are wary of it. On the other hand, the lack of clear conceptual basis acts further to hide the economic framing from critique allowing for broad consensus from institutional actors that would otherwise have conflicting priorities. This highlights the problems of integration and balancing of the three pillars. Even though the literature is far from having a clear origin on these concepts and sustainable development primarily evolved from the critiques of economic development and quality of life perspectives, the authors conclude that the three pillars are fundamentally rooted in sustainable development from its conception.

Sustainable development was institutionalised by the UN in the Brundtland Report in 1987 and the subsequent efforts push an understanding placing economic growth as the solution to ecological and social problems. The lack of rigour in theoretical underpinnings of sustainability result in the difficulty in producing operational frameworks. These applications would necessarily be context specific, requiring careful consideration of both spatial and functional boundaries. The inherently political nature of sustainability can often be forgotten if we have a clear understanding and we should be careful to avoid reproducing models without carefully considering their theoretical basis and the embedded ideology within them.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Sustainable ideas have been emerging since the 17^th century but gained more aspects during the 20^th century to include economic, environmental and social aspects and economic growth can be a solution to environmental and social challenges.
2. Sustainable development was clearly defined in the 1987 Brundtland report as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
3. Even though the origins of the three pillars are unclear, each of them is vital for sustainability and a clear understanding is crucial for proper implementation and decreased political nature.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What is your understanding of the three pillars – economic, social and environmental sustainability?
2. How are these present and connected in your urban area?
3. Which pillar interest you the most and why?
4. How can you work on that pillar and what effects would you create in that and other areas?

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