Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainable Development

Abstract

It is the challenge of Johannesburg to move beyond KO, yet it is the danger of Johannesburg to regress behind KO. The Rio Conference on Environment and Development strove to address two major crises: the crisis of nature and that of justice. Environmentalistsoften from the Northwere expected to take into account the desire of the majority of the world's citizens for a life beyond poverty and distress. By contrast, developmentalists -* often from the South-were called upon to recognize the disastrous repercussions * ofa deteriorated nature base. Typically, environmentalists were seen to be opposing deforestation, chemical agriculture or expansion of power plants, while : developmentalists were pushing for marketing timber, expanding food supplies or electrifying villages. Therefore, the Earth Summit aimed at integrating the environ-* ment and development agendas to liberate policy makers from the dilemma of either aggravating the crisis of nature by pushing for development or aggravating the crisis of justice by insisting on the protection of nature.As it turned out, the Rio process fell short of fulfilling this ambition. How to respond to the desire for justice without upsetting the biosphere is still a puzzle for the 21st century. Of course, the fact that helping people and helping nature can go hand in hand has been demonstrated in many instances: in organic agriculture, in sustainable forestry and in resourceefficient industries as well. But on a macro-scale, the reconcilia-

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