Transition, welfare and sustainable development
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The World Summit on Sustainable Development hosted by the United Nations in Johannesburg in September 2002 marks the tenth anniversary of the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro. Participants at the Rio summit, which included almost all countries in the world, committed to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and adopted Agenda 21 , a detailed road map for achieving sustainable development– that is, development "which will last". The Johannesburg summit reaffirmed the commitments made ten years earlier and sought to accelerate the pace of reform in several key aspects of the sustainable development agenda.
The debate in Johannesburg was dominated mostly by the concerns of industrialised and developing countries. The post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States all attended the summit but the issues arising from transition towards democracy and an open market economy did not feature prominently in public discussions. This chapter therefore examines transition from a sustainable development perspective and vice versa .
The chapter argues that communism and central planning were unsustainable systems, making transition essential for the region to achieve sustainable development. However, transition has been associated with at least temporary setbacks in some key areas of sustainable development, notably poverty levels and living standards. The concept of sustainability must therefore be refined to address adequately the issue of fairness towards both present and future generations and to reflect the constraints imposed by conditions at the start of the transition process and ongoing changes in the global environment. It is important to recognise that a sustainable process is not necessarily a stable growth path. Indeed, it could not be stable if the initial conditions were inconsistent with sustainable development, as was the case with the transition countries.
While some aspects of sustainable development in the transition countries have worsened, it is not clear whether transition has actually involved a departure from the principles of sustainable development and to an overall lowering of living standards since setbacks in some areas may have been offset by gains in others. We argue, along the lines of Sen (1999), that progress in development or transition must be evaluated in terms of fulfilling human potential. This places political issues, such as freedoms and rights, at the centre of the sustainability debate, especially the right to support institutions and policies that promote environmental sustainability and fairness in the distribution of resources within and across generations. In many countries, transition has brought marked improvements in political freedoms and individual rights.
Political and economic transition, however, is only one aspect of sustainability. Even in fully democratic and marketbased systems, additional measures are needed to ensure sustainable development. Markets need to be underpinned by adequate laws, regulations and institutions, and enterprises need to have incentives to follow the rules of good corporate governance and to apply sound business and environmental practices. There is a need, therefore, to assess progress in transition alongside achievement in sustainable development. This chapter evaluates sustainable development in transition economies in terms of overall levels of development, distributional issues and impacts on future generations.
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