ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS ELSEVIER

Ecological Economics 16 (1996) 205-216

Analysis

Sustainable development: looking for new strategies

H.J. de Graaf *, C.J.M. Musters, W.J. ter Keurs
Environmental Biology, Institute for Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences, University of Leiden, P.O. Box 9516, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands

Received 1 May 1995; accepted 7 September 1995

Abstract Many strategies have been proposed to reach sustainable development. A great many of these strategies aim at one type of problem--preventing environmental deterioration--while ignoring the importance of economic or social goals. In addition, while political decisions are at the heart of the choices to be made, most researchers seem to consider sustainable development as a mere technical problem. In this paper we describe a more complete strategy for sustainable development. We use the outlines of this strategy to find out what knowledge and skills are still needed. The strategy is based on the idea that it is necessary to find consensus on the development of a socio-environmental system as a whole, and between all people involved. It leaves us with at least two main areas that need further study: the supply of information and the management of consensus building. A formal procedure for consensus building might be developed based on the literature and on experiences with Environmental Impact Assessments. Special attention is paid to the information needed. It can be summarized as information about: (1) delimiting a socio-environmental system; (2) the needs and wants to be satisfied via that system; and (3) the physical, ecological, economic, social and cultural constraints of satisfying those needs and wants.
Keywords: Sustainabledevelopment;Socio-environmental system; Decision-making;Information

1. Introduction Until recently national and international policy makers seemed to be able to recognize environmental problems only when the solving of them was almost impossible. For example, in 1850 acid rain was discovered in Manchester, England: in 1872 the first book on the subject was published. The Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution was signed in Geneva in 1979, but a treaty designed to decrease international air pollution in Europe was not ratified until 1985. By that time a quarter of the lakes in Scandinavia were " d e a d " (Ponting, 1991).

* Tel.: (+31-71) 27 51 90; fax: (+31-71) 27 49 00.

Can careful planning, controlling and steering human activities prevent these kinds of scenarios in the future? The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) suggested "Sustainable D e v e l o p m e n t " in 1987 as a way of avoiding them. It realized, correctly, that environmental problems cannot be isolated from others, such as poverty and social disintegration. It regarded sustainable development as a development that minimizes the risk of creating new or exacerbating existing problems: as " a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Since then sustainable development has evolved into an umbrella concept collecting all issues that

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relate the environment to human development (Dovers and Handmer, 1993). In the process, however, many unanswered questions have been generated. Such as: what exactly is sustainable development? What kind of development is meant? What must be developed in a sustainable way? Is it the world, the earth, mankind, a country, a society, or sectors such as agriculture or transport? How long must a development be sustainable? How can today's decision-makers take the needs of future generations into account? Many politicians and scientists have tried to answer questions like these (e.g., Archibugi and Nijkamp, 1990; Goodland et al., 1991; Kuik and Verbruggen, 1991; Pezzey, 1992; Dutch Committee for Long-Term Environmental Policy, 1994; Beckerman, 1994; Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1994). Unfortunately, clear answers have not yet been forthcoming, although many strategies have been proposed that are aimed at sustainable development. The proposed strategies for sustainable development differ greatly: from "business as usual" (Beckerman, 1994) to population growth policy (e.g., Myers, 1993), from changing human attitudes (discussed by Mohr, 1994) to changing economic growth into growth in welfare (e.g., Parker, 1993). But do these strategies really lower the risk of future problems? To be able to judge a strategy, we must specify what kind of problems such strategy must solve. Environmental problems are often regarded as unwanted side-effects of economic activities: i.e., as negative externalities (e.g., Pezzey, 1992). But not only economic activities have negative side-effects. Any activity, whether aimed at social, economic, cultural, or ecological goals, can have negative sideeffects and, at the same time, side-effects can be

social, economic, cultural, or ecological problems. How can we prevent problems linked to the use of our environment if the relation between activities and problems is so complicated? We cannot try to steer isolated activities, because it would leave out solutions based on optimal combinations of activities. We cannot concentrate on solving existing problems either, because this could not prevent new problems. Any complete strategy for reaching sustainable development should be able to consider all possible activities and all their side-effects. It should also be effective. That means that it must not only be acceptable to, and supported by, as many people or parties involved as possible, but also it should be able to handle the often large differences in power between institutions and groups of people. Are any such strategies currently available? If not, can they be developed? In this paper we search for the outlines of a strategy for sustainable development that is as complete as possible. We will describe this strategy to specify the knowledge and skills that are needed to come closer to it, not because we believe that we have developed a perfect instrument yet. We expect that this specification can be used by scientists to fill in the missing pieces. We will start with a discussion of two traditional sets of instruments for solving environmental problems in order to learn which elements of a strategy demand our attention most.

2. Traditional strategies
Many strategies have been proposed to satisfy the demands of sustainable development. They are usually based on the notion that the limits to the use of our environment have already been reached. Thus it is necessary to remain within known and, as yet,

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Fig. 1. Traditional strategies: steering human activities based on informationon the environment.

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unknown physical and ecological constraints. They differ, however, in their approaches towards dealing with this situation. We will discuss the two most important strategies. The first is based on the belief that any human society is part of, and depends on, an ecosystem. The ecosystem constrains the development of that society. It is necessary to respect the carrying capacity of the ecosystems in order to attain sustainability. The second strategy is based on the belief that, if environmental decline is regarded as costs, western economics can cope very well with environmental problems. It argues for the power of self-regulation of human society. If the environment is incorporated in cost-benefit analyses, economic development will become equivalent to sustainable development. Both strategies want to change human activities based on information about the environment (Fig. 1). However, the two strategies lead to different sets of instruments to regulate human activities and to steer development. The proponents of the first strategy argue for imposing legal bounds on human activities to stop unlimited use of environmental goods and services and to reduce negative environmental impact. The proponents of the second strategy focus on pricing the use of environmental goods and services and negative environmental impact (Fig. 2). These instruments, which in the past have often been effective in solving existing problems, have more in common than is generally recognized or can be gone into here. Before discussing these instruments, we should also mention en passant that they are often mixed in everyday policy.

2.1. Maintaining carrying capacity by legislation

In the "carrying capacity strategy", it is assumed that ecosystems and populations have only a limited capacity to cope with environmental stress (Rees, 1990). The global ecosystem is capable, for example,

of absorbing a determined and determinable amount of pollution. This amount cannot be exceeded without catastrophic consequences. In the terms of Fig. 2, this means that if we can limit the use of environmental goods and services, and negative impact on the environment, then environmental hazards and risks become low and there is no need for environmental management. According to many, we have already reached, or even exceeded, the limits of the ecosystem (Rees, 1990; Goodland, 1991; Meadows et ai., 1991). That is regarded as the main environmental problem. Measures have to be taken to decrease the impact of human activities on the environment. This can be done by setting standards and passing legislation to decrease the material consumption per capita, to enforce the use of less polluting and wasting technologies, or to reduce population growth (Goodland et al., 1993). The success of this strategy depends on, first of all, convincing citizens, policy makers and all other parties involved that the limits of our environment have been reached. Thus it is necessary to discover the carrying capacity of the environment. Although many emphasize the criticalness of this, nobody has discovered the instruments and methods to do so. The limits are unknown and cannot be known by scientific study alone because these limits also depend on human needs and wants, and, therefore, on political choices (Haila and Levins, 1992; Musters et al., 1994). Further, even if the limits were known, it could be difficult convincing parties to respect them. For example, a population confronted with a food shortage will try to increase production in spite of the supposed exhaustion of the soil. In this kind of situation environmental limits are not the paramount issue. The people involved will deny soil exhaustion and assert that " I t is not as bad as it seems." Therefore, setting legal bounds to human activities will usually

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Fig. 2. Relations between the socio-economic system and the environmental system (according to de Groot, R.S., 1992).

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have to be accompanied by a costly system that upholds the law (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992). In practice, it turns out to be difficult to achieve the desired changes in population growth, material and energy use and technology through legislation alone. Population policy in itself is insufficient. Both "developing and developed countries are experiencing major difficulties in sustaining their population on their environmental resources" (Myers, 1993). Despite all--even draconian--efforts, the Republic of China authorities are still confronted with population growth (World Resources Institute, 1994). Material and energy use is still increasing in rich countries that have the opportunities and means to change their preferences. Facing the limits does not lead to changing "resource-wasteful life-styles" at all (Myers, 1993). And, finally, the availability of many less polluting technologies does not guarantee that they will be used. Other than scientific or technical arguments might be more powerful (Opschoor and Van der Straaten, 1993). For example, implementing the new technology might be too expensive and make companies "uncompetitive". Summing up, it is difficult or impossible to prove that environmental limits exist and, if they do, what they are. It is perhaps even more difficult to convince people to respect those limits and to provide strategies for doing so. One could say that this strategy overestimates our knowledge of human carrying capacity and underestimates the importance of socio-economic factors. 2.2. Pricing the environment Environmental economics ~ is based on the idea that environmental goods and services are scarce.

~For the sake of contrast between the two strategies, we describe here "environmental economics" and not "ecological economics", as defined by Sahu and Nayak (1994). Ecological economics seems to be a mix of the two strategies, since it is also based on the idea of carrying capacity. It considers natural capital a limiting factor to economic development (Barbier, 1989; Costanza, 1991; Klaassen and Opschoor, 1991; Common and Perrings, 1992). Emissions Permit Systems is an instrument that belongs to ecological economics (Daly, 1992).

Economic activities can cause environmental problems, because the goods and services of the environment are often free and environmental impact usually has no direct costs. One reason for this is that large parts of the environment are either not " o w n e d " by anyone in particular, or have disputed ownership. Another reason is that the value of our environment cannot easily be translated into financial terms (Pezzey, 1992). According to the laws of economics, unpriced production factors can, and therefore will, be used unlimitedly. So, pollution and the waste of materials will go on as long as they are, technically speaking, " f r e e " . However, as soon as they cease being free, activities will change. Politicians will make other decisions, new consumption patterns will arise, and producers will search for new technology. According to this view, pricing the environment is the most important measure that can be taken (Goodland et al., 1993; Common et al., 1993). In the terms of Fig. 2, if environmental goods and services and environmental impact are priced, environmental hazards and risk will be lowered, and funds will be raised to pay for environmental management. May (1994), however, has argued that, if the discount rate is higher than the growth rate of the resource, then from an economic perspective, the resource should be cashed in entirely. Put brutally, populations of slow-growing organisms, such as whales, tropical hardwoods and elephants, should be liquidated immediately. Pricing the environment differs between macroand micro-economics. In macro-economics pricing means correcting the Gross National Product (GNP) for the loss of natural resources. If this can be done, the GNP becomes an indicator of economic growth and well-being (Hueting, 1990). Greening the GNP is aimed at informing politicians about the real changes in man-made and natural capital. The main problem of thus correcting the GNP is that the price of many natural resources is not given by the market. So the price has to be determined indirectly. Cost-benefit analyses can be used to price resources, but their utility is limited to cases where there are substitutes for those resources (Booth, 1994). Unique resources--such as rare species and landscape--are "priceless" and, apparently, unpriceable. Some argue that it might even be unacceptable to price nature because it implies the denial

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of nature's inherent and unique value (Hourcade et al., 1992; Redclift, 1993). Another possibility for pricing is restoration costs. But in many cases recovery is impossible. For example, neither extinct species nor casualties from environmental disasters can be "restored". Hueting (1990) has proposed the use of expenditure on the measures that are necessary to meet physical standards for environmental functions as a basis for pricing. But can these standards be easily established? Is this not the same as determining "environmental utilisation space" (Opschoor and Weterings, 1994; Musters et al., 1994)? It certainly is not possible without political decisions on functions and standards. Pricing in micro-economics can be described as taxing--positively or negatively--resources, production processes, and products, aimed at changing production or consumption (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992). The tax needs only to be high enough to urge the economic actors in the appropriate directions. The right tax and the right tax level can be found by trial and error. But the level of tax is also a political issue. It will be necessary to find support from the people involved. Therefore, it is important that the money that is collected from this kind of tax is either recycled to the market or used to restore abused environments. Otherwise, a government would gain from the "sins" of others, and would thus be perceived as a sinner itself (Shogren et al., 1993). Taxes can be very effective in changing behaviour (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992). But this kind of financial instrument relies heavily on the qualities of a strong economy. What happens when the economic system is under pressure? What happens when important social issues, such as unemployment and social security, are at stake? In these cases it could be difficult to maintain "punishing" taxes. Thus, although pricing might be an important instrument to internalize environmental issues, it cannot be the only measure taken. Again, because not all natural capital can be priced and taxes are, almost by definition, unpopular. This strategy of pricing underestimates the importance of activities that are aimed at unpriceable values, such as cultural development, nature conservation, or landscape plan-

ning. It overestimates the possibilities of pricing under difficult social circumstances.

2.3. Conclusions

The two strategies discussed above illustrate what, in our opinion, is wrong with almost every strategy that has been proposed to achieve sustainable development. They aim at one type of goal--the discussed strategies try almost exclusively to solve existing environmental problems--while ignoring the importance of others. Frustrating these other goals can make sustainable development impossible. If tight ecological standards cause poverty, or if pricing of natural resources causes unemployment, sustainable development will remain beyond our grasp. Many authors recognise that the proposed strategies are only partial solutions (e.g., Von Droste and Dogs,, 1991; Goodland et al., 1993; Robinson, 1993; Peterson and Peterson, 1993; Vatn and Bromley, 1994; Balstad Miller, 1994; Upreti, 1994). Others propose integrated models or multiple goal techniques (Munda et al., 1994; Ojima et al., 1994; Riebsame et al., 1994). But most researchers seems to consider sustainable development merely as a technical problem. And yet we have shown that political decisions are at the heart of assessing carrying capacity, correcting the GNP, or taxing. We did not find in the literature many strategies that also cover the decision-making process (also noticed by Hourcade et al., 1992 and Redclift, 1993), although the relation between environmental planning and policy-making is sometimes explored (e.g., Pearce, 1993; Dutch Committee for Long-Term Environmental Policy, 1994; Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1994). Who will set the goals? Will these be supported by all parties involved? Will measures be accepted? These considerations should be part of a strategy. Not only because we think that decisions on sustainable development are political decisions, but also because they may strongly influence the more technical parts of a strategy. A strategy can only result in workable instruments if one has at least some idea about who and how they will be used. As far as we know, a strategy that covers the decision-making

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process, as well as the need for information, and the measures to be taken is not yet available. 3. T o w a r d s a new strategy Problems linked with the use of the environment can only be prevented if socio-economic, cultural and environmental aspects are taken into account (WCED, 1987, and many authors ever since). In our opinion, this can only be done if socio-economic, cultural and environmental processes are regarded as interconnected within one system: the socio-environmental system as a whole (Fig. 3). We think that consensus has to be sought on the development of such whole systems. This consensus, being a political item, should be reached by negotiations between the people involved. Of course, this can only be accomplished when these people feel involved: that is to say, when they also regard the system as an entity. So the ideal strategy is one that searches for consensus between all the people involved in the development of a socio-environmental system as a whole. The notion of a "complete system approach" is not new. For example, Meadows et al. (1972) analyzed the relationship between the human population and the complete biosphere. More recently, C o m m o n and Perrings (1992) and Grizzle (1994) have advocated a system approach and it is supported by the findings of John et al. (1994). We will use this system approach as the basis for discovering what procedures are needed, and which information on the socio-environmental system should be available to negotiate on the development of such a system. Is there any room for negotiation? After all, phys-

ical, ecological, economic, social and cultural constraints limit the possible solutions for sustainable development. These constraints exist and we can discover them in retrospect (e.g., Ponting, 1991). But when it is to be decided what to do now, we have to base this on our expectations of the future. And due to the inherent uncertainties of that, there will always be different views (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1994). Hourcade et al. (1992) articulated this by stating that it is often not a "decision in uncertainty" that has to be made, but a "decision in controversy". Therefore, compromises have to be sought by negotiation. But will consensus built on negotiations guarantee sustainable development? Since sustainable development, having economic, social and cultural constraints, is really a normative concept (Parker, 1993), this is not the appropriate question. For if we have reached consensus, we agree upon what development we call "sustainable". So, development in accordance with consensus is by definition "sustainable development". But does consensus guarantee some kind of stability? No. We can only try to lower the risk of future problems by considering all the possible side-effects we know, or want to know. Negotiation seems the best way of doing so (Hourcade et al., 1992). Our choice of looking for consensus on sustainable development is based not only on theoretical and ideological arguments, but also on experience. Negotiated approaches to consensus building have worked on a wide range of difficult and politically charged situations. This has been documented by Susskind and Cruikshank (1987). Also, based on the results of environmental policy of the Dutch govern-

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Fig. 3. A new strategy: steering the socio-environmentalsystem based on information on the needs and wants of the people involved and on the possibilities of the socio-environmental system.

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ment, several authors have advocated a more "horizontal" strategy of policy making (e.g., van der Weijden et al., 1984; Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1994; Glasbergen, 1993; Hidding, 1993; De Bruijn and Ten Heuvelhof, 1994). Experiments are performed on consensus building in environmental policy (Hidding, 1993; Richard, 1993). As a matter of fact, according to Beck (1992), our society is being increasingly ruled by "sub-politics"--that is, by bargains between groups of people that are directly involved. Consensus building for and about sustainable development can be approached through negotiations because all parties can expect to gain something from a development that lowers the risk of future problems. An important complication in open negotiations, however, is that the parties involved usually differ greatly in the power to influence the outcome. Therefore, a kind of management or assistance of the negotiations should be available to handle these kinds of differences, to guarantee that all parties have an equivalent voice in the development (Richard, 1993). We could also state this by expressing that all kinds of human goals--all kinds of needs and wants of the people involved--should at least be taken into account (Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987). Thus the management of the negotiation becomes an important issue in this strategy for sustainable development. Further, negotiations about sustainable development can only be realized if all the parties know what they are talking about and have the same information at their disposal. All parties should be able to interpret this information. All parties should know what is meant by "the socio-environmental system". They should know what the present and future needs and wants of the people involved are (Grizzle, 1994), what the possibilities of the system are to fulfill these needs and wants, and what the consequences of different plans are (Pezzey, 1992). The negotiation should lead to steering the system and, thus, to measures that affect human activities. These measures could be very painful. We think, however, that if the negotiations are performed well, it will broaden the basis for measures. Moreover, we think that discussions between the people involved could generate new ways of handling old problems.

Negotiations can use an important resource: the creativity of people who are authentically motivated to find solutions. The strategy we propose might be especially workable at the local and regional level. In these cases the commitment of the people involved will be highest. People will feel more easily part of the socio-environmental system and connected to other people involved. Development can be built on the knowledge and skills of those people. It can be based on cultural and social traditions. It has been argued that in developing countries local environmental problems should have higher priority than global problems (Parikh and Painuly, 1994). On the other hand, it has also been argued that with regard to sustainable development the important questions must be answered at the global level (Pezzey, 1992; Giampietro, 1994). The national government is always one of the parties involved at the lower levels. It represents the interests of the higher level and should make sure that the directly-involved people are not exporting their problems to their neighbours. On the higher levels, from the national to the global, political structures already exist that are designed to facilitate negotiations. Managing the negotiations here is not really the issue. The issue is placing sustainable development on the agenda, which has already been started by the WCED. On these levels, it is more important to provide the relevant parties with the relevant information. Our strategy leaves us with at least two main areas that need further study: the management of negotiations and the supply of information. How should this management be accomplished and what information is relevant?

3.1. Managing the negotiations

It is not enough to say that negotiations on sustainable development are needed. The strategy raises many questions: Who will start the process? Only one of the parties involved can start the search for sustainable development. On the local and regional level of scale, we believe that the best initiating party is comprised of the people that are directly involved and are worried about the development of their surroundings. However, in most cases governmental institutions will start negotiations by assigning a

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socio-environmental system that must become sustainable. We have already stated that the national government is always a party when searching for sustainability at the local and regional levels of scale. Who will manage or assist the negotiations? Governmental institutions might have this task, but since the government is also a party, it seems better that it is performed by independent institutions. It is the task of management to structure the process of finding consensus on sustainable development. Why should parties negotiate? Why should a company that can decide by itself where to build a factory bargain on social structure, landscape or nature conservation? It is clear that the parties involved will only be prepared to negotiate if they can get something out of it. From the idea that a sustainable development is one that has low risks for future problems, one might say that everybody involved will win. A company, for example, might save time because bargaining would diminish the chances of legal procedures. It could also save money by lowering the potential for insurance claims after the factory is built. But it is clear that not all parties involved have the same expectation on future problems. Farmers might not expect depletion of their soil and they might not be worried about social disintegration because they think it would not affect them. What will happen when not all parties can be convinced of the necessity of a sustainable development? If the management is not able to convince all parties, one should ask whether the search for sustainable development is the right strategy for the situation. We think that an important reason for parties to negotiate could be the knowledge that they really have a voice in the development. Therefore this should somehow be guaranteed. The negotiation management should have, as a bare minimum, the following tasks: 1. It should specify what socio-environmental system should reach a sustainable development. 2. It should gather the relevant groups of people around the negotiating table. 3. It should convince parties that negotiations are needed. 4. It should guarantee that all the parties have the same information on the possibilities for sustainability and understand the consequences of the proposed measures.

5. It should provide all parties with instruments to search for optimal solutions to their problems. 6. It should guarantee that all parties have a voice in the development. 7. It should take care that the results of the negotiations are democratically checked: that is, that citizens can hold decision-makers responsible for the results. 8. And it should monitor whether the development is really going the way it should go and take action when it is not. A formal procedure for the negotiations might be developed based on the literature of consensus building (e.g., Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987; Richard, 1993) and on the experiences with Environmental Impact Assessments in different countries (e.g., van Straaten, 1993). Our strategy differs from an EIA in the fact that an EIA is aimed at the environmental impact of one project and our strategy is aimed at the economic, cultural, social, ecological and physical impact of the development of a complete socio-environmental system. The best way to manage negotiations on sustainable development needs further research.

3.2. Information needed

What information is needed? The socio-environmental system must be defined as clearly as possible: not only the physical environment, but also the people who are involved. In order to determine the other necessary information, we must return to the essence of environmental problems. An environmental problem can be described as a discrepancy experienced between the observed state of our physical environment and the state in which we want or need it to be. Or, as de Groot (W.T., 1992) has said, as a fact/value discrepancy. But how can such a discrepancy arise? First, the fact/value discrepancy may be a result of changes in our physical environment: the facts have changed or, to be more precise, the facts as we perceive them have changed. For example, decreasing rainfall provides us with less quality surface water. This changing of the facts can have non-human causes, such as epidemics, volcanic eruptions or inundations, or human causes, such as pollution. However, the difference between "human-caused" and "non-human-caused" is not always clear and

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not crucial when trying to deal with preventing problems in the first place. The risk of non-humancaused facts can be lowered. We can build dikes against inundation. On the other hand, the risk of human-caused facts might be hard to control. The problems of drug usage seems sometimes uncontrollable. The most relevant distinction seems to be: problems that can be prevented and problems that cannot, or developments that can be steered and those that cannot. Second, the fact/value discrepancy can also be a result of the changing of our values, or what we perceive to be our values. We could call these values our needs and wants. Changes in needs and wants can be stimulated by specific human activities, such as scientific investigations, commercial and noncommercial advertising or information services. It can also be the result of autonomous or uncontrolled processes. In these cases socio-cultural processes that led to new values and standards raise the problems, not the condition of the environment itself. Not the facts, but our values have changed. Thus we must collect information about preventable problems and steerable development. The socio-environmental system as a whole is necessary to meet all our different needs. Therefore, this system as a whole should be planned and steered so that the discrepancy between the way things are and the way we want them to be is minimized. And, as said before, both the state and our states of mind can change. Consequently, the information needed on the socio-environmental system can be grouped in two main categories: values and facts. What human needs and wants are to be satisfied by using a particular system? And What are the possibilities of satisfying these needs and wants through that system? Concluding, we say that managing of the process requires information and, at the same time, the managers must provide information to the parties at the negotiating table. Now we must be more specific about this information. 1. At first glimpse defining the socio-environmental system seems simple: the United Nations is likely to search for consensus on sustainable development of the whole earth and the governments of individual

countries want solutions for themselves. But we can regard individual countries as spatial, economic, or political units. We know it is impossible and useless to plan developments into the unforeseeable future. Nevertheless, we must consider what is the relevant time scale. Is that to be determined by physical, ecological, economic, sociological, or cultural processes? Answering these questions will determine to a large extent the solutions for sustainable development that will be found. If a country is considered only as a political unit without spatial limits, enlargement of its territory could be an option. If it is perceived as a spatial unit, this option is forfeited. If the ecological time scale is chosen, solutions must at least cover several decades. If the political stance is selected, the time framework could shrink to less than one decade. We are searching for a method that enables us to define the object that we want to be sustainable in such a way that it can be regarded as a system that can be judged on its possibilities to fulfill all kinds of human needs and wants. We have called such a system a "socio-environmental system", which is not the same as an ecological system described in ecological terms. It is not the same as an economic system described in economic terms, or a social system described in sociological terms. In fact, it must be capable of being judged by all of those terms at the same time. 2. A strategy for sustainable development should look for solutions that have no unwanted side-effects. Thus it should be able to consider all human needs and wants known at that moment. To be sure, we consider the necessity for nature conservation as a " h u m a n need". But will it ever be possible to know and define all needs and wants? Probably not. Therefore, what we really require is a method to locate all needs and wants relevant to the negotiations at hand. That is, a method that helps the parties to assess the needs and wants that they shall be considering at this particular gathering. Such a method would not guarantee that the list of needs and wants is complete. But it should be developed in such a way that the list comes as close to being complete as possible. Special attention should be given to the needs and wants of people who, although they must be considered directly involved,

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cannot be directly represented by the parties. That includes the people of the succeeding generations. That includes people, such as children, who cannot adequately organize or express themselves in the accepted terms of the negotiations taking place. And that also includes people belonging to other socioenvironmental systems, people who might be affected, directly or indirectly, by the decisions being reached by the negotiations. 3. Historical investigations have shown that, given a certain time-space setting, the possibilities of satisfying human needs and wants are limited. That is why highly developed societies can collapse (Ponting, 1991). Thus, in searching for sustainable development, all constraints should be taken into consideration. However, our knowledge of these constraints - - n o matter how good and sophisticated--is bound to remain incomplete. The best we can do is gather all the available information for all the negotiating parties. Quantified information is needed on the needs and the wants that can be satisfied by a particular socioenvironment system. How much food can be produced in the area? How many people can live and work there? How many large mammals? How much wood can be harvested? How much drinking water is there? Then we should study the costs of fulfilling particular needs. In other words, if an area is reserved for nature conservation, how much wood harvest are we sacrificing? How much food could be produced using the same land, and how many people could earn a living through agriculture? It should be possible to estimate the effects of a proposed solution on all the other needs and wants. For example, if the proposed solution is that 60 percent of the area should be used for food production, 15 percent for nature conservation, 20 percent for wood production, and 5 percent for cities, industry and roads, and if the area is used in the most optimal way, what would be the expected effect on the number of people living there, and on their income? What would be the effect on the drinking water supply? What would it be on the conservation of nature? Even though most environmental studies in the past were focused on finding the effects of human

activities on the environment, and a lot of work has been done on modelling human activities, much of the knowledge needed to make such predictions is still not available. Nevertheless, as we stated before, we must make it possible to bring together systematically all the relevant knowledge in order to arrive at the best possible solutions. Thus information is required on the socio-environmental system, on needs and wants, and on the possibilities of satisfying those needs and wants. Can this information actually be gathered and can it be presented in such a way that all parties can utilize it? Further research is needed to answer this question. This research should consider sustainable development primarily as an information problem. Theories are needed that enable the development of instruments for gathering information and making it available to all parties.

4. Conclusions In our introduction we skipped defining "sustainable development". We return to this issue now with two definitions. One is formal, but not operational; the other is procedural, but does not guarantee stability. Combined with other conclusions from this paper, they form a proposal for further research. Sustainable development is a development of a socio-environmental system with a high potential for continuity because it is kept within economic, social, cultural, ecologic and physical constraints. Since all constraints are not, and cannot, be known, the sustainability of a given socio-environmental system cannot be assessed in advance. Most strategies proposed to reach sustainability focus on one set of goals while underplaying others. In other words, they ignore or even deny some of the constraints. Most strategies do not contain a description of how the proposed measures should be embedded in a decision-making process and, therefore, are too technocratic. We propose a strategy that regards sustainable development as a development on which the people involved have reached consensus. To be able to follow this strategy, further study is

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needed on: (a) the management of the negotiation process; (b) the definition of the socio-environmental system which must be developed in a sustainable way; (c) assessment of the needs and wants of the people involved; (d) assessment of the possibilities of satisfying those needs and wants.

Acknowledgements
This study has been made possible by financial support from the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment. The authors would like to thank R. Brinkman, O. de Kuijer, H.C. van Latesteijn, I.J. Schoonenboom, and Max Brecher for their comments on previous versions of this paper.

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