THE TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABILITY: A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT

Ever since the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, the concept of sustainable development has supposed to guide the future pattern of economies, societies and environmental well-being. Over the years, the notion of sustainability as a process of transition towards a more caring future for people and the planet, while enterprise flourishes, has gained topicality. This paper looks at how certain ideas, implicit in the transition to sustainability, can be converted into various economic, natural resources, social and environmental protection initiatives currently being developed in South Africa. The paper argues that many key policy measures could be converted to the sustainability paradigm with a programmed, but participatory change of original direction. However, there remains a serious lack of capacity within governance generally to meet legislative and popular expectations, particularly for South Africa's poor people. For them, sustainability is a foreign word, even though many local actions and protests push in the general direction of sustainability. Genuine partnerships with South Africa's energetic civil society are emerging and deserve much more specific encouragement, even though sustainability as such, will not be the only vehicle for this transformation. Sustainability remains too muddled, and too preferentially interpreted, for it ever to be a coherent driving force on its own.