Re-conceptualizing Sustainable Development on the Basis of the Capability Approach: A Model and Its Difficulties

Abstract

This article sketches a re-conceptualization of sustainable development (SD) on the basis of Sen's capability approach (CA). The notion of sustainable development was developed as a compromise in a political process and has been reinterpreted (some say diluted) again and again over the last 20 years. When modelling the notion through the lenses of the capability approach, difficulties occur that are at the core of SD and of CA or that are due to their combination. This article shows why it is not easy to replace ‘needs’ in the Brundtland definition of SD with ‘capabilities’. In our model, the differences between systemic and individual levels become clear and herewith the necessity to include both when dealing with issues of SD. The most salient difficulties relate to the multidimensionality and dynamics on both levels. Confronted with these difficulties, demanding individuals to consciously choose sustainable actions seems to be heroic. We propose two ways to alleviate the cognitive and moral burden on individuals by concentrating on the natural environment and by introducing collective institutions. Both alleviations are far from evident, however; this concerns their justification as well as their operationalization.

Keywords:

• Capability approach
• Sustainable development
• Systemic level
• Collective institutions
• Dynamics

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support provided by the research project ‘GeNECA: Fair Sustainable Development Based on the Capability Approach’ (www.geneca.ufz.de). GeNECA is a three-year project (2010–2013) funded by the German Ministry for Science and Research as part of the funding programme ‘Economics for Sustainability’ (FKZ 01UN1015A). We have presented this article at capability and ecological economics conferences. We thank our respective institutions, all commentators on the earlier versions of this article and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Notes

Refer to Holland (2008) for a discussion on Nussbaum's CA and sustainability; to Scholtes (2011) for a background paper on the UNDP report (2011); and to Watene (this issue) for discussion of Nussbaum's CA and intergenerational justice.

Historically, this replacement makes sense as the capability approach was developed with the aim of overcoming difficulties with the basic needs approach (Sen, 1983).

Of course, resources and conversion factors are not objective manifestations of the systems, but are ascribed by individuals. Furthermore, the social system impacts on the individual values, i.e. on the reasons for including an option into one's own capability set and for selecting functionings out of the capability set. To simplify the figures and our argument, we omit this influence.

In principle, the capability sets of future generations include their agency freedom. This could be represented by an arrow going from future achievements to future systems in Figure 2.

The argument from institutional economics, that due to free-riding and so on it is more efficient to reach and implement collectively binding agreements, adds to this.

Page (2007) rightly points out that maintaining opportunities is what the CA takes as its ‘currency of justice’ and that this cannot easily be reconciled with the broadly resourcist idea of justice in terms of ecological space.

It is another question how these institutions should be brought about—through dictatorships, majority voting, discursive and participatory processes, a council of wise people and so on.

To our knowledge, the translation of her work into the language of the CA has not yet really been made.

We cannot go into detail of such deliberations on intergenerational justice (see Gutwald et al., 2011 on this), but note that arguing for SD institutions is still confronted with the moral and conceptual difficulties of granting the status of moral subjects to unborn people.

We are grateful to Peter Krause for this still unexplored remark.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ortrud Lessmann

Ortrud Lessmann is Research Fellow at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Forces, Hamburg, Germany

Felix Rauschmayer

Felix Rauschmayer is Deputy Head of the Department for Environmental Politics at the Hamburg School of Business Administration, Hamburg, Germany