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Werner Hediger: Agricultural Economics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
1. Introduction
The idea of sustainability as a management rule and policy principle is by no means new. However, interpretations and management objectives have changed over time. As a fundamental principle of resource management, it has a long tradition in forestry, and has logically been extended to other concerns of natural resource use (Hediger, 1997). In addition, the notion of sustainability has been adapted to the context of various objectives of economy, society and the environment (cf. Tisdell, 1991), including the context of economic growth (OECD, 1960) and nature conservation (IUCN, 1980). As a consequence, the interpretation has become ambiguous and the operational content increasingly unclear. It was the contribution of the "Brundtland Commission" (WCED, 1987) to provide a still vague but nonetheless meaningful definition of sustainable development which involves a shift of the predominant development paradigm (Munasinghe, 1993), and "a subtle but extremely important transformation of the ecologically-based concept of sustainable development, by leading beyond concepts of physical sustainability to the socio-economic context of development" (Adams, 1990, p. 59).
Correspondingly, sustainable development is an important concept of integrating social, economic and ecological dimensions of development and jointly addressing objectives conservation and change. Since these objectives cannot be achieved simultaneously as a rule, trade-offs across the various objectives are inescapable. They must be made explicit to have a clear idea of what is meant by "sustainability" and "sustainable development", respectively (cf. Barbier, 1987; Tisdell, 1988, 1990; Hediger, 1997). Nonetheless, much of the present literature does neglect these trade-offs, by either concentrating on issues of environmental preservation or economic development. This has culminated in mutually exclusive concepts of "weak" and "strong" sustainability that are either grounded on an ethical premise of keeping the general production capacity of the economy constant, or maintaining essential functions and capacities of the environment intact over time. It is dividing economists and environmentalists, rather than reinforcing and integrating different perspectives, and comprehensively addressing the overall challenge of sustainable development.
An integrated approach is required that goes beyond traditional debates on economic development versus environmental conservation, and mono-disciplinary conceptions of sustainability. Hence, an important task is to bridge the gap between the value principle of weak sustainability and the physical principle...