Sustainable development : an analysis of the global conceptual domain with an eye on praxis

Abstract

Paper presented at the 11th International Winelands Conference, organized by the School of Public Management and Planning, 16-18 April 2008, University of Stellenbosch at Spier Hotels and Conference Centre, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Sustainable development as a global formulated concept can be traced back to the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft titled A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Thomas Paine, Right of Men published in 1792. These writers were concerned with giving everyone power over their lives and opportunities to live according to their own values and aspirations. In modern literature, the concept emerged in the ‘Limits to Growth’ of the early 1970s, with the concern that planetary resources cannot accommodate indefinitely the high rates of economic and particularly industrial growth of the times. The paper deviates from the current debate in which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature(IUCN) emerged as a strong advocate, by introducing the new millennium debate on determination of the domain of sustainable development in the fast globalizing world in which all key sectors of development need to cooperate with governments with the aim of solving myriads of complex global sustainable development problems at local, national , regional and international levels.