EQUITABLE

World population
* 6 billion human beings today, approximately 10 billion about 2050.
* Each day in the world, nearly 180.000 people come to increase the urban population.
* 20% of the world population consume 80% of the natural resources.
* 1,5 billion human do not have access to drinking water. They will be 5 billion in 2025.
* 840 million people in the world is underfed.

Following the conference of Rio, the majority of the States began to work out a national strategy of sustainable development. Its implementation will be complex because it will have to face the stakes of sustainable development. These stakes will be also those which will weigh on the success of the top of Johannesbourg, whose exit is necessarily fragile. Because sustainable development imposes in-depth structural changes.

• It is necessary to rebalance the capacities between the economic priorities and the urgent social and ecological requirements. How? By integrating obligations of respect of the environment and social norms in the mechanism of the financial markets. And in substituent with the fast stock exchange speculations of the viable and equitable economic projects in the long run. To give the man in the middle of the economy is a priority.
• It is necessary to found a new practice of the government decisions. The political decisions are still too often calculated in the short run, to answer particular economic interests without taking account of the long-term impact for the whole of the population.
• The State is not the only person in charge of sustainable development. One needs an implication of all the socio-economic groups. The effective realization of the objectives of sustainable development, can succeed only if the whole of the actors of the company acts jointly: private companies, public, associations, ONG, trade unions and citizens.
• It is necessary to rebalance the economic forces between the countries of the South and North. The countries in the process of development are too much involved in debt and slowed down in their commercial exchanges to devote the sufficient energy and means to education, health and environmental protection. It is necessary to cancel the public foreign debt of the Third world, to apply a tax of the Tobin type by assigning the receipts to development projects durable, and finally to give up the structural policies of adjustment.
• To implement all conventions and the multilateral agreements on the environment, it is necessary to create an international institution charged to make respect the obligations subscribed by the States. Following the example World Trade Organization (WTO) which manages the commercial exchanges, one would need an Worldwide organization of the Environment to manage the ecological problems.

At the time of the Week of Sustainable development, Ethicity introduces to the results of the annual study “the French and the durable consumption”, carried out near 4 500 French in order to define their waitings as regards durable consumption.
For 30% of the French, to consume in a responsible way is to consume less in general and for 46% less superfluous products. Nearly 70% of the questioned French consider that the way in which they consume can have a rather positive impact on the environment. 20% estimate that with through their choice of purchase, they act with the service of their conviction. They are 66% to state to make responsible purchases, including 20% who say to do it regularly.
A movement of company which one sees emerging gradually throughout the annual studies and which the current economic situation still more reveals.

For 90% of French, the crisis represents an occasion to re-examine our lifestyles and of consumption!
More than ever, it is important to help all the actors to include/understand and identify the levers necessary to the behavioral change. The study 2009 thus makes it possible to identify 4 major levers:
- To propose gravitational offers as well on the price as on the contents: 70% of the population consider that the products and services of responsible consumption are not gravitational overall.
- To bring more information (51% of the population still do not know where to buy responsible products or services), of clearness (in particular on the labels) and of transparency, essential lever of the release of purchase of the French who doubt the social or ecological promises of the marks and the companies.
- To support the local products: for nearly 30% of the population, a product making it possible to consume responsible must be in priority a product manufactured locally. In addition, the origin of the raw materials and the place of manufacture are in the middle of waitings of information on the labels (65,4% of the answers). These assertions translate a need for proximity and centring on its immediate environment.
- To develop novel modes of exchange and to pass from the approach produce with the approach service: 28,5% of the women are said ready to exchange a product for another mode clothing, 40% of the 25 - 34 years ready to buy and use with several of the tools of do-it-yourself and gardening…
In parallel, waitings of the French remain strong with respect to all the actors of the company, policies and undertaken, of which they await incentives to act and an accompaniment.

Dimensioned political: if the ¾ of the questioned people consider that the policies and communities do not take sufficiently counts the environmental stakes of them, they are nearly 40% to estimate that Grenelle of the Environment is effective. The requirements remain strong to go further.
Dimensioned undertaken: the fall of confidence in the large companies continues (- 11points since 2006 to 37%) and the requirement of responsibility with respect to the employees is accentuated since the 2006 (“health and the safety of its employees” 1st criterion of responsibility for the company. + 10 points with 38%).

In conclusion, the Ethicity study on waitings of the French as regards durable consumption shows this year a movement of centring on essence (what is important for oneself and its entourage).

Inquire ground realized by TNS MédiaIntelligence. D-interrogation of a sample of 6000 old individuals from 15 to 70 years in the car managed by post way (return 4500 individuals) in March 2009. Use of sample SIMM 2008 for Access Panel.

At the time of the week of sustainable development, the Ministry for ecology and sustainable development in partnership with the ADEME publish a guide general public of 24 pages which explains the 8 stakes face to which we must act in a collective but so individual way to the daily newspaper and gives keys to reach that point. Let us live together differently! To download

Like all the concepts, sustainable development finds also its limits. Indeed, the capitalist company, in which we are, knew to redistribute the dividends of the production to the economy (in the form of reinvestments) and to social (rise of the income of paid) during all its existence. The balance between these two poles was carried out with the liking of the economic evolution, the economic equilibrium and the political convictions of the leaders. But how to take into account the environment in this balance?

1. The most important risk is that the label “sustainable development” is recovered to support more and more policies or acts not having any relationship with the concept even, or being attached to it in a very surface way. For example, the dematerialization does not remove the paper consumption and does not improve environmental quality of the products, “durable tourism”, application to tourism of the concept of sustainable development, tends to be tourism of elite which, in the name of the respect of the environment, draws up a social barrier by increasing the tariff of the stays in order to “preserve the environment”, forgetting the social aspect.
2. The second risk is that the concept of sustainable development derives towards a vision Malthusian from our company. Why the rich countries, now developed, impose would on the developing countries a restrictive vision of their development? The concept is good, its creditable objectives, perhaps but it is used to justify a protectionist policy of certain countries fearing a too great competition. In practice, the developed countries are not deprived to trade with China, in spite of the risks of drift of the ecological print of this one.
3. A third risk is that of a badly balanced communication. That is to say the communication would not be followed actions, in the field of the innovation for example, and the company would weaken compared to its competitors more innovating. That is to say on the contrary the communication would reveal too many confidential informations. In both cases, the coherence of the organization and the competitiveness of the company would suffer from it in the context of revolution Internet.
4. A fourth risk is that of a drift towards models of low durability, i.e. admitting the substitution of the natural capital by a stock of knowledge. This model is often that of the American organizations in particular, especially at the federal level or their world ramifications. This risk results in the constitution of networks of innovation controlled apart from Europe which would be likely to destabilize the European institutions and the States of the European Union (research, universities,…).
5. A fifth risk, more pernicious still, is underlined by the philosopher André Count-Sponville. This one fears that the ethics of company shouted high and strong in the conferences, in the name of the interest (in fact of the company) does not mask actually the lack of a broader morals. In practice, the fluidity of flows of information and financial of universalization leads to a multiplication of the not controlled overseas investments. That can short-circuit the European coordinated actions, in the legal political arena and in particular, because of cultural skews and of administrative rigidities of the States. Count-Sponville concludes some with the need from a morals exceeding the manager from the company (four orders). A reorganization of the right appears moreover necessary.
6. A sixth risk comes from the monopolization, by the powers which control information technologies, of the procedures of international standardization and regulation. So richest are likely to impose a model which ends in fact in a distribution even more unjust of the knowledge, and consequently of the natural resources. Software known as open source and companies or organizations supporting their implementation (of which the SSL), can perhaps contribute to reduce this risk.
7. A seventh risk is that the criteria of evaluation are badly balanced and crossed between the environment, the social one, and the economic one, or the implementation of skewed total models (return to Utopias or certain forms of ideologies,…). For example, environmental skew can mask other deficiencies.
8. An eighth risk is that the financial analysts charged to evaluate the reports/ratios of sustainable development of the companies do not have the formation necessary on the concepts of sustainable development, and that they do not have the adapted tools for analysis.
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Criticisms
The term of “sustainable development” is criticized for the blur which surrounds it. Luc Ferry writes as follows: “I know that the expression is of rigour, but I find it so absurd, or rather so fuzzy that she does not say anything given.” And Luc Ferry to add that the term is in fact the obviousness, while reasoning by the absurdity: “which would like to plead for a “intolerable development”! Obviously nobody! [.] The expression sings more than she does not speak.”.

Lastly, the traditional definition of sustainable development exit of the commission Brundtland (1987) can appear with certain exceeded. Indeed, it is not a question today more of aiming, as there is a score of years, the satisfaction of the remote needs for future generations. It is the current satisfaction of the needs which is now compromised by the crises environmental and social that XXIe century knows. It is not a question any more of anticipating the problems but of solving them. Sustainable development could then leave room to the concept of “desirable development” which gathers the whole of the solutions economically viable to the problems environmental and social that the planet knows. This novel mode of development, economic growth factor and of employment, would be a true “green economy”, based on the social economy and interdependent, the éco-design, the biodegradable one, the bio, the dematerialization, re-employment-repair-recycling, renewable energies, the equitable trade, the relocalization…

The concept meets critics on several levels. Thus, John Baden considers that the concept of sustainable development is dangerous because leading to measurements with the unknown and potentially harmful effects. He writes as follows: “in economy as in ecology, it is the interdependence which reigns. The isolated actions are impossible. An insufficiently considered policy will involve a multiplicity of perverse effects and undesirable, as well in the plan of ecology as in the strictly economic plan.”. Contrary to this concept, it defends the effectiveness of the private property to encourage the producers and the consumers to save the resources. According to Baden, “the improvement of the environmental quality depends on the market economy and the presence of legitimate and guaranteed property rights”. It makes it possible to maintain the exercise effective of the individual responsibility and to develop the mechanisms of incentive with environmental protection. The State can in this context “create a framework which encourages the individuals with better preserving the environment”, by facilitating the creation of foundations dedicated to environmental protection.

Sustainable development is also criticized in what it can be only one tool of the countries of North against the developing countries: The geographer and specialist in the Third world Sylvie Brunel estimate that the ideas of sustainable development can be useful like folding screen with the protectionist ideas of the countries of North to prevent the development by the trade of the countries of the South. For Sylvie Brunel, sustainable development “legitimates a certain number of barriers at the entry”. By thus offering a pretext to the protectionism of the developed countries, “the feeling which sustainable development gives, it is that it serves capitalism perfectly”.

Certain authors denounce a religious dimension or irrational sustainable development. Sylvie Brunel speaks thus about “technique of marketing worthy of the large preachers” and thus underlines in a Naissance conference of a religion: sustainable development, that “sustainable development is the product of the last universalization and all the fears which it can involve.”. For Claude Allègre, it is about a religion of the nature, which forgot that the essential concern was to be the man. He is partly criticized associations ecologists which would like to make pass the man in the second plan: “The ecological moulinette, alas, amplified the word “durable” and erased the word “development” with the passing of years. We assert here the respect of this requirement in its entirety. It is not because one defends the nature which one can put aside the culture.”

Other thinkers still underline the potential threats that the ideas with the base of sustainable development can represent for individual freedoms the Luc Ferry philosopher sees for example in the ideas of Hans Jonas of the potentially totalitarian ideas and underlines the risks of sustainable development in this respect. This fear are also shared per many liberals: “The environment can be the pretext with a new increase in the capacity and dangerous drifts on behalf of the assoiffées people of power. Even the people the best disposed ones could not most probably not manage the immense capacities whose certain ecologists would like to see equipped the guards the ecologically correct one.”

Lastly, holding them of the decrease consider that the term of sustainable development is a oxymore since the natural resources are finished and noninfinite.
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