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The five dimensions of sustainability

Lucas Seghezzoa
a
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Instituto de Investigación en
Energía No Convencional (INENCO), Universidad Nacional de Salta (UNSa), Argentina

To cite this Article Seghezzo, Lucas(2009) 'The five dimensions of sustainability', Environmental Politics, 18: 4, 539 — 556
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 Environmental Politics
Vol. 18, No. 4, July 2009, 539–556

The five dimensions of sustainability

Lucas Seghezzo*

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientı´ficas y Te´cnicas (CONICET), Instituto de

Investigación en Energı´a No Convencional (INENCO), Universidad Nacional de Salta
(UNSa), Argentina

Sustainability is usually seen as a guide for economic and social

policymaking in equilibrium with ecological conditions. More than two
decades after the World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED) defined ‘sustainable development’ and put the concept of
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sustainability on the global agenda, the concrete meaning of these terms

and their suitability for specific cases remains disputed. A new conceptual
framework to address sustainability issues is needed. The limitations of the
WCED definition could be mitigated if sustainability is seen as the
conceptual framework within which the territorial, temporal, and personal
aspects of development can be openly discussed. Sustainability could be
better understood in terms of ‘Place’, ‘Permanence’, and ‘Persons’. Place
contains the three dimensions of space, Permanence is the fourth dimension
of time, and the Persons category represents a fifth, human dimension. The
five-dimensional sustainability framework is arguably more inclusive,
plural, and useful to outline specific policies towards sustainability.
Keywords: permanence; persons; place; sustainability; sustainable
development

Introduction
‘Our common future’, the report released in 1987 by the World Commission on
Environment and Development (WCED) chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland,
stated that development is only ‘sustainable’ if it ‘meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’ (WCED 1987, p. 8). The concept of sustainable development was
launched by the WCED as a ‘global objective’ to guide policies orientated to
balance ‘economic and social systems and ecological conditions’. It is often
represented with the ‘triple bottom line’ of economy, environment, and society
(Elkington et al. 2007, p. 1). A sustainable development ‘triangle’ formed by
People, Planet, and Profit (the three Ps), with Profit sometimes replaced by the

*Email: lucas.seghezzo@wur.nl

ISSN 0964-4016 print/ISSN 1743-8934 online

Ó 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09644010903063669
http://www.informaworld.com
 540 L. Seghezzo

more moderate ‘Prosperity’, is common use in business and governments

(European Commission 2002). The term ‘sustainability’ is considered a
synonym of sustainable development although, as pointed out by Dresner
(2002), some distinctions between these two concepts can be identified. The
WCED paradigm of sustainable development advocates the environmental and
social implications of economic growth must be included in the decision-
making process.
It is my contention that the suitability of this paradigm to explain and solve
environmental, social, and economic problems needs to be reconsidered. I
begin by examining some antecedents of the concepts of sustainable
development and sustainability and by identifying key points in the debate
that could be useful to analyse their validity and reliability. I also look at some
aspects of the WCED definition that, in my view, represent serious limitations
to its universality and usefulness. In particular, I provide some arguments to
show that the essential anthropocentrism of the WCED definition makes it a
weak conceptual framework to discuss issues of development. While this
definition overestimates the explanatory power of economic reasoning, it does
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not pay enough attention to other, fundamental aspects of development. To

overcome these shortcomings, I propose an alternative sustainability triangle
formed by ‘Place’, ‘Permanence’, and ‘Persons’ (the new three Ps). To justify
this triangle, I try to show that: (a) Place, the three-dimensional physical and
geographical, but also culturally constructed space where we live and interact,
should be more adequately represented in a sustainability paradigm; (b)
Permanence, the fourth, temporal dimension, has been largely neglected in the
sustainability debate, in spite of the widespread recognition of the potential
long-term effects of our actions, and all the inter-generational justice rhetoric;
and that (c) Persons, the fifth dimension, a symbol of people as individual
human beings and not as undifferentiated members of society, has been all but
excluded from the WCED notion of sustainability.

Some antecedents and debates around sustainable development and sustainability

The notions of sustainable development and sustainability are often related to
ideas introduced by economists, philosophers, scientists, and writers from the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, as described in Holland
(2003), Lumley and Armstrong (2004), and Pepper (1996). More recent
antecedents can be found in the writings of Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner,
Donella Meadows, Arne Naess, Murray Bookchin, E.F. Schumacher, Fritjof
Capra, James Lovelock, and Vandana Shiva, among many others (Edwards
2005, Nelissen et al. 1997, Pepper 1996). As discussed below in more detail,
critical objections have been raised against the idea that ‘development’ can ever
be ‘sustainable’ (Tijmes and Luijf 1995). The underlying ambiguity of the
concept of sustainable development, rather than its historical foundations, has
probably led to its worldwide acceptance as a framework for environmental
and social action (Mebratu 1998, Mitcham 1995, Redclift 1993).
 Environmental Politics 541

The sustainability debate has been greatly influenced by previous divisions

in the environmental movement between anthropocentric and non-anthropo-
centric worldviews (Pepper 1996). Anthropocentrism is based exclusively on
human-related values, and considers the welfare of mankind as the ultimate
drive for defining policies related to the environment (Norton 2005).
‘Ecological modernisation’, a recent and well-known anthropocentric (or
even ‘technocentric’) theory, postulates that technical and managerial
approaches could well solve the environmental crisis. Therefore, there would
be no need to radically change the present patterns of development (Baker
2007). This theory is perfectly suited to the ‘limited opportunities available,
desired or permitted’ by political leaders and the business community (Barry
2003, p. 209). As discussed below, not all anthropocentric views are necessarily
technocentric. Non-anthropocentrism, on the other hand, rejects the idea that
nature has value ‘only because, and insofar as, it directly or indirectly serves
human interests’ (McShane 2007, p. 170). It can include radical lines like
‘ecocentrism’ or ‘biocentrism’, which consider that nature has value in itself
(intrinsic value). Non-anthropocentric views are relatively sceptical of large-
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scale technological developments and the commitment of big corporations to

environmental matters. Radical social changes are usually advocated under
these views, and ethical issues are considered the main driving force for the
protection of nature (Mason 1999). In this context, the concept of sustainable
development is regarded as just another product of the market economy that
could never cure the crises that the market economy helps to produce.
The anthropocentrism/non-anthropocentrism debate has also been a major
focal point of theoretical concern among environmental sociologists. A clear
distinction between the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm (HEP) and the New
Ecological Paradigm (NEP) was proposed by Dunlap and Catton Jr. (1979).
The HEP is based on the assumption that the physical environment is relatively
irrelevant for understanding social behaviour (humans are ‘exempt’ from
nature’s influence). In contrast, the NEP points out that humans, who are
supposedly ‘exceptional’ because of their possession of culture and technology,
remain one among many species in the world and they are thus also influenced
by the forces of nature. Human societies can make use of nature in order to
survive but they also have the power to exceed nature’s carrying capacity and,
eventually, destroy it (Buttel 1987).
The relationship between nature and society can be perceived in different
ways. Awareness of these differences is important to understand the
sustainability debate. It can also be a useful tool to assess current development
paradigms in terms of their ability to integrate, reconcile, or transcend the
anthropocentrism/non-anthropocentrism ‘dichotomy’.

Limitations of the WCED definition of sustainable development

In this section, I address some characteristics of the WCED definition of
sustainable development that would represent serious theoretical and practical
 542 L. Seghezzo

limitations that undermine its usefulness as a comprehensive conceptual

framework for sustainability.
First, the WCED definition, as most of the definitions that were introduced
later, is essentially anthropocentric. The WCED report sees the satisfaction of
human needs as inherently conflicting with environmental constraints and, as a
result, the usual sustainability triangle represents society and environment as
separate ‘pillars’. This triangle is rooted in the belief that nature and culture are
a dichotomy that can only be reconciled by the economy. Whether there is such
a dichotomy at all is often questioned. Merchant (1980, 2006, p. 514) resisted
the idea of nature and culture as a structural dualism and argued that such
dissociated nature could be easily ‘dominated by science, technology, and
capitalist production’. Macnaghten and Urry (1998, p. 29) also believe that
‘there is no simple and sustainable distinction between nature and society’
because, to a great extent, nature is a cultural construction. The devastating
human consequences of environmental events like hurricanes, earthquakes,
droughts, floods, and tsunamis highlight how difficult it is now to separate
social and environmental issues (Mittman 2006, Newton 2007). Complexity
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theories have also indicated the existence of ‘hybrid systems’ which are ‘neither
natural nor social’ (Urry 2006, p. 112). The idea of a nature/culture dichotomy
and the anthropocentrism of western and westernised societies have been
denounced long ago (White Jr. 1967), but these modern conceptions have not
been questioned by the WCED report, as indicated by Tijmes and Luijf (1995)
and Dresner (2002).
The anthropocentrism of the WCED definition is in line with the notion of
‘weak’ sustainability. The difference between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability
lies basically in the extent to which exchanges or ‘trade-offs’ between ‘natural’
and ‘man-made’ capital are acceptable. Weak sustainability requires ‘main-
taining a non-declining stock of economic capital into the indefinite future’ and
allows ‘unlimited substitution’ among natural and man-made types of capital
(Norton 2005, p. 307). On the other hand, strong sustainability ‘specifies limits
on substitution’ based on the intrinsic value of some natural assets (Norton
2005, p. 307). Natural capital is regarded ‘as providing some functions that
are not substitutable by man-made capital’ (Cabeza Gutés 1996, p. 147).
According to the WCED report, species and ecosystems must be preserved
because they have an economic value that is deemed ‘crucial for development’
and ‘important to human welfare’ (WCED 1987, pp. 147–150). The report
acknowledges conservation of nature ‘is not only justified in economic terms’
(WCED 1987, p. 155). Yet the additional reasons provided (aesthetic, ethical,
cultural, and scientific considerations) are markedly anthropocentric. It can
then be inferred that, for the WCED, human welfare is the ultimate reason for
the protection of natural capital.
The anthropocentrism of the WCED definition is not a critical issue for
those who advocate ‘weak’ or ‘reflexive’ forms of anthropocentrism, which are
allegedly closer to non-anthropocentric ethics than ‘strong’ anthropocentrism
(Barry 1999, p. 39, Norton 2008). According to Barry (1999), ‘green politics’
 Environmental Politics 543

should be consistent with the principles of green ideology while being

acceptable to non-greens concerned about social and environmental problems.
He postulates it is not necessary to be a rights-based ecocentric to identify some
absolute limits to human action. As an alternative, an anthropocentric ‘ethics
of use’ could also ‘delineate the ethical threshold beyond which the human use
of nature becomes abuse’ (Barry 1999, pp. 58–63). Similarly, Hill Jr. (2006,
331) considers an ‘ethics of virtue’ is probably the only reason we need to
protect nature, and argues that commitment to metaphysics of intrinsic value is
not really required by virtuous agents to value the environment. Whatever the
case, Smith (2006) and Norton (2008) argue that the gap between
anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism is not so wide in practical
situations because to them, virtuous agents and those who hold rights-based
beliefs would tend to promote comparable policies on many environmental
issues. Even though the essential anthropocentrism and technological optimism
of the WCED definition could be alleviated by more moderate positions, some
non-anthropocentric authors might still feel uncomfortable. McShane (2007,
2008), for instance, without discarding Norton’s ‘convergence theory’ on
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practical policy issues, insists that some ethical objections can still be raised
against strong and weak anthropocentrism alike. She identified reasons to
reject anthropocentrism ‘from the point of view of norms for feeling’ that go
beyond the contested idea that nature has intrinsic value (McShane 2007,
p. 169). For her, anthropocentrism implies ‘certain ways of caring’ cannot be
applied to non-human objects, an implication that is difficult to accept for
many environmentalists (McShane 2007, p. 179). In line with this idea, Dunlap
(2006, p. 325) argues that the ultimate justification for environmental concern
should be found on reasons of a more spiritual nature like those that inspired
early environmentalism, a movement that combined a predominantly
ecocentric perspective with an attempt to give a renewed answer to ‘people’s
deep hunger to belong to a community and have a place in it’.
The theoretical motivations to protect nature are not the only thing under
discussion. The adequacy of different economic and technical instruments to
measure sustainability is also a contested issue (Beckerman 1995, Dobson
1996). For that reason, practical agreements might not be so easy, even
between people who do agree on values. Moreover, Ziegler (2009) warns that
such agreements, if possible at all, will probably lead to the empowerment of
the ‘experts’ and technocrats who decide which assessment criteria and
indicators should be measured. This empowerment might come at the expense
of those who believe that open discussions and (some) agreement on values are,
if not indispensable, at least highly desirable before specific policies are
implemented.
Secondly, the importance of the economy is overestimated in the WCED
definition. The WCED report makes it clear that sustainable development is
‘far from requiring the cessation of economic growth’ (WCED 1987, p. 40). It
even goes on to say ‘the international economy must speed up world growth’
that is allegedly ‘essential’ to ‘avert economic, social, and environmental
 544 L. Seghezzo

catastrophes’ in ‘large parts of the developing world’ (WCED 1987, p. 89).

Growth should be achieved, according to the WCED, by promoting freer
markets, lower interest rates, greater technology transfer, and significantly
larger capital flows. Although the WCED report acknowledges that ‘growth by
itself is not enough’ (WCED 1987, p. 44), it still makes a direct and inseparable
connection between growth and issues of poverty alleviation, equity, and
income redistribution. Advocates of ecological modernisation, who often
present this theory as the operational tool of sustainable development in
industrial societies, continue to see economic growth as a central feature for a
just and equitable development (Spaargaren and Mol 1992). However, as noted
by Arrow et al. (1996, p. 14), the link between growth and equity may not be so
straightforward, especially in regions where it is needed most, namely where
‘the environmental costs of economic activity are borne by the poor, by future
generations, or by other countries’. Redistribution and equity are, to a certain
extent, contradictory with the primary objective of economic activity, being to
maximise ‘economic efficiency’ (irrespective of the initial distribution of wealth)
and increase national income (which is assumed to be directly proportional to
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the well-being of society as a whole) (Hanley 2000, Norgaard 1992, Ziegler

2009). This contradiction implies that, unless intergenerational equity becomes
a more central issue in the analysis, the economic approach used in isolation
might not be very useful to address issues of sustainability. The potential
conflict between economic growth and sustainability is perhaps more sensitive
in industrial societies where environmental goods and amenities will never be
enough to satisfy the supposedly infinite needs of individuals. This ambivalence
between the concepts of economic growth and environmental scarcity has been
seen as a major flaw of the idea of sustainable development articulated by the
WCED (Tijmes and Luijf 1995). A joint criticism of both ‘ecoscarcity’ and
‘modernization’ has been given by Robbins (2004). He highlighted the ‘ethical
and practical weaknesses’ of these two approaches to explain and solve
environmental and social problems (Robins 2004, p. 7). The WCED report did
call for some international reforms intended ‘to deal simultaneously with
economic and ecological aspects’ (WCED 1987, p. 90). Arguably, because it
did not fundamentally challenge the dominant economic paradigm, it did little
in practice to diminish the predominance of economistic accounts over social
and ecological concerns. The ensuing ‘inevitability’ of a type of progress
understood only as plain economic growth should be put under more scrutiny
in debates about sustainability (Norgaard 1992). Yet the ‘politically powerful’
idea of progress could be recalibrated and re-appropriated, instead of rejected,
in an innovative development paradigm, as advocated by Barry (1999, p. 250).
A significant additional drawback of the inclusion of an economic
dimension in the definition of sustainability is that a purely economic approach
is, in some respects, incompatible with the long-term thinking required to
attain inter-generational justice. This can become clearer after we take a brief
look at one of the main decision-aiding tools used by economists to analyse
economic efficiency in the public sector, namely cost–benefit analysis (CBA)
 Environmental Politics 545

(Bell and Morse 2008, Hanley 2000). Although CBA was never meant to be a
stand-alone method, it is still widely promoted as one of the best ways to guide
the efficient allocation of resources and to assess the feasibility (and
sustainability) of projects and policies (Pearce et al. 1989). A number of
limitations, obstacles, and ‘behavioural anomalies’ that undermine the validity
of CBA for environmental policy making have been identified, forcing
economists to devise a variety of coping strategies to overcome these
limitations and make it more appealing to governments and the general public
(Barde and Pearce 1991, Hanley and Shogren 2005). The main ethical,
philosophical, and practical objections raised against the use of CBA derive
from the very assumptions on which the method is founded. Especially
questioned have been the legitimacy of ‘valuation’ of some forms of nature, the
acceptability of unlimited trade-offs between natural and man-made capital,
and the validity of ‘discounting’ (Freeman III 2003, Hanley 2000, Mason 1999,
Shechter 2000). Discounting is a particularly contentious issue, especially in
terms of intertemporal equity and distributive implications. According to
Hanley (2000), the assumption made by CBA that the net present value of
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products and projects must be maximised lays potentially heavy costs on future
generations. In fact, at any (reasonable) discount rate greater than zero, the
present value of damages expected far in the future could be neglected when
confronted with present benefits. This constitutes a clear, pervasive, not to say
perverse, bias in CBA tests in favour of the present generation at the expense of
the yet unborn. As compensating future generations may be impossible as well,
the possibility that the ‘winners’ can compensate the ‘losers’ and still be better
off with the changes produced by the project, one of the foundations of CBA, is
significantly reduced. Additional criticisms have been directed to the
assumption that everybody should be eventually willing to accept some kind
of compensation in exchange of environmental or social losses, an idea rejected
by strong sustainability advocates. Besides, poor people would tend to accept
lower compensations in exchange for natural goods (if they are compensated at
all), and this would help perpetuate the present state of inequitable distribution
of wealth. Even strong defenders of CBA consider that a sustainability
‘constraint’ should be used as an ‘additional criterion’ to prevent the depletion
of natural resources threatened by excessive exploitation (which, by their own
account, is encouraged by high discount rates) (Pearce et al. 1990, p. 37).
Others have pointed out that CBA ‘should not be viewed as either necessary or
sufficient for designing sensible public policy’ (Arrow et al. 1996), or that
additional measures are always needed to ensure that projects that passed a
CBA are sustainable (Hanley 2000). It could instead be argued that economic
tools like CBA might be more useful after, not before, other sustainability
assessment methods have been carried out in order to reject unacceptable
alternatives. In this respect, the use of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and
participatory approaches is steadily growing (Hajkowicz 2008, Hanley and
Shogren 2005). Criticism of CBA does not automatically mean a concomitant
criticism of all market-based processes. It is possible, as some authors have
 546 L. Seghezzo

suggested, that ‘ecological rationality’ could also be met within a classical

liberal framework (Pennington 2008). Yet other authors see mounting evidence
of the unsustainability of the consumer capitalist principles of infinite
economic growth and wealth accumulation, and of the ‘failure of ecological
modernisation strategies to secure sustainability’ (Blühdorn and Welsh 2007,
p. 198). Whatever the case, it is becoming increasingly clear that sustainability
cannot be understood in terms of purely economic criteria (Holland 2003).
The third limitation is that space and time have been largely neglected in the
WCED definition of sustainability. The idea that a clear definition of spatial and
temporal boundaries is essential to assess sustainability is not new (Bossel 2004,
Chambers et al. 2000, Edwards 2005, Fresco and Kroonenberg 1992). Fruitful
debates held over the last two decades pointed out the prominence of space and
place in environmental justice debates (Agyeman et al. 2003). The importance of
time in the complexities associated with problem solving is also acknowledged
(Tainter 2006). However, when it comes to concrete cases, space and time are not
always taken into account in sustainability projects. Operational tools such as
sustainability indicators are usually defined only in economic, environmental,
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and social terms (Bell and Morse 2008). Yet, as argued by Rosenau (2003), several
problems resist such categorisation. A paradigm based only on those aspects will
most likely be unable to understand and explain, let alone solve, these problems.
The increasing centrality of a globalised economy in the relationships between
nature and culture has also undermined the importance of specific locations,
landscapes, or ‘places’ as critical components of sustainability, as highlighted by
Escobar (2001). He thinks a radical questioning of place is a common feature of
theories of globalisation that associate place with the limited and incomplete
realm of the local, while promoting a world without frontiers understood as an
absolute and universal space. Time, in spite of all the long-term rhetoric in most
debates about development, has not been explicitly included in the classical
sustainability triangle. The presence of an economic corner in that triangle is
probably the reason why temporal aspects have been so neglected in practice, as
discussed above. Contrary to space, which is associated with visible and tangible
assets, time is beyond the reach of our senses and, for that reason, its pertinence
within the environmental debate has been largely underestimated, as highlighted
by Adam (1998). She proposed to pay more attention to ‘timescapes’, the
temporal dimension of our environmental problems, in order to improve our
understanding of their nature and impact. The inclusion of a time dimension
seems indispensable for Adam because, from a temporal perspective, it is difficult
to ‘conceive of nature and culture as separate’ (Adam 1998, p. 23). Conceptions of
time, as notions of space and territory, can differ greatly in different cultures and
at different historical moments (Adam 1990, Bates 2006, Giddens 1984, Hubert
and Mauss 1905). Time is therefore, as the concept of nature itself, a contested
and culture-dependent issue that plays an important role in the way we perceive
and define nature (Macnaghten and Urry 1998).
Finally, personal aspects are as good as forgotten in the WCED definition
of sustainable development. The WCED report emphasises the role of human
 Environmental Politics 547

‘needs’ as perhaps the ultimate goal of any development policy (WCED 1987,
p. 43). Yet humans cannot be equated only to their needs. Moreover, human
needs are not only physiological. Many types of needs have been identified,
such as safety, love, esteem, and the desire for self-fulfilment (Chuengsatiansup
2003, Holden and Linnerud 2007, Maslow 1943). Most of these needs involve
feelings, felt by individuals, and cannot be catalogued as ‘social’. Whether the
management and coordination of economic, environmental and social aspects
is the right strategy to satisfy all human needs is therefore debatable. As will be
discussed in more detail below, a development paradigm that fails to take these
feelings into account might not guarantee that issues related to, for instance,
personal happiness are incorporated in the sustainability debate.

The five dimensions of sustainability

As discussed in the preceding section, the WCED concept of sustainable
development has contradictions and limitations. Nonetheless, its release by the
United Nations had a very powerful influence on the world’s environmental and
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social agenda. The report was allegedly made with people ‘of all countries and all
walks of life’ in mind and called for immediate action on many fronts (WCED
1987, p. 23). Whether or not the ultimate purpose of the WCED report (1987) was
to be an all-encompassing theory of social change is difficult to say. Yet it made sure
to warn us that unless we changed our attitudes, ‘the security, well-being, and very
survival of the planet’ were threatened (WCED 1987, p. 23). The academic world
seems reluctant to rethink the WCED paradigm although, as pointed out by
Reitan (2005), this vision of development does not appear to be working in
practice. The persistence of environmental, social, and economic problems is
attributed more to ‘implementation deficits’ than to intrinsic inconsistencies of the
concept itself. However, since it was released more than two decades ago, it is
obvious that the WCED definition could not have taken into account recent and
fruitful debates on sustainability that partly complement and partly counteract the
ideas in the WCED report.
Building on some of these debates, I will try to show that the limitations of
the WCED definition of sustainable development could be mitigated if
sustainability is seen as the conceptual framework within which the territorial,
temporal, and personal aspects of development can be openly discussed. To
illustrate this framework, I propose a sustainability triangle formed by ‘Place’,
‘Permanence’, and ‘Persons’ (Figure 1). In such a triangle, it is possible to
distinguish five dimensions: Place contains the three dimensions of space (x, y,
and z), Permanence is the fourth dimension of time (t), and the Persons corner
adds a fifth, individual and interior, human dimension (i). Place and Persons,
the base of the triangle, represent ‘real’, objective and concrete things that exist
in the present time. Permanence, which is located in the upper (or the farthest)
corner, is a more ‘ideal’, abstract and subjective projection of events from the
other corners into the future. I turn to a more detailed explanation of the
meaning I ascribe to the vertices of this new triangle.
 548 L. Seghezzo
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Figure 1. The new five-dimensional sustainability triangle. Place: the three dimensions
of space (x, y, and z); Permanence: the fourth dimension of time (t); Persons: the fifth,
human dimension (i). More details in the text.

Place
People tend to see the environment as the place in which they live and interact.
There are consequently as many ‘environments’ or ‘places’ as visions people
have of the space around them (Macnaghten and Urry 1998). Place provides an
important share of the sense of belonging and identity that are partly
responsible for the generation of culture. It has been defined as ‘the experience
of a particular location with some measure of groundedness . . . , sense of
boundaries . . ., and connection to everyday life’ (Escobar 2001, p. 140). As
Escobar suggests, the definition of any alternative development paradigm
should ‘take into account place-based models of nature, culture, and politics’.
Places are much more than just empty geographical spaces. They contain what
Macnaghten and Urry (1998) call the spatialised, timed, sensed and embodied
dimensions of nature. Places are therefore a source of facts, identities, and
behaviours. They incorporate notions of culture, local ways of life, and human
physical and psychological health (Franquemagne 2007, Garavan 2007, Leff
2000). Place can also be constituted by a number of locations distant from one
another. This shared territory might be an important ingredient in social
cohesion, as studies on mobility, networks and migration have suggested (Urry
2002). Place is, to a certain extent, a social construct that helps people build a
sense of belonging to a given culture. On the other hand, it could also be
argued that culture is, in turn, delineated in terms of specific places. A
perception of place as an inseparable unity constituted by the natural and
cultural environments can help transcend the nature/culture dichotomy
and integrate or reconcile opposite worldviews such anthropocentrism and
 Environmental Politics 549

non-anthropocentrism. It could be said that acknowledgment of local

conditions, constraints, and opportunities is necessary to devise more
sustainable policies (Rootes 2007). However, without explicit consideration
of temporal issues, policies based only on the economic, environmental, and
social facets of a place will exaggerate the relevance of the present time. The
concept of Place, though essential, is hence only the restricted realm of intra-
generational equity (Zuindeau 2007).

Permanence
Permanence is not only mere maintenance of present conditions. It includes
changes and improvements. As indicated by Norton (2005, p. 304),
‘sustainability, whatever else it means, has to do with our intertemporal moral
relations’. For that reason, Permanence could be seen as the main realm of
inter-generational equity. The need for long-term thinking has always been
acknowledged in the sustainability discourse. However, planning has been all
too often relegated to a secondary role. Permanence is consequently the
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dimension where planning and consideration of the future effects of today’s

actions and inactions are paramount. The explicit inclusion of temporal aspects
seems especially appropriate to deal with issues related to our material legacy
and personal transcendence. The sense of belonging to a given place is often
related to things that occurred at different, sometimes distant moments
(Macnaghten and Urry 1998). Therefore, it can be argued the very concept of
place is not complete until we attach to it a certain temporal component. As
indicated by Giddens (1984), time is not a mere background for action and
interaction. Instead, it is inextricably correlated with space, social institutions
and individual persons. Complementary concepts like Place and Permanence
seem pertinent within a development paradigm that intends to have local and
global, but also far-reaching implications. Nonetheless, it has to be considered
as well that a world defined only in terms of place and permanence can be a
very sad place for many people. Slavery, torture, tyranny and other human
monstrosities so widely distributed in space and time can never be considered
‘sustainable’ (George 1999). The concepts of justice and equity, though
essential to build a more sustainable world, are probably not comprehensive
enough to contain a number of more personal aspects. We can all be equal and
have the same access to goods and services but we can also all be equally
unhappy. For those reasons, I believe that the notion of sustainability should
include a ‘personal’ dimension. This dimension, however fuzzy and contested
its definition may be, seems necessary to deal with issues of identity, values,
rights, happiness and well-being.

Persons
The idea of the existence of an individual ‘person’ within each human being,
similar yet entirely different to those around them, has been the subject of
 550 L. Seghezzo

intense philosophical, psychological, and religious speculation. It has been

argued most human beings have always had a ‘sense of corporal and spiritual
individuality’ (Mauss 1938, p. 6) and people have always been ‘concerned with
meaning and the nature of existence’ (Macnaghten and Urry 1998, p. 95).
Wilber (1998) argues the basic problem of modern societies (especially western)
is not a development-related issue or even a social one. Instead, it is the
abandonment, neglect, or rejection of the interior, spiritual dimensions of the
world, a situation that leaves people in a ‘flatland’ devoid of meaning and
value. He believes that without some kind of ‘marriage’ between modern
knowledge and pre-modern wisdom ‘the future of humanity is, at best,
precarious’ (Wilber 1998, 4–10). In the same line, Radford Ruether (1971, p.
214) believes modern society can still be the ‘age of the person’ because men
(and women) ‘have not capitulated entirely to a one-dimensional, secular
definition of man and reality and have retained some notion of transcendent
values which they believe apply not only to their personal lives but to the way
in which social organizations should operate as well’. In her view, the ‘modern
world’ has threatened the ‘foundations of freedom and the person by seeking to
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eliminate the transcendent framework altogether’.

In recent decades, the environmental movement has contributed to the
development of personal and social identity. Environmental issues entered the
international agenda and began to shape personal attitudes and governmental
policies. As time went by, confidence on the ability of governments and
corporations to solve environmental and social crises somehow faded away.
Research conducted by Macnaghten and Urry (1998) suggests that people are
resorting more and more to their own senses in order to perceive the existence
and the gravity of environmental problems. This is allegedly due to growing
distrust towards politicians and the objectivity of ‘others’ in general (including
companies, the media, etc.), and to a widespread perception of lack of personal
agency. This shift has been interpreted as a revaluation of ‘localized and
embedded identities’ and might be an adequate framework to understand the
relationship between nature and society from a more personal point of view.
This relationship involves actions but also feelings. As indicated by McShane
(2007, p. 175), feelings and moral lives ‘are lived from the inside, in the first
person’. Therefore, we should not only care about material ‘outputs’ but also
about the ‘inner life of the being that produces those outputs’.
As some studies have suggested, personal happiness and subjective well-
being seem to be relatively disconnected from economic wealth, environmental
quality, and even social justice (Marks et al. 2006, O’Neill 2008). According to
Dresner (2002), unhappiness is related largely to the impossibility of fulfilling
socially created desires. In contrast, happiness and personal well-being have
been associated with aspects of life such as ‘autonomy, freedom, achievement,
and the development of deep interpersonal relationships’ (Kahneman and
Sugden 2005, p. 176). The existence of projects and relationships is not only
meaningful from a personal point of view, but also complements ‘a purely
impartial ethical commitment’ towards society (O’Neill 2008, p. 138). This
 Environmental Politics 551

personal commitment may play a distinctive role in the pursuit of better inter-
generational justice since humans have the freedom to be relatively
autonomous from both their environment and their culture, as postulated by
Maslow (1954). Arguably, individuals and society can play different roles in the
pursuit of sustainability. Barry (1999) thinks that we are not an ‘undiffer-
entiated ‘‘humanity’’ facing an equally undifferentiated ‘‘nature’’’. He proposes
a ‘citizen–environment’ perspective, as opposed to the classical society–
environment relation, as ‘the most appropriate standpoint from which to judge
politically the normative standing of the non-human world’ (Barry 1999, pp.
61–65, emphasis original). Merging individuals and society into one single
dimension might fail to capture the complexity of human behaviour and the
relevance of personal relationships for sustainability. Explicit consideration of
personal aspects or ‘personscapes’ in the sustainability triangle can also be seen
as a challenge to the idea that nature and society are opposites. Individuals,
who play a fundamental role in the generation, shaping, and maintenance of
culture, are in consequence partly responsible for the construction of a culture-
dependent notion of nature. Therefore, from a personal point of view, it would
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also be as difficult to separate nature and culture as it is to ‘neatly separate

mind and body’, paraphrasing Adam (1998) on timescapes.
The idea of some connection and interdependence between humans and
nature and between humans themselves, in recognising intrinsic value to
‘others’, is a powerful political instrument with normative implications
(Saravanamuthu 2006). Seeing individual persons as intrinsically valuable
might reduce the risk that sectoral (social, environmental, economic,
institutional, or political) interests override the rights of minorities and citizens
by considerations of public utility, as discussed in Norton (2005) and Caney
(2008). Only individuals, with their morals and values, can achieve the ‘change
of consciousness’ that, according to Dryzek (1987, pp. 150–160), is needed to
achieve an ecologically ‘rational’ world free from authoritarian top-down
moral ‘persuasion’. Norton (2005) and Hill Jr. (2006, p. 331) also provided
arguments against the idea individuals are always selfish and insatiable
consumers whose behaviour can only be restrained by compulsion. There are
many examples of collective institutions guided not by immediate gains but by
more altruistic aims, which have been effective in managing common resources
(Folke et al. 1996, Ostrom 1990). The individualistic pursuit of profit, which
has been usually supposed to lead to the common good (thanks to Adam
Smith’s ‘invisible hand’), could instead lead to environmental destruction and
economic crisis, as pointed out long ago by Hardin (1968).

Concluding remarks
I have tried to show that the conventional idea of sustainable development has
a number of conceptual limitations and does not sufficiently capture some
spatial, temporal, and personal aspects. To mitigate these shortcomings, I
introduced a five-dimensional conceptual framework arguably more sensitive
 552 L. Seghezzo

than the traditional triple-bottom-line approach to understand the complex

issues of sustainability. The new framework could be useful for both academic
analysis and policymaking. It has been based on more fundamental ontological
categories as those that serve as underpinning principles of the social sciences
in general (such as space, time, persons, and the relationships among them).
For that reason, its potential for plurality and its adaptability to specific
settings might be higher, making it more appropriate to understand local,
regional, and global processes. As discussed in Norton (2005), pluralism is
‘unavoidable’ in any model, especially for ‘facing wicked problems’ like those
posed by the collision of collective and individual values and rights. Whether or
not the proposed framework is a sufficiently distinctive, improved framework
for the analysis of sustainability issues remains to be seen. The concept of
sustainability is highly contingent to cultural and natural characteristics.
Therefore, agreement on a single definition is not only impossible but also
objectionable. Within the mutually-agreed confines of a sufficiently inclusive
conceptual framework, multiple meanings and site-specific definitions are
possible. Different visions on what sustainability is and how it should be
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measured could coexist, not only for plurality but also because different
frameworks of analysis could give a better idea of the sustainability (or
unsustainability) of processes and regions. In that sense, the new conceptual
framework could augment or complement previous paradigms, instead of
replacing them. Space, time, and human aspects are not independent from each
other and interact in complex ways. In fact, most definitions of place include a
certain notion of time and the conceptualisation and use of space and time
form important cornerstones of people’s cultural identity. The vertices of the
new sustainability triangle are so closely linked to each other that it would not
be easy to deal with them in a fragmented way, as is usually the case for
economic, environmental, and social problems.

Acknowledgements
Detailed and insightful observations from three anonymous referees were greatly
appreciated. The incisive comments of Gatze Lettinga and former colleagues of
Wageningen University (The Netherlands) on early versions of this paper are also
deeply acknowledged. I credit the lively discussions at the cafeteria of the National
University of Salta (Argentina) for some of the ideas in this paper. Many thanks to
James Champion and Tim Briggs for their grammatical input. The author is a full-time
researcher at The National Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina
(CONICET) (www.conicet.gov.ar).

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