Research and Solutions: "Green" vs. Sustainability: From Semantics to Enlightenment

Abstract

The sustainability movement from the grassroots to the global level has been both enriched and hobbled by the many different versions of sustainability articulated in scholarly and popular writings, town hall forums, and international conferences. The latest expression of this cacophony is evidenced in the emergence of “green-talk” and the growing substitution of varieties of “greenness” for sustainability and sustainable development in everyday and media parlance. This critical essay seeks to accomplish two things: draw out the differences between the green label and sustainability, and situate this debate within a hierarchical sustainability rubric that allows us to meaningfully offer gradations on the sustainability continuum. In so doing, we seek to illuminate the stakes involved in this conceptual debate and provide clarity about what these putative variations on sustainability imply for both theory and practice. In an age of mounting finite resource scarcities, rapid climate change, and continuing global population growth, combined with the growing clamor for Western-style economic development, the sustainability movement is not going to go away. Sadly, the meaning of sustainability and sustainable development remains highly contested and subject to ongoing and fierce dispute. This state of affairs is evidenced by the growing shift away from the language of sustainability and its variants to the increasingly popular, and easier to swallow, term green.