Sustainable Development and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)

Theoretically, the ‘post-development’ age in the discourse of development started in the 1990s with the promotion of the concept of ‘sustainable development’. However, the term ‘sustainable’ can be traced back to 1972, when it was introduced in “The Limits to Growth”, a report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind (Meadows et al 1972). The aim of this project was to systematically analyze and identify global problems, or in the author’s words

to examine the complex of problems troubling men of all nations: poverty in the midst of plenty; degradation of the environment; loss of faith in institutions; uncontrolled urban spread; insecurity of employment; alienation of youth; rejection of traditional values; and inflation and other monetary and economic disruptions. (qtd. in Margolin 2002, p. 80)

Initial debate arose in the context of expanding populations, economic growth and limited resources.

Twelve possible future scenarios from 1972 until 2100 were explored in order to draw attention to different “choices open to society to reconcile sustainable progress within environmental constraints” (The Story of the Club of Rome [online]).

In 2004, this report was updated in the form of a book whose fundamental message was that global political-decisions must act faster than hitherto, in order to prevent global “overshooting” – i.e.

exceeding limited resources. The book called for a new concept of growth that respected the increase of quality of life as opposed to purely material values and measured humanity’s progress in terms of the growth of security, happiness, stability and sustainability (Meadows et al 2004, ch.7).

In addition to the efforts of the Club of Rome towards a sustainable world, considerable contributions of different United Nations international commissions and conferences on “sustainable development” took place on the international level; most literature refers this back to 1972. The significance of these global events was to formulate the idea of “sustainable development” and to promote this concept further. Three important historical events were held between 1972and 1992 that cannot be ignored when talking about sustainable development (SD) in general. They reflect three modes of SD:

1. The 1972 UN International Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm is considered the first milestone, despite the fact that this term was not clearly introduced at this conference.

But the significance of the event is twofold: it was the first meeting for stakeholders from the environment sector, who called, in the “Stockholm Declaration on Human Environment”, for a connection to be made between environmental issues and development discourse; the second factor was the establishment of a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) that focused on

33 environment and development (Stokholm+40 – History and background [online]). Thus the first mode of sustainable development was about joining development and environmental issues.

2. In 1987, the Brundtland report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) sponsored by the UN, entitled “Our Common Future”, introduced the term “sustainable development” under the classical definition that has been used until recently: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p. 37). This report focused on the “needs of the world’s poor” and called for “a new era of economic growth – growth that is forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable” (ibid, p.

7). This illustrates the second mode of SD that led to the expansion of its limited scope around environmental issues to the integration of economic and social dimensions.

3. In Rio de Janeiro, sustainable development became a driving concept behind “the earth summit”

conference held in 1992 that ended up with “Agenda 21: the Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet”. This agenda was promoted as “a global agenda for change” that developed a set of guiding principles to support strategies for change (Adams 2009, p. 2). Simultaneously, a considerable contribution to this event was an emergent culture of sustainability fueled by capturing attention in various spheres of the media, as well as governments and non-governmental organizations (Margolin 2002, p. 97).

Afterwards, many international conferences were held in order to follow up the achievement of previous conference outcomes and recommendations, as well as to report challenges and obstacles, and there were some calls for another high-level meeting to overcome these obstacles.

Unfortunately, these meetings and many subsequent efforts just accumulated in the form of good words, reports and documents, whose intentions paled in front of the scale of the problem at issue.

Moreover, to ensure that different countries would adopt the goals of sustainable development and be willing to participate actively in pushing SD efforts forward, eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed in the 2000 UN Millennium Development Declaration as an international development framework to be achieved by 2015. These goals were:

halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, providing universal primary education, eliminating gender disparity in education, reducing the under-five mortality rate, reducing the maternal mortality rate and achieving universal access to reproductive health, developing a global partnership to address the needs of the poorest countries, to further an open non-discriminatory trade system, and to deal with developing country debt; and ensuring environmental sustainability by integrating sustainable development into country policies and programs, reducing biodiversity loss, improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and improving the lives of slum dwellers. (United Nations Headquarters 2010, p. 9)

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Figure 2- 1: Millennium goals, (source: http://www.jolkona.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/millenniumgoals.gif)

The intention of MDGs is to facilitate the implementation of sustainable development principles on the country level by integrating them into different country policies and programs. However, in the 2002 report on implementation Agenda 21, Kofi Annan, the United Nation Secretary General, stated that “progress towards reaching the goals set at Rio has been slower than anticipated” and “there is undoubtedly a gap in implementation” (qtd. in United Nations Headquarters 2010, p. 8).

The need to deal with emerging challenges and gaps in implementation has called for a new paradigm of sustainable development. “A new model could chart a development path that truly is concerned with equity, poverty alleviation, reducing resource use, and integrating economic, environmental, and social issues in decision making. The opportunity is ripe to move beyond incrementalism to real systemic change” (United Nations Headquarters 2010, p. 3).

In 2012 two international conferences were held to promote sustainable development and action:

 “Stockholm +40” was convoked to commemorate the first UN conference held 40 years earlier in Stockholm. The intention of this conference was to put a holistic view of sustainable development from different fields and sectors together in practical solutions. Therefore, the focus of this conference was to gather promising examples for sustainable development in three categories: sustainable innovation, sustainable production and sustainable living. The outcomes and recommendations of this conference were published and used as clear messages for young people, civil society organizations, businesses and other stakeholders, as well as politicians and decision-makers at “Rio+20” (Stockholm+40, [Online]).

 “Rio +20”, held in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, aimed to develop strategies for the eradication of poverty, the promotion of social equity, the creation of an institutional framework for sustainable development, and the promotion of the green economy approach to environmental protection (Rio+20 [Online]; General Assembly 2012, p. 21). Green economy here refers to economic growth based on friendly environmental investments that respect the social dimension – or in UNEP words “growth in income and employment […] driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services” (UNEP- Green Economy, [Online]).

35 While the three UN development decades presented above failed to reduce poverty, they did promote the concept of ‘sustainable development’, described as “a new bureaucratic exercise to give development another lease of life” (Esteva 1992, p. 16). In 1990 the United Nations Development Program (UNDP – the economic development arm of UN according to Jeffrey Sachs) published the first Human Development Report, which adopted the idea of putting people at the heart of the development process. The focus of Human development Reports released since 1990 has been that

“People are the real wealth of a nation” (UNDP Human Development Reports [online]).

The primary intention of the Human Development Reports since 1990 has been to encourage a human development approach towards achieving MDGs around the world. This has included raising awareness about human development especially among policy makers in order to promote a national political agenda, engaging national partners, and measuring progress on the country level (UNDP Human Development Report [online]).

However, since publishing the first Egypt Human Development Report (EHDR) in 1995, the role of design in sustainable development has not yet been recognized in local design discourse. Different frameworks, action plans and strategies were suggested and/or established in the following report (EHDR 1996) to support decision-making in combating poverty, but the gap between theoretical efforts and reality is still unfortunately large. Poverty reduction is still one of the most challenging problems facing Egypt; it blatantly reflects the gap between theoretical efforts and reality.

Recent Egypt Human Development Reports (EHDR) have recognized particular academic disciplines, particular segments or specific sectors as partners in the ongoing process to achieve sustainable development: EHDR 2007 focused on “Business Solutions for Human Development”, EHDR 2008 put a spotlight on the role of civil society in “Egypt’s Social Contract”, and EHDR 2010 focused on “Youth in Egypt” as a power resource for change and building the future. These partnerships, however, did not include design or even mention the potential of design thinking as a reliable discipline for supporting the development process. These issues will be discussed later in detail (see Design for Development).