The environmental-social interface of sustainable development: capabilities, social capital, institutions

By Markku Lehtonen. 2004

778 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The social dimension has commonly been recognised as the weakest pillar of sustainable development, notably when it comes to its analytical and theoretical underpinnings. While increasing attention has lately been paid to social sustainability, the interaction between the environmental and the social still remains a largely uncharted terrain. Nevertheless, one can argue that the key challenges of sustainable development reside at the interfaces synergies and trade-offs between its various dimensions. This paper looks for preliminary ideas on frameworks for analysing the environmental social interface. It first discusses the concept of sustainable development and the relations of the three dimensions of sustainability on the basis of the fundamental premises of neoinstitutional and ecological economics, and briefly presents the bioeconomy model . Based on this conceptualisation of sustainable development, it then goes on to analyse two popular ways of addressing the social dimension of sustainability, namely, the capability approach of Amartya Sen, and the concept of social capital, and discusses the potential of these as bases for the analysis of the environment social interaction. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Environmental Performance Review (EPR) programme is presented as an example of attempts to analyse the environmental social interface in practice. The paper concludes by noting that a single framework for studying environmental social interface is neither feasible nor desirable. It questions the usefulness of analysing only two dimensions of sustainability at a time; and emphasises the need to situate the analysis in its context. In particular, it stresses the need to involve the potential users, as well as to take into account the planned use of the analysis and the interactions between different levels of analysis and decision-making. Capabilities and social capital can both be useful in structuring thoughts, but are not as such directly applicable as suitable analytical frameworks. In particular, they do not provide adequate tools for examining the social preconditions for institutional change needed for environmentally sustainable development.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0096881e206dc42bc04e8619f9230ce88acb6b46

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Citations in the corpus

The responsive bioeconomy: The need for inclusion of citizens and environmental capability in the forest based bioeconomy (2018, methodology): “…focused coding of elements of responsiveness and environmental capabilities in forest-based bioeconomy discourses was undertaken to structure and group statements responding to the two following themes and questions, inspired by Lehtonen (2004) and based on Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’:”
Social Capital: A Necessary and Sufficient Condition for Sustainable Community Development? (2010, background): “The social dimension is likely the weakest pillar of sustainable development (Lehtonen, 2004), and key challenges exist where the social and economic imperatives intersect at the local level, as well as globally.”
The relationship between Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility (2006, background): “Lehtonen, 2004 highlights the economic-social interface due to capability approach and social capital.”
CSR related management practices and Firm Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the Quantity-Quality Trade-off on French Data (2015, background): “For instance, gr en and customer & supplier dimensions share some similar “substantial” attributes in the sense that it is difficult to implement a green dimension within a firm without implementing some attributes of the customer & supplier dimension (Lehtonen, 2004; OCDE, 20062).”
Quality, safety and sustainability in food distribution: a review of quantitative operations management approaches and challenges (2010, background): “The social dimension has received less attention in the literature (Lehtonen 2004).”
There Is No Such Thing as Sustainable Tourism: Re-Conceptualizing Tourism as a Tool for Sustainability (2014, background): “Source: [24] (p.”
Sustainable entrepreneurship orientation (2018, neutral): “Summarizing, we can conclude that an SME’s internal culture and the reconfiguration of resources [116] are critical determinants for adopting a sustainable entrepreneurial orientation.”
How Frugal Innovation Promotes Social Sustainability (2016, background): “Social capital Cuthill [82], Lehtonen [2], Magis [155], Messer and Kecskes [156], Semenza [157], Baines and Morgan [144], Dempsey et al.”
Trends and Future Directions in Sustainable Development (2018, background): “2017 DOI: 10.1002/sd interface and service supply chain performance (Lehtonen, 2004).”
The role of social capital in encouraging residents' pro-environmental behaviors in community-based ecotourism (2014, background): “In order to guarantee mutual benefits for the environment and residents, it has particular importance for the local-level collective management of common resources, such as the environment (Jones, 2005, 2010; Lehtonen, 2004).”