Sustainable development (1987-2005): an oxymoron comes of age

By M. Redclift. 2005

1,028 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The essay began by arguing that 'sustainable development' had for some time been a property of different discourses. The term 'sustainable development' was an oxymoron, which prompted a number of discursive interpretations of the weight to attached to both 'development' and 'sustainability'. Only by exposing the assumptions, and conclusions, of these discourses could we hope to clarify the choices, and trade-offs, which beset environmental policy, and the environmental social sciences. Today 'sustainable development' needs to be linked to new material realities, the product of our science and technology, and associated shifts in consciousness.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/966b495bc9a11bc9a58a52230d39b1dfdb29727a

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Citations in the corpus

The Imperatives of Sustainable Development (2017, neutral): “Thus, according to Sen (2009), the capability approach contrasts philosophical approaches such as the basic-needs approach (which focuses on necessities), utility-based approaches (which focus on individual happiness or pleasure), and resource-based approaches (which focus on income, wealth, or reso”
Achieving sustainable development goals: predicaments and strategies (2019, neutral): “Furthermore, there is an inherent conflict between the socio-economic development and ecological sustainability, which makes it challenging to determine the most effective strategy to create sustainable development (Redclift 2005; Spaiser et al. 2016).”
Sustainable adaptation: An oxymoron? (2011, background): “…is both deliberatively provocative, in that it throws out a rather bold challenge to the concept of sustainable adaptation, and purposefully redolent of earlier debates about sustainable development, widely rehearsed more than two decades ago (notably Redclift, 1987; see also Redclift, 2006).”
Sustainable development: Our Common Future revisited (2014, background): “This is an open access artic that the sustainable development concept is in danger of becoming irrelevant (e.g., Hopwood et al., 2005; Redclift, 2005).”
The Environmental Impacts of Sprawl: Emergent Themes from the Past Decade of Planning Research (2013, positive): “We address these divergences by limiting our analysis to environmental outcomes and while this is but one of the familiar sustainable development pillars [65,66], it helps to bridge the idiosyncrasies of scale, methodology, and national context.”
Towards nexus-based governance: defining interactions between economic activities and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2020, neutral): “To date most efforts examined the consequences of economic growth on sustainable development in general (e.g. Meadows et al. 1972; Redclift 2005) and the SDGs more specifically (e.g. Spaiser et al. 2017).”
The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals (2016, neutral): “Redclift (2005) even called sustainable development an oxymoron that disguises the inherent conflict of human and natural systems.”
‘How corporate social responsibility can be integrated into corporate sustainability: a theoretical review of their relationships’ (2018, methodology): “In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil [Rio Earth Summit] aimed to build upon the objectives of the Brundtland Commission Report, and focus on developing a global framework for addressing environmental challenges, such as climat”