Sustainability: Views from the margins. DevelopmentPLUS Conversation (II)

Please take a moment to join in the conversation! This month, DevelopmentPLUS Development 54.2 authors points of view about sustainability. The first round of conversation presented provocative critiques of sustainable development by Arturo Escobar, Jayati Ghosh, Jan Pronk and Nicola Bullard. How is development perceived in the countries on the margins of the big power centres where many of the decisions about development policy are made? A common critique is that development has to be context specific. Can major global programmes such as the Millennium Development Goals be applied to places recovering from conflict, in direct threat from climate change as small island states? How can development theory and policy respect the environmental and social and political interests of people living in states that are smaller than just one city in large nations like India, China, Brazil, USA and France? What does sustainability mean in those places faraway from decision-making?
The second set of authors in the DevelopmentPLUS tasters of volume 54 no 2 on Challenges to Sustainability reflect on what they see as the un-sustainability of development from the vantage point of their homes in the Pacific, The Caribbean and Serbia.
See conversations: round I, round III and round IV
Jasmina Kijevcanin: Serbia adopted its strategy of sustainable development in 2008 … There has been one step forward at level of policy, two steps back at level of people’s action. I would say it is like dancing traditional Serbian dance ‘Kolo’. Music is changed but people continue to use the same steps. Serbia cannot reach sustainable economic development if its citizens do not know how to read and write; Serbia cannot have competitive market if a non-Serbian speaking person is under risk of being attacked in its capital. It is the people who need to drive the horse of sustainable development.
With this banner, Development is on the Guardian Global Development website this month!