Criticism Of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development defined by Sustainable Development Measurement index (N.d.) as “sustainable development refers to social, economic, and environmental development that meets the needs of current society without compromising or limiting future development and growth” (Cantor, 2001). In short, the theoretical approach on sustainability contains three essential elements, which are social, economic and environmental development. In order to achieve sustainable development, nations are needed to balance between the economic development, environmental protection and social consensus. However, in recent years, numerous ecological damages brought by economic and industrial activities and led to disputes among the society. The growth of the human

The theory associated with a dominant view of business as usual, they also believed in technological fixes and reductionist scientific analysis. Neoclassical has a weak concept of sustainability, which devoid of social and cultural conditioning and oblivious to ethical responsibilities to other or to the environment (Gowdy&Waltson, N.d). In other words, they perceive that growing economy should be separated from environment and free of biophysical constrains. In Neoclassical development model, it strongly associated with developing countries with large amount of unskilled labor and abundant natural resource, but lack capital to extract these resources. These would encourage countries to export goods in which they have comparative advantage. These comparative advantages exist in form of labor-intensive goods and natural resources and the economy rely heavily on the export goods. The statistic will indicate a high output and increase living standard, it creates an illusion that people enjoy a higher living standard. Furthermore, the economic systems view man-made capital being equivalent to natural capital (Daly, 1991). The also reflected their confidence that technology will be able to replace any natural capital. The neoclassical economics approach emphasis the important of free trade to economic growth. Unfortunately, it fails to identify the important of natural resource and sustainable