Sustainable Development

Sust. Dev. (2011)

Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/sd.522

A Review of Utopian Themes in Sustainable

Development Discourse
John Harlow,1* Aaron Golub2 and Braden Allenby3
1
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
2
School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and School of Sustainability, Arizona State University,
Tempe, Arizona, USA
3
School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

ABSTRACT
Sustainable development is commonly traced to the ‘Bruntland Report’. However, its origins
wind their way back through earlier UN conferences, 18th and 19th century political economic
thought, Rousseauian ideals, the modernism founded on Bacon and Descartes, early
Christian utopianism, and classical utopias such as Republic and New Atlantis, which
expressed themes of social justice, environmental stewardship and economic growth. This
article follows these utopian themes back through the history of sustainable development
thought, relying on contemporary histories and reviews of the field as well as certain original
texts. We also identify these threads within, and their impact upon, contemporary narratives
and debates. We conclude with the suggestion that awareness of these discursive streams
can assist in the effective use of the tools and concepts available for sustainable development
efforts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Received 29 August 2010; revised 14 February 2011; accepted 22 February 2011

Keywords: discourse; history; utopia; Brundtland Report; sustainable development; sustainability

Introduction

‘R
EPRESENTATIONS ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF “REALITY” BUT CONSTITUTIVE OF IT. THERE IS NO MATERIALITY THAT IS
not mediated by discourse, as there is no discourse that is unrelated to materialities’ (Escobar, 1995,
p. 130). This paper highlights the discursive precursors of historical, existing and proposed
‘materialities’ within utopian visions of sustainable development. It tracks elements of discourses
from contemporary manifestations to intellectual roots through a review of recent analyses, historical accounts and
original sources. We go on to critique how various discursive themes have coalesced uneasily beneath the
overarching banner of ‘sustainable development’, and investigate the causes and effects of the resulting tensions.
To quote Michael Redclift,

The ‘new’ sustainability discourses were often clothed in new language – deliberation, citizenship, even the
rights of species – but they hid, or marginalized, the inequalities and cultural distinctions that had driven the
‘environmental’ agenda internationally (Redclift, 2005, p. 224).
* Correspondence to: John Harlow, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, 123 S Hardy Dr apt A, Tempe, AZ 85281. E‐mail: Johnharlow7@
gmail.com

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
 J. Harlow et al.

Discourse shapes the possible. Ideas within a discourse are debatable, usable, manifestable. Those outside the
discourse gain no traction, find no audience, accumulate no momentum. Discourse is the accepted frame of
thought and reference around a concept. It contains layers and opposing positions, but also an exclusive hierarchy
of relevance based on political expediency, path dependence and the status quo. Thus, the ideologies collected
within sustainable development discourse have used the term to acquire for themselves broad acceptance.
Unfortunately, as Redclift noted, this has attached sustainable development to ideas internally at odds.
To be clear, we wish to distinguish ‘conventional’ discourses that use sustainable development’s wide approval to
cloak unchanged agendas from emerging thought and practice that actually addresses inequality and cultural
differences. In this treatment, conventional sustainable development is the bold program for balancing ‘economic,
social and environmental’ needs, and such approaches are the main subject of this analysis. To be clear then, the
term ‘sustainable development’ herein refers to popularized conventional approaches, and not the work of local
practitioners and expert academics. We shall conclude by looking forward from conventional discourses to advances
in the field, held under, perhaps unfortunately, that same banner of ‘sustainable development’.
Across disciplines, both academic and popular literature point to the 1987 World Commission on Environment
and Development book, Our Common Future, commonly referred to as the Brundtland Report, as the work that
gathered serious attention to sustainable development. Its oft‐cited definition of sustainable development,
‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs’ (WCED, 1987, p. 19), helped to establish a discursive frame that has been progressively modified
and contested (Connelly, 2007; Giddings et al., 2002; Jacobs, 1999). While the Brundtland Report often serves as a
starting point for contemporary discussions of sustainable development, we spend most of this piece exploring the
cultural and intellectual currents that produced it, and provided its underlying imagery and force. To conclude, we
look forward from Brundtland, to recent developments in sustainable development discourse.
This paper is an overview of from where and who came the oftentimes dissonant discursive elements of sustainable
development. We begin by summarizing contemporary discourse, focusing on the Brundtland Report and selected UN
conferences of the last 50 years. We then review the history of some of the dominant themes of sustainable
development: economic growth, social equity and environmentalism. Jacobus Du Pisani (2006), Sarah Lumley and
Patrick Armstrong (2004), Diana Mitlin (1992) and Keith Pezzoli (1997), among others, have all explored the history of
sustainable development preceding the Brundtland Report, identifying key thinkers, ideas and trends. This paper
builds on their work, focusing more precisely on recurring utopian themes, and the thinkers that evolved these themes.

Conventional Sustainable Development Discourse

Most treatments of sustainable development acknowledge the Brundtland Report in their opening remarks
(Bebbington, 2000; Connelly, 2007; Dasgupta, 2007; Filho, 2000; Giddings et al., 2002; Hedren and Linner,
2009b; Jacobs, 1999; Kates et al., 2005; Laws et al., 2004; Luke, 2005; Lumley and Armstrong, 2004; Mebratu,
1998; Michaels and Laituri, 1999; Mitlin, 1992; Pezzoli, 1997; Redclift, 2005; Söderbaum, 2009). The discursive
impact of its definition of sustainable development, and its centrality of reference, makes it the departure point for
our review of conventional sustainable development discourse. Post‐Brundtland, the next broadly acknowledged
step in sustainable development discourse was the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio
de Janeiro, which resulted in Agenda 21 (Filho, 2000; Kates et al., 2005; Mebratu, 1998; Mitlin, 1992; Pezzoli,
1997). These major reports set the stage for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, South Africa, also known as the ‘Earth Summit’.
However, Pezzoli (1997) notes that the specific phrase ‘sustainable development’ was in use much earlier,
during the 1974 joint UN Environment Program and UN Conference on Trade and Development Seminar in
Cocoyoc, Mexico, and at the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden (Hedren
and Linner, 2009b). The ‘Stockholm Conference’ was an early attempt to unite economic growth with
environmental protection to assuage long‐held North–South ideological differences about developmental needs and
ideals. Of course, these conferences built on numerous, long‐developing social movements concerning social
justice, environmentalism and anti‐colonialism. The Brundtland Report was a coordination of these, and other,
intellectual streams, and attempted to discursively unite the opposing concerns of Northern supported
environmental conservation and Southern desired economic development. It implied that economic growth could

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/sd
A Review of Utopian Themes in Sustainable Development Discourse

drive environmental protection and that the two issues should be addressed together (Hedren and Linner, 2009b;
WCED, 1987). From here, we follow themes from the contemporary discourse back to their beginnings.

Historical Roots of Sustainable Development Discourse

Pezzoli (1997) tracks the evolution of the modern environmental movement to the late 19th century. He is among
many who note the lack of consensus within the movement and among definitions of sustainable development.
Lumley and Armstrong (2004) also follow the origins of sustainable development discourse back to the mid‐18th
through late 19th century, when a robust intellectual exchange around political economy raised questions about the
morality of capitalist accumulation from both the liberal perspective of Adam Smith and the radical one of Karl Marx.
Although Robert Heilbronner finds that Smith’s The Wealth of Nations emphasizes capital accumulation, he finds
that ‘the interplay of material progress and moral decline takes the form of a subtle dialectic that invests his work with
its remarkable depths’ (Heilbronner, 1985, p. 114). Lumley and Armstrong (2004), as well as Heilbronner, lament the
loss of such dialectics as the discourse progressed and subsumed Smith’s thought into a popular canon championing
economic growth, free markets and trade over other concerns. Witness the rise of ‘development economics’
proselytizing gross national product growth (e.g. Harrod–Domar) and simplistic policy formulae to achieve it.
Lumley and Armstrong drilled down into the work of ‘British Victorians’, who, with the aid of Adam Smith’s
interpretations, understood capitalism as a system not solely based on market economics, but also requiring specific
‘rules of justice’ (Lumley and Armstrong, 2004, p. 367). They characterized the attitudes of 19th century
economists toward the inherent tensions between capitalist economic growth and social justice, writing ‘almost
invariably they put justice before wealth’ (Lumley and Armstrong, 2004, p. 370). These very origins of theories of
economic growth and political economy contain the seeds of tensions between growth and social justice. This focus
on justice and fairness has reappeared in the discourses of development, intergenerational equity (Barry, 1999;
Wissenburg, 1999) and environmental justice (Agyeman et al., 2003).
Marx’s work responded to the moral themes in economic philosophy generated just before and during his life, but
developed a vastly different understanding. He theorized that poverty and crisis were inherent to the capitalist system
of production due to both inter‐ and intra‐class struggle, but that private production would eventually give way to a
worker managed society. His focus on power, class relations, political consciousness and social change has profoundly
impacted sustainable development discourse, especially in the global South. In the end, however, Marxism’s
discursive contributions appear not only as revolutions, but also as cognizance of local and international inequities and
the North–South divide, exemplified by imperialism and the political economy of trade agreements (Wade, 2003).
Yet, the tendrils of sustainable development thought stretch back even further than Smith and Marx. Gilbert La
Freniere (1990) explores the 18th century work of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, who advanced notions of small‐scale,
steady‐state economies operating under an environmental ethic of humanity’s harmony with nature. Lynn White Jr.
finds the origins of such environmentalism even earlier in history, naming late 12th to early 13th century Saint
Francis of Assisi the ‘patron saint for ecologists’ (White, 1967, p. 1207).
‘Development’ also has deep historical roots, and rests on the historical frameworks and foundational
assumptions of western rationalism. As Bruce Rich describes in Mortgaging the Earth (1994), international
development institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) operate within a development paradigm conditioned by the visions of Sir
Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Du Pisani follows the philosophical stream that underpinned the thought of
Bacon and Descartes back into medieval times, when

The Christian conception of progress encompassed… utopian ideas… By the 13th century two crucial strands
of the European conception of human progress had been established: awareness of the cumulative
advancement of culture and a belief in a future golden age of morality on this earth (Du Pisani, 2006, p. 84).

As we shall discuss, Christian utopianism is a primary underlying theme in sustainable development discourse.
The economic and scientific paradigm around modernization and development is based on a notion of linear
progress, which correlates with a combination of these 13th century articulations of progress. Modern development
economics, including the ‘Harrod–Domar’ and Rostow’s ‘Stages of Growth’ models, predicts cumulative

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 J. Harlow et al.

advancement of material culture, given that nations follow the proper investment policies. Of course, the end game
of sustainable development includes not only economic growth, but also the described ‘golden age of morality’, with
ubiquitous and equitable wealth and opportunity as well as environmental preservation.
Among these intellectual threads comprising sustainable development run several utopian themes, including
constant economic growth, equality, morality and environmental conservation. Next, we focus on the themes most
relevant to the formation of the contemporary sustainable development narrative. We begin first by discussing
utopian themes and their use as discursive devices.

Utopian Themes

‘Utopia’, as coined by Sir Thomas More, comes from the Greek for ‘no place’ or ‘good place’. Utopias envision
societies without conflict that embody justice and internal peace. However, generalizations about the populations of
utopias tend to render individuals faceless and insignificant. Utopian thought shares some of these flaws (Hedren
and Linner, 2009a).
Hedren and Linner (2009a) draw on the work of Krishan Kumar to illuminate the important distinction between
scattered and non‐exhaustive ‘utopian thought’ and a ‘classic utopia’ – a functional narrative around a complete
expression of an envisioned society. Although classic utopias exhibit considerable influences, they are
overshadowed, especially in modern times, by the visions and thought they have generated. Utopian visions
unanchored to any classic utopian narrative are constantly generated and referenced in today’s political, economic
and sustainable development circles. The result of this production is fragmentary, competing and incoherent
strains of utopian thought.
The fragmentation of utopian elements often minimizes important, but undesirable, elements of classic
utopias (Hedren and Linner, 2009a). For example, in Republic, Plato’s cultural context taints his vision with
the commonly accepted practice of slavery (2003). While there are attractive elements in Republic, many of
which play important roles in today’s visions of development, clearly the practice of slavery does not enjoy
similar acceptance. Sir Thomas More (1912) also exemplifies how the prevailing norms of a time color its
utopian ideals. In More’s Utopia, visitors easily convert the Utopians to Christianity: ‘after they heard us speak
of the name Christ… many of them consented together in religion and were washed in the holy water of
baptism’ (More, 1912, p. 189).
With these caveats, that (1) utopian thought diverges from classic holistic narrative utopias and (2) elements
deemed unacceptable may be left out of current manifestations of utopian visions, we now follow some of the
utopian strands in sustainable development discourse from early manifestations into current discursive
iterations.

The Modernist and Capitalist Utopia

Economic growth and modernization are the dominant characteristics of the economic aspect of sustainable
development’s ‘triple bottom line’. Although disputed by the political left (Benton, 1999; O’Connor, 1997), and the
emerging field of steady‐state economics (Daly, 1996), capitalist economic growth has been a generally accepted
and central aspect of conventional sustainable development discourse since the Brundtland Report (Benton, 1999;
Jacobs, 1999; Kates et al., 2005; Mebratu, 1998; WCED, 1987). We can find the roots of this powerful proposition in
the cumulative advancement of material culture envisioned by early Christian utopianism and later capitalist
utopianism (Du Pisani, 2006; White, 1967).
Sir Francis Bacon’s Christian utopian vision, New Atlantis, describes a Christian oligarchy, analogous to Plato’s
‘philosopher kings’, which controlled knowledge and technology (Bacon, 2008; Rich, 1994). Today, we live in a
world in many ways conditioned by and analogous to New Atlantis. Disputes over intellectual property and
technology transfer within international trade agreements (Chang, 2003; Wade, 2003), and increasingly climate
change treaties (Ikeme, 2003), reveal a contemporary political structure reminiscent of an oligarchy or ‘ philosopher
king’ apportioning knowledge and technology.

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/sd
A Review of Utopian Themes in Sustainable Development Discourse

The themes of rational management in New Atlantis mirror Rene Descartes’ conception of a world composed of
objects under man’s control. The concept of progressive material culture created the discursive space Descartes
inhabited when envisioning a future mediated by the power of humankind to make and remake the world: ‘a world
reduced to a geometric extension occupied by objects for a rationating, calculating subject’ (Rich, 1994, p. 205).
Certainly, Descartes’ impassioned cry for the imposition of man’s will upon nature is reflected in the evolution of
an economic system built and reliant upon the distant extraction of energy and raw materials. His ideas of
‘geometric extension’ have driven the general disconnection of modernity, not only from the stuff of which it is
built, but also increasingly from those who build it. Descartes was fascinated with the potential of man to create,
from the raw material of nature, a modernistic temple unto himself (Rich, 1994).
Of the many examples of modernism inspired by this ideology, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, stands out.
The epic play may be the most iconic dialectic between material development and its costs. Marshall Berman writes
of the play’s message, ‘the only way for modern man [sic] to transform himself… is by radically transforming the
whole physical and social and moral world he lives in’ (Berman, 1985, p. 40). This revolutionary thought took place
within the crucible of emerging European capitalism, and thus alludes to Smith’s future utopian capitalism.
Smith’s vision included full employment and social harmony based on the market economy, the enforcement of
property rights and fair processes, alongside minimal but necessary provisions for collective welfare. Over the
ensuing century, following capitalism’s tendencies (and perhaps in opposition to Smith’s visions) ‘modern’ would
also connote a bureaucratic, industrial and urban form of development.
Claude Henri de Saint‐Simon may have been modernity’s greatest visionary and advocate. Saint‐Simon found
modernization and technocracies to be powerful tools for transforming man’s innate will to power. He wanted to
channel the urge to dominate people into dominance over the environment. Saint‐Simon foresaw a peaceful utopian
future, in which man’s ‘natural’ aggression was put to use on grandiose public works projects and infinite industrial
and economic growth (Berman, 1985). This future would be mediated by a Baconian technocracy, which would
operate a centralized bank, through which funds for development would be allocated. However, Saint‐Simon’s grand
utopian plan was tinged with the prejudice of his cultural context. His goal, quoted by Rich, was ‘to people the globe
with the European race, which is superior to all other races, to open the whole world to travel and to render it as
habitable as Europe’ (Rich, 1994, p. 217).
Saint‐Simon’s followers published Le Globe ‐ a Parisian journal that birthed the term ‘socialisme’: in English,
socialism. Their socialism was a utopian dream of infrastructure projects that would improve the public good and
render the world a European‐style paradise. However, the emerging, smaller scale capitalism of the time was not yet
wealthy enough to engage schemes of such magnitude. It was not until later that capitalism evolved the surplus
wealth, flexibility and public–private institutional osmosis necessary to take on Herculean development tasks. ‘It is
only in the twentieth century that Faustian development has come into its own’ (Berman, 1985, p. 74).
The aftermath of Saint‐Simon’s obsession with grandiose development projects has been manifold. It helped
create the discourse that housed the utopian visions that drove Baron von Haussman to remake Paris, the Roosevelt
administration to prioritize the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Robert Moses to re‐imagine New York City
(Berman, 1985). Rich echoes Berman, and connects the latter projects directly to the discursive progression
beginning with Descartes: ‘by the mid‐twentieth century many of the elements of the Cartesian vision were
embedded at the deepest, most unconscious level as fundamental assumptions of a global culture of modern
institutions and bureaucratic decision making’ (Rich, 1994, p. 206). Indeed, these utopian visions reappear at the
core of development economics, emphasizing infrastructure investment rates to overcome investment ‘gaps’ and
foster the Rostowian ‘take‐off’ to a modern society. The clearly urban character of this proposition is shown also in
‘dual‐sector’ (e.g. Lewis) development theories emphasizing the mechanization of rural production systems to free
labor for urban and industrial activities.

The Equitable and Just Utopia

Like Bacon, Descartes and Saint‐Simon, Marx drew on the Christian utopianism that preceded his work (Allenby,
2005) and built on the egalitarian ‘golden age of morality’ to develop a new, but secular, utopian philosophy. Marx’s
utopian thought contains multiple streams. One has similarities to the modernist, industrially driven economy
discussed in the previous section, in which ‘modern people came to see life in general through the lens of

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 J. Harlow et al.

production’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 60), and the social and economic feedbacks of natural systems are mainly ignored
(Lumley and Armstrong, 2004). Another stream predicts the historical inevitability of communism as structures of
inequality and unplanned market anarchy crumble under the duress of working class ingenuity and organization.
Berman describes Marx’s work as not primarily focused upon the material precursors or results of production.
Rather, like Descartes and Saint‐Simon, Marx was fascinated with the process through which the bourgeoisie
transformed ideas into reality (Berman, 1985). Marx strove to dissect the ability of people to transform raw materials
into the stuff of modernity, which drove his theory that labor created all value in productive processes (Berman,
1985). Marx did not believe that the effects of capital accumulation were limited to simply ‘positive’ economic
growth. His unique contribution to sustainable development discourse is the vision of a secular industrial society in
which the principles of social justice upend the vicissitudes of the market.
Marx’s utopia is not one of benevolent oligarchs, but rather of a collectivized society in which the distributive
ethic ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ reigns. Justice is found through the
communal ownership of the means of production and an absence of private property and class hierarchy. In such a
society, all people would enjoy increased free time and a just share in the material wealth collectively produced.
These revolutionary ideals have not yet been realized, and several past attempts have failed, but Marx’s work still
carries the torch of enlightenment egalitarianism forward. His ideas resonate in conversations about intra‐ and
intergenerational equity, anti and post‐colonial movements, third world liberation and even today’s alternative and
anti‐globalization movements.
While Marx theorized upending the market, Smith and others envisioned justice in the very freedom that
liberated private exchange theoretically provides. In such systems, equity is the procedural fairness and justice of
free markets, provided that certain social needs are met collectively. This utopian vision lives not only in the
economic practices and rhetoric of Western ‘developed’ societies at large, but also heavily influences conventional
sustainable development thought.
Though Marx and Smith figure prominently in discussions about equality, other liberal and libertarian
approaches to justice have also appeared in sustainable development discourse. Justice and the environment has
received much attention (Agyeman et al., 2003; Allenby, 2005; Ikeme, 2003; Wissenburg, 2006), and Wilfred
Beckerman (1999) questions the utopian premise of intergenerational equity often highlighted from Brundtland.
He believes that the focus should instead be simply ‘bequeathing a more just and decent society than that in which
most people today live’ (Beckerman, 1999, p. 72), and proposes a more ‘humanist’ set of goals.

The Ecocentric, Pastoralist, Conservationist Utopia

Sustainable development, or sustainability, is often conflated with environmental protection and conservation. The
tendency to emphasize the environmental aspect of sustainable development stems from the profound cultural
shift brought about by the environmental conservation movement, the origins of which date back to Earth Day in
1970 (Pezzoli, 1997). However, Pezzoli (1997) and others find the beginnings of environmentalism discourse
centuries earlier.
White (1967) theorizes that the Christian worldview paved the way for environmental tragedy: the shift from
paganism to Christianity fundamentally changed the way humans interact with nature. Unlike sacred responsibility
to animistic spirits throughout the natural world, ‘especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most
anthropocentric religion the world has seen’ (White, 1967, p. 1205). White connects man’s biblically God‐given
‘dominion’ over, general disconnection from and apparent disdain for nature to the Christian conception of
progress. Thus, he charges the Christian worldview with driving environmental degradation and resource
consumption. In contrast, he describes St. Francis of Assisi’s lifework and philosophy as trying ‘to substitute the
idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man’s limitless rule of creation’ (White, 1967,
p. 1207). St. Francis failed to change the anthropocentrism of mainstream Christianity. However, his thought
influenced how Rousseau understood humankind’s relationship with nature, as well as contemporary
environmentalism’s ecocentrist and deep ecologic philosophies.
La Freniere’s description of Rousseau’s work as ‘a model of a complete, holistic outlook toward nature and
humanity’s relationship to nature’ (La Freniere, 1990, p. 42) makes it analogous to a classical utopia. La Freniere
also specifically describes Rousseau’s philosophy as ‘utopian progressivism’ and contrasts this with the

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. (2011)
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A Review of Utopian Themes in Sustainable Development Discourse

‘developmental progressivism’ shaped by the technological and scientific paradigm articulated by Bacon and
Descartes (La Freniere, 1990, p. 49).
Rousseau envisioned two separate utopias. One is the ‘state of nature’ – a static, de‐historicized utopian ideal of
man’s harmonious relationship with the natural world in the distant past (La Freniere, 1990, p. 45). The other was a
future, steady‐state, pastoralist, agricultural society based on an ‘environmental ethic’ (La Freniere, 1990, p. 47).
Rousseau’s ‘progress’ was building values from the ‘state of nature’ into society in order to approach his utopian
end goal, which La Freniere describes as ‘political intervention within society to create new political forms which
will allow the recovery of qualities, such as empathy and cooperativeness’ (La Freniere, 1990, p. 48).
This Rousseauian vision of progress differs significantly from conventional Enlightenment conceptions of
progress, through which the human condition would simply be ‘naturally’ improved by science and technology.
Rousseau’s critique offers a strong counterpoint to modernism’s implicit quest for scientific and technical
progress through economic growth, and resonates strongly in today’s sustainable development discourse. It
was rediscovered, according to La Freniere, when ‘environmental crisis of recent decades demanded its recall
in the form of the development of principles and utopias outlining the goals of sustainable, steady‐state
societies’ (La Freniere, 1990, p. 51). This arguably inspired some of the growing body of work on steady‐state
economics by Herman Daly (1996) and others.
Rousseau’s desire for a ‘return to nature’ (Allenby, 2005; La Freniere, 1990), and call for small economies and
communities, began a discourse that Pepper traces through what he terms ‘romantic anarchism’ into
‘communalist ecocentrism’ (Pepper, 1993, p. 38). Participants in this progression include the transcendentalists
Thoreau and Emerson, as well as environmental ethicists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson (La Freniere,
1990). Leopold’s classic, A Sand County Almanac, expresses a philosophy of progress in line with Rousseau’s
beliefs: ‘politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free‐for‐all competition has been
replaced, in part, by co‐operative mechanisms with an ethical content’ (Leopold, 1970, p. 238). Replacement of
laissez‐faire competition by ethical co‐operative mechanisms resembles Rousseau’s desire for progress mediated
by a politics of empathy and cooperation. Leopold’s criticism of land‐use ethics, ‘still governed wholly by
economic self‐interest, just as social ethics were a century ago’ (Leopold, 1970, p. 245), reflects Rousseau’s wish
for a ‘general will’, under which people pursue the good of society, which in turn provides for their individual
self‐interest (La Freniere, 1990). Leopold’s work is also widely recognized as aesthetically awed by nature, a
normative perspective used by Rousseau (La Freniere, 1990), and culminating in Leopold’s own famous
expression, in the spirit of St Francis, and Rousseau’s ‘state of nature’: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’ (Leopold, 1970,
p. 262). Sustainable development approaches reflect the ethic embodied in this statement through the use of the
‘precautionary principle’.

The Confluence of Utopian Themes in Conventional Sustainable Development Discourse

We shall now discuss the contemporary state of the utopian themes thus far identified, and explore the tension and
occasional incoherence that has resulted from competing utopian visions within sustainable development
discourse. In conventional sustainable development discourse, the utopian elements discussed thus far converge.
Today’s ‘philosopher kings’ are the western scientists, economists, researchers, development loan managers and
diplomats whose expertise guides the conduct of development (Escobar, 1995; Mitchell, 2002; Rich, 1994). The
framework for this development is of a lineage passing from Christian utopianism through the work of Descartes,
Bacon, Smith and Saint‐Simon, culminating in grand visions such as the ‘manifest destiny’, and perhaps even the
sweeping policy platforms of the Monroe, Truman and Bush Doctrines.
Such development narratives display the utopian themes of a collective capitalist project, based on a vision
of continuous progress, undertaken by centralized technocracies, such as the U.S. State Department, USAID,
the U.S. armed forces, The World Bank and The IMF. This development is assumed to ‘naturally’ provide
benefit through the allocation of resources by markets in a Kaldor–Hicksian ‘winners could compensate losers’
trickle‐down process.

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These utopian elements, themes, and visions are connected to the discursive progressions referenced in this
paper. However, they do not always match and merge into a coherent, holistic perspective on conventional
sustainable development. Though Marx envisioned an extractive industrial society, he imagined a radically
different and egalitarian political economy. He proposed a secular future without private property or class, where
the means of production were owned collectively, rejecting technocratic oligarchy. Countless critiques of global
capitalism draw on Marx’s work for inspiration, and find egalitarian, libertarian, or humanist concerns for justice
to be of central importance in sustainable development. Similarly, as much as Marx’s communism echoes
Rousseau’s ‘general will’ in the primacy of the collective over the individual, their utopias drastically differ in
scale. Rousseau’s small‐scale pastoralism looks nothing like industrial socialism (though some scholars on the
left, John Bellamy‐Foster among others, find Marx’s methods more cognizant of the environment’s role in
economics than later socialisms demonstrated, and that ‘…Marxism does already contain enough in the way of
meaningful – albeit mostly implicit – perspective on ecology’ (Pepper, 1993, p. 61)).
Rousseau’s ecocentric and somewhat anarchist philosophy is somewhat absent from conventional sustainable
development discourse, leading to impassioned disagreements between conservationists and proponents of eco‐
efficiency. Even the linguistic shift from ‘nature’ to ‘environment’ represents a major discursive shift of emphasis.
Where nature was ‘wild’ and ‘uncontrollable’, environment is quantifiable and scientifically manageable – inputs
into the modern global economy (Allenby, 2005). The sanctity of nature has been lost within the Christian
worldview that dominates western thought. Humans have objectified the world in which they live, just as Descartes
envisioned, and these primary elements of modernism seem to oppose the spirituality of St. Francis and
Rousseau’s ecocentric utopian thought.
Conventional sustainable development discourse perpetuates the commoditization of our ‘environment’
with economic terminology: ‘natural capital’ or ‘ecosystem services’. This ‘regime of representation’ (Escobar,
1995, p. 10) holds the discursive space in which technologies can be substituted for the newly labeled natural
resources and processes: ‘weak sustainability’ (Bebbington, 2000, p. 19). Even though this regime of
representation better recognizes the coupled human–environment system, the practical implications of ‘natural
capital’ are management strategies based on neoclassical economics. Thus, nature, like human labor, enters
the market to be commoditized like any other good. Where this ‘weak sustainability’ reigns, the deep ecologic
philosophy of St. Francis mourns the slavery of life in pursuit of capital accumulation.
Utopian ideals compete in sustainable development, but are they a cohesive whole? Bacon and Descartes
dreamed of modernization and technocracy whereas Rousseau pleads the case for small communities and renewed
connection between man and nature. Smith celebrates a morally informed ‘invisible hand’ directing an economy
based on accumulation, whereas Rousseau looks to steady‐state economics and elevates the ‘general will’ over
private decisions. Marx indicts capitalism for its inherent poverty and crisis and wishes to overthrow the private
property so dear to Smith and Rousseau.
Within the arguments for definitions of sustainable development, utopian visions constantly surge forth from
the institutions and thinkers they have begotten. Our collection of separately evolved, but currently intertwined,
utopian themes is not necessarily reconcilable. Ferguson and Lohmann (2006), Hedren and Linner (2009b),
Mitchell (2002), Redclift (2005) and Rich (1994) strongly critique the international development paradigm as an
imposition of western cultures and values, and question the de‐politicization of the discourse around poverty,
foreign aid and other development issues. This de‐politicization, along with the mutation and flexibility of
discourse, facilitates absorption of non‐European cultures into progressions of utopian thought that are the
foundations of Western institutions and social and cultural consciousness. In Escobar’s words,

Labels determine access to resources… people must adjust to such categorization to be successful in their
dealings with the institution… the whole reality of a person’s life is reduced to a… ‘case’. That this case is more
the reflection of how the institution constructs ‘the problem’ is rarely noticed, so that the whole dynamics of
rural poverty is reduced to solving a number of ‘cases’ with apparently no connection to structural
determinants, much less the shared experience of rural people (Escobar, 1995, p. 110).

Berman also explores such tensions, focusing on how development discourse takes the desirability of modernity
for granted regardless of consequences or context (Berman, 1985). James O’Connor adds his commentary, ‘The

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/sd
A Review of Utopian Themes in Sustainable Development Discourse

Second Contradiction of Capitalism’, on ecological commoditization and challenges the very idea of sustainable
capitalism (O’Connor, 1997). Timothy Luke plainly states

Living in societies organized around global information networks and commodity markets requires a broad
facility from everyone for coping with many different language games, using various skill sets, adapting to
several new technocultures and all while being ‘green’. In many ways, sustainable development is a social
movement for greater commodification, working both from above and below (Luke, 2005, p. 233).

These criticisms show some consensus in opposition to the desirability of modernity and the commoditization of
humankind and nature. They address the structures in which conventional sustainable development discourse
takes place, and question the opening of countless local communities to global markets and the modern vision of a
one‐world system based on the expansion of western culture and capitalism.
The ability to address social justice in concert with environmental conservation and regeneration while
maintaining capitalist economic growth is a utopian vision built on the remnants of utopian past. Can conventional
sustainable development discourse approach or reach these often contradictory goals? Can it do so in the capitalism
lauded by Smith or the communism by Marx? Can it do so given the dominance over nature inherent in Biblical
traditions and ‘weak sustainability’ discourse? Can it do so within ongoing North–South conflicts over local
livelihoods, pollution, biodiversity loss and the dignity of the poor? As long as defining and practicing sustainable
development happens within a discourse that does not address structural contradictions, that discourse will be blind
to its historically utopian roots and the core drivers of its currently competing agendas. How can it know success if
it cannot define progress? We now look forward from conventional sustainable development discourse to the
achievements of leading academics and local practitioners.

Looking Forward

Our review of conventional sustainable development discourse illustrates the discord in such an amalgam. It also
now begs some comparison with current practice as a gesture towards the future. Indeed, sustainable development
practitioners have begun to recognize the roots of sustainable development discourses, clarify the futures we wish
to inhabit and identify methods we might use to achieve those futures.
New Zealand’s Resource Management act is an excellent example of progressive legislation incorporating
indigenous perspectives (Michaels and Laituri, 1999). However, implementation has faced difficulty overcoming
the political status quo (Grundy, 1998). The collection of sustainability tools and metrics explored by Robert et al.
(2002) acknowledges to a point their context within broader sustainable development strategies. Elinor Ostrom’s
review of case study results detailing socioenvironmental relationships (Ostrom, 2009) offers detailed insight into
the circumstances under which sustainable development tools are successful. The ‘Ten principles for sustainable
societies’ assembled by Cavanagh and Mander (2002) can find a large and motivated audience, and even improve
its practicality by integrating existing political realities, taking into account path dependences and recognizing their
own utopian origins. We have a wide range of real tools and ideas at our disposal, and complex discourses need to
integrate them to create the most effective and appropriate strategies and solutions. To merely equate sustainable
development with environmental protection because economic growth will create opportunities for conservation
leaves ideas and practice stuck in the utopias of centuries past.
However, the question asked of sustainable development is not rhetorical. The question asked of sustainable
development is practical: How do we become a real sustainable society? And, more importantly: How do we take
into account our context and avoid the oversights of utopias past? To borrow a concern from Escobar (1995): What
might a post‐sustainable‐development discourse include?
Sustainable development discourse can widen to appreciate historical and cultural drivers, political circumstances
and strong self‐examination in the face of contested and protested discursive elements. Instead of relying on economic
thought predicated upon now questioned assumptions about human nature and decision‐making (Tversky and
Kahneman, 1981), emerging convergence between economics, neuroscience and psychology offers new understandings

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/sd
 J. Harlow et al.

of human behavior (Sanfey, 2007). Advances like these make room for perspectives other than objectivist and
depoliticized science and management (Söderbaum, 2009), and incorporate non‐western visions and approaches.
There are numerous examples of sustainable development practices that transcend the triple bottom line. They
actively incorporate local knowledge and traditional practices and attempt to tackle some of what have been termed
our most ‘wicked problems’. The ‘Ecodialogue Station’, at Mexico’s University of Veracruz, attempts to transcend
differences between conventional enlightenment science and traditional ways of knowing through cooperative
problem solving involving indigenous scientists. The Lynedoch EcoVillage in Stellenbosch, South Africa, tackles
problems of ecology, food production and poverty, while directly confronting the legacy of racism and apartheid that
plagues all sustainable development efforts in South Africa (Swilling and Annecke, 2006). Agyeman and Evans
(2003) review prominent case studies in which justice was successfully prioritized against the constraints of
ecological and economic viability, overcoming Campbell’s ‘conflicts of sustainable development’ (Campbell, 1996).
There are also successful examples of egalitarian, market‐based and collectivized development solutions at a
variety of scales. There are policies that protect non‐human species as well as benefiting humans. There is even an
emerging ‘sustainability science’ that combines issues of scale, complexity and transdisciplinarity with local and
indigenous knowledge and participation. It offers a problem‐solving framework focused on process rather than
solutions (Kates et al., 2001). Such approaches, systems and models project of people, in the aggregate and as
individuals, not rationality, but that of which they are truly capable in actual lived experiences.
Changes in sustainable development goals will mirror shifts in discourse, allowing varied perceptions of
sustainable development to become many small‐scale experiments, instead of large‐scale arguments. Developing a
flexible and reflexive suite of sustainable development best practices could make the discourse of the Brundtland
Report actionable. It could shift the discussion from myriad definitions and interpretations of ‘sustainable
development’ to comparing and contrasting practical results at realistic scales. A self‐aware discourse based around
practical implementations of culturally and scale appropriate development interventions can help conventional
sustainable development overcome the limitations and tensions of its discourse.

Acknowledgements
This paper would not have been possible without the support of Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, especially
Arnim Wiek.

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