3.5 Sustainable Development
Sustainable development is defined as the ways in which societies and other work systems manage economic, social, political, and ecological processes to shape their development in ways that preserve the preconditions of development for future generations. Drawing on Becker, Jahn, Stiess,and Wehling’s discussion, the concept of sustainable development has at least two important distinguishing dimensions. The normative dimension of sustainable development acknowledges that economic processes are necessarily subordinated to socialand ecological constraints. Markets, for example, are dependent on societies and other work systems, neither of which can exist without a natural environment. The strategic dimension of sustainable development implies the existence of a system of governance capable of instituting policies that move societies and work systems away from non-sustainable processes and towards sustainable ones.