Is Sustainable Development Sustainable? Or the Discourse on Future Applied to the Present

This study claims that the concept of sustainability is threatened by being closed into generalities and void promises. Insofar as this concept is satisfied to urge the linear convergence of the environment and economic development, it will hardly be able to grasp the tendencies of modernity. There is a need to differentiate between strong and weak sustainability, because weak sustainability may only repeat existing tendencies at most. The study attempts to approach the concept of strong sustainability, pin down its criteria, shed light on the pertaining normative measures, and show that weak sustainability is only a subsidiary case of strong sustainability.

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