Sustainable Development: ‘Still’ the Opportunity for Irish Economic Policymakers

Abstract

Sustainable Development remains a concept easily ascribed to by populations but deceptively difficult to effectively operationalise in the context of modern economies and societies. This paper draws upon a Barrington lecture to the SSISI thirty years ago setting out the then challenge for Irish economic policymakers to both define and deliver upon a sustainable development future. Three decades later, this paper highlights how this “still” remains the challenge for Ireland as the climatic threat from human induced greenhouse gas emissions leads to “virtual certain” extreme environmental events from global warming. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and irreversible ways. Whilst the economic and social progress of Ireland in the last 30 years was inconceivable from the vantage point of the early 1990s, the paper argues that the statistical evidence is that our society has failed to grasp the opportunity from the perspective of having used the time wisely to address the challenge, but that the opportunities from both economic and technical advancement, along with an educated generational behavioural response, still provides the prospect, albeit in a limited timeframe, to achieve a sustainable development outcome.