Ambigüidades e deficiências do conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável

More than ever, "sustainable deoelopment" is fashionable. Several authors have given their interpretations to it and international and governamental organizations have adopted a formulation which contains ambiguities, inconsistencies and contradictions. A criticai review of part of the current literature upon the concept shows that there are some basic questions to be better explained in terms of overcoming the ambiguities and giving a more consistent content to it. These basic questions are: the interpretation of the causes of the povert and environmental degradation; the inadequacy of the development strategies to cope with them; thepertinency of what has to be sustainable; the necessity of making the concept more accurate and the lack of a large discussion in society upon what is a "suetainable deoelopment" .