Sustainable Development and Globalization Sustainable development is defined in Our Common Future, the Report of the 1987 World Commission on the Environment and Development (the Brundtland Report), as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. Rather than predicting greater environmental decay and hardship in a world of ever-diminishing resources, the Report foresees 'the possibility of a new era of economic growth, based on policies that sustain and expand the natural environmental resource base'. Economic growth and modernization have historically been pursued aggressively by nation-states, as a means not only of satisfying basic material needs, but also of providing the resources necessary to improve quality of life more generally (for example with respect to access to health-care and education). However, most forms of economic growth make demands on the environment, both by using (sometimes finite) natural resources and by generating waste or pollution. This jeopardizes growth for future generations. The philosophy of sustainable development attempts to resolve this dilemma by insisting that decisions taken at every level throughout society should have due regard to their possible environmental consequence. In this way, the right kind of economic growth—based on biodiversity, the control of environmentally damaging activity, and replenishment of renewable resources such as forests—is generated, and this can protect or even enhance the natural environment. Present-day economic development is therefore rendered compatible with investment in environmental resources for the future. Although it is understandably hard to find authorities who are prepared to argue against the idea of sustainable development (it is in fact widely applauded by almost all governments and their agencies), it is often difficult for governments (which tend to be accountable to electorates over short-term periods such as five years or so) to accept the political consequences of promoting sustainable development, for example by imposing tolls or fines for the use of cars in cities (on the principle that the 'polluter should pay'). Moreover, the environment is shared and is largely a public good, so that to a considerable extent its protection requires collective action. In practice, therefore, this has proved hard to organize because of the usual free-rider problems. Globalization theory examines the emergence of a global cultural system. It suggests that global culture is brought about by a variety of social and cultural developments: the existence of a world-satellite information system the emergence of global patterns of consumption and consumerism the cultivation of cosmopolitan life-styles the emergence of global sport such as the Olympic Games, world football competitions, and international tennis matches the spread of world tourism the decline of the sovereignty of the nation state the growth of a global military system recognition of a world-wide ecological crisis the development of world-wide health problems such as AIDS the emergence of world political systems such as the League of Nations and the United Nations the creation of global political movements such as Marxism extension of the concept of human rights and the complex interchange between world religions. More importantly, globalism involves a new consciousness of the world as a single place. Globalization has been described, therefore, as 'the concrete structuration of the world as a whole': that is, a growing awareness at a global level that 'the world' is a continuously constructed environment. Perhaps the most concise definition suggests that globalization is 'a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people are becoming increasingly aware that they are reced