Coming out the Sustainable Development Trench: a New Perspective for Analyses and Decision in Sustainablity

Abstract

The sustainable development is entrenched. Your field is characterized by conflicting visions and interests that provide feedback for its fragmentation in two main ideological groups which oppose one another. In one trench are the biocentered, who advocate for the prioritization of natural resources preservation over socio-economic systems; the other trench is occupied by the antropocentered, moved by the belief that Nature exists to serve men and that market growth and technological evolution are enough to create sustainability. This loggerheads makes more difficult to construct a common vision for sustainable development, what results in slow advancement, if not in regress for a bigger equilibrium between economy, society and environment all over the world. Then there is the necessity to make the gap between these two vision smaller, so there is space to the construction of actions and politics towards a really viable sustainable development. That is this paper aim: to propose a new conceptual perspective for sustainable analyses and decision, which allows a closer approach of both visions. From a “general map”, where we track biocentered and antropocentered actors in opposite fields, we begin the construction of the conceptual model. The industrial ecology perspective is integrated to the stakeholders theory and to the Mauerhofer’s (2008) 3-D sustainability for the construction of it, which is conceived to reflect instrinsic sustainable development characteristics and it works as a closed circuit, retrofitted. This model fulfills this theoretical paper objective and is its main contribuition. We suggest the following advancements: (a) the model operation development and its ulterior application over the biocentered and antropocentered main demands, present in the diverse discussion forums; and (b) the model adaption to specific industries.