Inter-generational equity

human ingenuity will naturally find a way to achieve it (a risky position, but not nonsensical). I have the uncomfortable feeling, however, that most of this talk about sustainability is so vague as to be meaningless, or just warm and fuzzy, or perhaps a cover to validate pet projects.

One source of my discomfort is the fact that sustainability, when you begin to analyse it carefully, turns out to be a very difficult concept. Our understanding cannot support nearly as much conversation as we hear. The second source is more directly connected to the specific concerns of this Report, and that is what I want to write about here.

If "we"-the people making economic decisions now-have any sort of obligation to steer economic growth in a sustainable direction, it must be because we think it would be unfair or unsound to use limited resources for current benefit, in ways that will impoverish future generations. A decision to seek sustainability is thus a decision to avoid a certain kind of inequality. It is not a good thing that "we" should be well off, or get better off, if that entails that our (distant) descendants will be much poorer than we are. If "human development" is the underlying goal of economic growth, human development should be equitably shared between the present and future.

That sounds nice, and probably it is nice. But there is something strange about focusing on the goal of sustainability, defined and justified in that way. The odds are very good that, a thousand years from now, the inhabitants of Europe and North America will be enjoying an average standard of living very much higher than that achieved today by most of the people of Africa and Latin America. Not everyone would agree with that statement, but I think it is plausible and I will hold to it for the sake of argument. (Notice that I have not bothered to guess whether "our" descendants will be better or worse off than "we" are today.)

But now you can see the paradox connected with the popularity of sustainability. If the underlying reason has to do with dislike for inequality, there is at least as strong a case for reducing contemporary inequality (and probably stronger) as for worrying about the uncertain status of future generations. Those who are so urgent about not inflicting poverty on the future have to explain why they do not attach even higher priority to reducing poverty today.

The analogy between intertemporal inequality and interregional inequality comes easily to mind, but it is not the only one. Even within the rich regions of Europe and North America there are, of course, extremes of wealth and poverty. In the United States, and to a lesser but significant extent in some nations of the European Union, the inequality of income and wealth seems to be increasing.

Why is it so important that we protect the distant future from a fate that arouses so little concern and action when experienced by contemporaries? If we agree that human development is the goal and economic growth is the means, current productive capacity is just as eligible a means. But the governments-and people-of the advanced economies of the world do not seem at all anxious to think about equity when it comes to the use of current resources. I t would be easy to provide a cynical interpretation of this observation, but no doubt there are others.

I hope no one will think that I mean to downgrade sustainable development as a social goal and as a guiding concept for economic growth. It is important that we find ways to advance human development with less strain on the limited resources and environmental amenities that we must share with future generations. But sustainability intertemporal equity-is one goal among several. It is subject to trade-offs against other goals, just as those other goals are.

To the extent that we can manage to do so, economic policy should be made all of a piece, taking all the goals and all the constraints into account, balancing intertemporal, interregional and intraregional objectives against one another. It would be too bad if sustainability were fashionable not despite its vagueness-but because of its vagueness.