Sustainability Dilemmas Transdisciplinary contributions to Integrated Cultural Landscape Management

conference paper

English

The growing understanding that several disruptive trends were rising, from the late 1960’s, led to debates that would become framed under the concept of “sustainable development” and a threefold attention to social, economic and primarily environmental problems. This understanding, that find in the Brundtland report (1987) and in the eco-summit of Rio de Janeiro (1992) its main references, fostered a widespread awareness of the environmental risks, contributed for the implementation of institutional tools dealing with the environmental sector in most countries (ministries and agencies, and on occasions a relevant citizenship engagement, rooted in the so-called “Agenda 21”). Yet, from the turn of the millennium, it became more and more clear that the expected outcomes of the summit, i.e., a more balanced world, with less social inequality and less environmental threats, were not being achieved. The failure of interim attempts, as the Kyoto pro- tocol, would become combined with the economic depression that became perceivable after 2008. The failure of the “sustainable development” agenda lies not on the need to achieve goals in line with its statements, but on two major errors. First, the agenda designed an approach based on the illusion of a unique point of view in face of social, economic or environmental issues, while these are human realities that are informed by cultural different understandings; while the contextual impacts may condition all humans,their responses will remain different and often contradictory, because their cultural past experiences induce different strategies and, more than this, because the uncertainty of future favors the usefulness of such diversity of attitudes. This first error is expressed by the idea of “a common future” instead of “convergent different futures”. The second error was inherited from the neo-positivist optimism of post-world war II, when Universities and technology became perceived as providers of solutions, then focusing education on a problem-solving agenda that reduced the space for critical thinking and alienated most part of society from the cognitive tools for autonomous agency. page 22 The Apheleia project and this book have been funded by the erasmus+ (action Ka2) programme of the European Commission

Sustainability , heritage , economical situation , historical development of town , sustainability , economic grown , environment

BELÁČKOVÁ, K.

28. 4. 2016

ARKEOS – perspectivas em diálogo, nº 38-39

Tomar , Portugalsko

978-989-99131-2-7

Sustainability Dilemmas Transdisciplinary contributions to Integrated Cultural Landscape Management

ARKEOS , Edited by Luiz Oosterbeek , Maurizio Quagliuolo , Laurent Caron

108463/97

405

418

623

http://www.apheleiaproject.org/apheleia/index.php/2015-10-30-19-22-17