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SUSTAINING NATURE, SUSTAINING CULTURE

At the dawn of this new millennium, humankind has a historic opportunity, not to
say responsibility, to make a case that is stronger than ever for a “culture of
sustainability”, because cultural diversity and biodiversity are both values of and
for the very long term. By focusing on “sustainable diversity”, we assume that
human beings belong to the biological universe while, at the same time, they are
the only species on earth that has the privilege of creating diverse forms of culture
in time and space. Accordingly they determine the earth’s whole future. (UNEP &
UNESCO 2003, p.8)

By the time this statement was released in 2003 (written for the 2002 World Summit of

Sustainable Development, Johannesburg), the era of earth politics had well and truly begun

(Grober 2012, p. 153). The connection between human population growth and demand on

finite resources was well established, as was the conviction that this problem must be

addressed on a global scale through global governance. This conviction was put forward by

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the Club of Rome in the late 1960s in their seminal publication The Limits of Growth . The

1987 Brundtlant Report carried on this work and articulated the goals of sustainable

development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present generation without

compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (United Nations

[UN] 1987, para. 1). The notion of world limits was accompanied by a growing disquiet over

widespread environmental devastation, climate change, the processes of globalisation as well

as many key social issues such as poverty, health, and indigenous rights to land and natural

resources. Most importantly the plethora of issues were increasingly understood as

interrelated. Within the period of the 1990s and early 2000s an integrated sustainability

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