UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 36 of 150

Correct — A, both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A). Take the Reason first, because it is the easier of the two to test. It reproduces, almost word for word, the definition given in 'Our Common Future' (1987), the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development — the body the UN General Assembly set up in 1983 and which is universally known as the Brundtland Commission after its chairperson, Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway. The report's sentence is: development that 'meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' So R is not merely true, it is the standard, textbook-accurate definition. The Assertion is also true, and unremarkably so: a pattern of growth that exhausts soils, aquifers, fisheries, forests and the atmosphere buys present consumption at the price of future deprivation, so a society's long-run well-being depends on development that does not do that. Now the decisive step in any Assertion-Reason item — does R explain A, or does it merely sit beside it? Here R supplies exactly the reason A is true. Sustainable development matters for human well-being BECAUSE, by definition, it is the kind of development that secures present needs while leaving the next generation's ability to meet its own needs intact. The definition contains the justification; the link is definitional and therefore about as tight as an explanation can be. Hence (a), not (b).

• (b)Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A) — This is the trap that catches most candidates, and it is the option chosen by anyone who verifies both statements and then stops. R is not an unrelated true fact placed next to A — it states what sustainable development IS, and that definition (needs of the present + no loss of capacity for future generations) is precisely why sustainable development serves human well-being. When the Reason is the definition of the subject of the Assertion, it almost always explains it.
• (c)(A) is true, but (R) is false — R is not false — it is the single most quoted sentence in environmental studies, taken from the Brundtland Commission's report 'Our Common Future' (1987), and it is the definition on which the whole 1992 Rio process and the later SDG framework was built.
• (d)(A) is false, but (R) is true — A is true. Human well-being rests on natural systems — food, water, clean air, climate stability — and development that draws these down faster than they regenerate transfers a deficit to the next generation. That is why sustainability is treated as a condition of long-run social welfare rather than a luxury add-on.

'Sustainable development' entered mainstream policy through the World Commission on Environment and Development, constituted by the UN General Assembly in 1983 and chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, whose 1987 report 'Our Common Future' defined it as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The report attached two ideas to that sentence: 'needs' — in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which it said overriding priority should be given — and 'limitations' imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs. Sustainable development is conventionally pictured as resting on three interlocking pillars: economic, social and environmental. Its normative core is intergenerational equity — the present generation holds natural resources in trust and may use, but not exhaust, them.

Assertion-Reason questions are answered in two steps, never one. Step 1: is each statement independently true? Here both are. Step 2 — the step that decides between (a) and (b): does R state the cause, mechanism or definition that makes A true? A useful test is to join the two with 'because' and see whether the sentence still makes sense: 'Sustainable development is important for human well-being BECAUSE it is development that meets present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs.' It reads perfectly, so R explains A and the answer is (a). Candidates lose this mark by treating (b) as the 'safe' option whenever both statements check out.

• The definition quoted in the Reason is from 'Our Common Future' (1987), the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).
• The WCED was set up by the UN General Assembly in 1983 and chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway — hence 'Brundtland Commission' and 'Brundtland definition'.
• The report pairs the definition with two concepts: 'needs' (above all the essential needs of the world's poor) and the 'limitations' that technology and social organisation impose on the environment's capacity.
• Sustainable development is conventionally described as resting on three pillars — economic, social and environmental — with intergenerational equity as its guiding principle.
• The concept drove the Rio Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development, 1992, which produced Agenda 21), the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg (2002, 'Rio+10') and Rio+20 (2012).
• It culminated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 — the framework current on the exam date of 15 December 2019 and still current today.

• Settling for (b) because both statements are true — the explanation test, not the truth test, is what separates (a) from (b).
• Attributing the definition to the Rio Earth Summit (1992) or to an IPCC assessment report instead of the Brundtland Commission's 'Our Common Future' (1987).
• Reducing sustainable development to environmental protection alone and forgetting its economic and social pillars — the report itself gave overriding priority to the needs of the poor.

UPPSC asks this area either as flat recall ('the report that started the discussion on sustainable development') or, as here, as an Assertion-Reason pair built around the Brundtland sentence; UPSC prefers the conceptual link — which idea (carrying capacity, intergenerational equity) the definition is inherently tied to.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The widely used definition of sustainable development — 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' — was given in which of the following?

  • (a)'The Limits to Growth' (1972), Club of Rome
  • (b)'Our Common Future' (1987), World Commission on Environment and Development
  • (c)Agenda 21 (1992), Rio Earth Summit
  • (d)The Stockholm Declaration (1972)

  Answer(b) 'Our Common Future' (1987), World Commission on Environment and Development — the Brundtland Commission report, from which the sentence is taken verbatim.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Brundtland definition of sustainable development is most directly an expression of which principle?

  • (a)Polluter-pays principle
  • (b)Precautionary principle
  • (c)Intergenerational equity
  • (d)Absolute liability

  Answer(c) Intergenerational equity — the definition turns on not diminishing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, i.e. fairness between generations, whereas polluter-pays, precaution and absolute liability address who bears costs, how to act under scientific uncertainty, and liability for hazardous activity respectively.