This paper supplies a critique of the view that a practice which ought not to be followed is ipso facto not sustainable, a view recently defended by Nigel Dower. It is argued that there are ethical criteria independent of the criterion of sustainability. The concept of sustainability is thus retrieved for the distinctive role and the important service in which environmental and social theorists (paradoxically including Dower) have hitherto employed it, not least when debating the nature, merits and demerits of sustainable development.
NigelDower1983. World Poverty: Challenge and Response. York: Ebor Press.
2.
NigelDower1992. “Sustainability and the right to development”, in AttfieldRobin and WilkinsBarry (eds.), International Justice and the Third World, 93–116. London and New York: Routledge.
3.
NigelDower, “A Just and Sustainable Society” (unpublished paper) World Commission on Environment and Development1987. Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
