Sustainable Development, Greening and Eco-efficiency

Abstract: Paul Collier argues that, "Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart, while the carbon emissions and agricultural follies of the developed world could further impoverish them"¹. This line of debate has been more fashionable in understanding the growing deleterious effects of environmental use currently riddled with inequality. The essay builds on seminal studies such as UNEP 2012 post Rio environmental reports, TRUCOST,(2008,2013)an independent environmental survey  which provided  an analysis of global cost of damage on the environment by the business sector. The aim is to create possible linkages between environmental consumption and sustainability. This strand forms an offshoot of the "unsustainability" thesis where core development issues such as green economy, eco- efficiency, ecological footprints, dematerialism etc,   are marginalised by the high income countries. In an increasingly globalizing world, eco-efficiency, emphasizes creating more goods and services with ever less use of resources, waste and pollution. This paper sets to interrogate the post Rio+20 Summit and the extent of global operationalization of eco-efficiency among corporate organizations. It explores certain theoretical evidence on production and consumption dynamics of multinationals in the high income countries using the political ecology tools of analysis. Findings suggest evidence of prevailing global unsustainable environmental use which taints green economy, eco efficiency and sustainable development. It recommends that lack of policy implementation in this direction poses greater challenges to sustainable development.