Sustainable Development – Calling for Policy Analytics and (Wittgensteinian Turn Towards) Economics of Moderation

Abstract

As post-MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) international policy focus turns toward establishing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the global development agenda beyond the year 2015, it is becoming clear that the conceptual framework underpinning sustainable development is still loosely defined as the intersection of environmental sustainability, economic development and social equity objectives. Likewise, attempts and quantifying and analysing developmental sustainability never aggregate meaningfully from the sourced environmental, economic and social indices.

In this paper the author has these objectives: to seek greater conceptual clarity vis-à-vis SDGs as the object of analysis, debate and policymaking, to attempt to infuse economics of moderation proper as the requisite paradigm which internalises and institutionalises SDGs at the core of our socio-political-economic reforms, to posit cultural integrity as the fourth integral component to developmental sustainability, and finally to call for active academic-methodological research into the construction and calibration of policy analytics that leverage off of those already available environmental-sustainability, economic-development and social-equity indices. Only then will the imperative urgency of action emerge as self-evident, politically subscribed and morally compelling.

Keywords: Sustainable Development, Sufficiency Economy Philosophy, Economic Development, Environmental Sustainability, Social Equity, Cultural Integrity, Moral Capitalism, Mindset, Policy Analytics, Infographics

JEL Classification: A13, D63, N50, Q20, Q32