Human development and sustainability

This article reviews existing linkages between the two broad concepts of human development and sustainability and discusses ways in which the often separate literatures can learn from each other. It proposes a practical way in which the measurements of human development and sustainability can be linked with each other. Empirical results for both a weak and a strong sustainability indicator are presented for the time period 1980–2006. The most important policy conclusion derived from these results is that countries of high to very high human development face the double task of achieving strong sustainability by severing the link between high human development and strongly unsustainable carbon emissions and helping other countries, particularly those with low levels of human development, to achieve weak sustainability in the first place and strong sustainability eventually.