Sustainability by Interrelating Science, Society and Economy in Embedded Political Economy – an Epistemological Approach

Sustainability is a far wider concept than in the environment context. Besides, when ecology is invoked to establish sustainability the concept assumes a wider field of ethical and social evaluation. Such an evaluative domain involves embedding among a wide field of interactive subsystems. The systems learn by synergy and unify in the midst of the good things of life. The learning and choice of the good things of life through the interactive systemic synergy conveys the essential meaning of ethicality. Systemic learning as an embedded phenomenon in a unification framework of human ecological setting establishes the substantive meaning of sustainability (Hawley, 1986). Indeed, the South Commission (1990, p.13) defines development as such an embedded process in the following words: "To sum up: development is a process of self-reliant growth, achieved through participation of the people acting in their own interests as they see them, and under their own control." Yet the context of learning by synergy is not prevalent in this definition of development. The process of choice by participating individuals in the light of their own interests could very well be a ruthless experience in competition and self-interest -if not of individuals then of collusive groups. In the sustainability debate we find such a conflict to be entrenched. Consider the conflict between global corporation and small enterprises. One complains of the other for their individual impediments to growth (Barbier, 1986). Yet it is a fact that enterprises must necessarily survive within the reality of markets, an institutional regulatory framework, and participatory mechanism (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). Besides, there is also the conflict between the present and future generations, whereby the magnitude of financial and physical resource allocation problem between the present and future generations remains indeterminate. The savings problem is unresolved in the intertemporal case (Phelps, 1989). In fact, there is no participation between the present and far future generation. These two are not contiguous, and hence cannot co-determine, participate and interrelate. Thereby, there does not exist a discounting for such indeterminate future preferences and the resource allocation linked with such out-of-bound resource allocation points beyond