Defining and determining development

The eminent physicist Lord Kelvin contended that “if you can define and measure precisely that of which you speak, you know something of your subject; but if you cannot, your knowledge must be considered meagre and unsatisfactory.” Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the great eighteenth century French chemist, insisted that scientists be as accurate and precise in their speech and writing as in their analytical measurements. In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty, after speaking semantic nonsense, defended it by saying: “When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less”. The popular non-scientific literature concerning ‘sustainable development’ at times seems more in tune with Humpty Dumpty than with Kelvin and Lavoisier.

The Pearson Report [Pearson 1969] stated that ‘development’ presented his Commission with exceptional semantic difficulties. The Brandt Commission [Brandt 1980] reported it would not try to define ‘development’. The Brundtland Commission [Brundtland 1987a,b] made no attempt to define ‘development’ but simply stated that “development is what we all do in attempting to improve our lives”.

The word ‘development’ came into the English language around 1750, since when it has been applied to suggest patterns of change and progress in virtually every form of human, corporate and institutional activity. From the late 1940s ‘international development’ gained currency with the creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), the United Nations Development Programme, and, among the industrial nations, establishment of government-financed ‘development agencies’ devoted to offering technical, social and economic assistance to poorer nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.