Abstract

This paper supplies a critique of the view that a practice which ought not to be followed is ipso facto not sustainable, a view recently defended by Nigel Dower. It is argued that there are ethical criteria independent of the criterion of sustainability. The concept of sustainability is thus retrieved for the distinctive role and the important service in which environmental and social theorists (paradoxically including Dower) have hitherto employed it, not least when debating the nature, merits and demerits of sustainable development