Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003) 339–341www.cleanerproduction.net

Note from the field

A forgotten pioneer of sustainability

Harry BlutsteinEnvironment Protection Authority Victoria, GPO Box 4395QQ, Melbourne, 3001, Australia

Received 14 August 2001; accepted 10 November 2001

Abstract

The early pioneering work of Sir Macfarlane Burnet in developing the conceptual framework for sustainable development isrecognized. Twenty-one years before the definition provided by the Brundtland Commission, his wording was almost identical.Furthermore he extended this definition into a series of principles which bear a resemblance to the system conditions used in TheNatural Step framework. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: History; Sustainability; Burnet; The Natural Step

The history of the environmental movement is markedwith the names of pioneers who provided new aware-ness, insights and perspectives of the problems faced,and more recently developed constructs that identifiedpractical solutions. As a result, today there is a growingconsensus between industry, government, NGOs and thecommunity on the need to achieve a sustainable future,although debate still exists on whether this can be achi-eved in a growth scenario [1].

Rachel Carson is recognized as being one of the earlypioneers of the modern environment movement. In 1962she published her groundbreaking bookSilent Spring [2]which alerted the public to health problems of pesticidepollution. Other doomsayers of this first wave ofenvironmental awareness were Barry Commoner [3] andPaul Ehrlich [4].

While doomsayers have been a constant feature of thehistory of the environmental movement, the early 1970ssaw two strands of positive response to the challenge. Ina number of developed countries national environmentalprotection agencies were created to deal with local pol-lution, and there was increasing interest in addressingglobal threats.

In 1972 the Club of Rome sponsored research intofinding answers to the dangers of unrestrained growth[5]. In the same year the international community took

E-mail address: harry.blutstein@epa.vic.gov.au (H. Blutstein).

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a role in the debate convening the Stockholm UnitedNations Conference, and since then through a numberof international fora there has been a growing globalconsensus. This was tied together in 1987 by the WorldCommission on Environment and Development (theBrundtland Commission), which defined sustainabledevelopment [6] as: “…development that meets theneeds of the present without compromising the abilityof future generations to meet their own needs”. The con-cept on which this definition is based has contributed toan emerging international consensus by governments [7],industry [8] and the community [9].

The slow growth from problem recognition to inter-national consensus on a conceptual framework may havebeen short circuited if the ideas of Nobel Laureate SirMacfarlane Burnet, expressed in his 1966 Boyer Lecture[10], had been more widely known. While the maintheme of the Lecture was genetics and the ability ofhumans to reach their true potential, he identified thedependence of humans on the biosphere and other glo-bal resources.

Sir Macfarlane provided one of the earliest formu-lations of sustainability, which has an uncanny resem-blance to that produced by the Brundtland Commission.He said: “The resources of the Earth must be maintainedfor the use and enjoyment of future generations in a mea-sure not less than we now enjoy”.

Sir Macfarlane’s ideas would have also contributed tothe current interest by the corporate sector on how to

340 H. Blutstein / Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003) 339–341

use natural capital more effectively, a cause which hasbeen promoted by a generation of environmental techno-crats—Elkington [11], von Weizsacker [12], Lovins [13]and Hawken [14].

In expounding on his definition, Sir Macfarlane ident-ified a number of principles that bear an astonishingsimilarity to The Natural Step system conditions, whichis gaining acceptance by a number of industries, mainlyin Sweden, to translate the general concept of sus-tainability into a practical framework [15].

The Natural Step, established in Sweden by Dr Karl-Henrik Robert in 1989, developed a framework thattranslates the definition of sustainability into four systemconditions [16] which could be applied to industrial andnatural resources case examples. With the help of 50Swedish scientists, Robert developed a consensus aroundthe system conditions that used the principles of thermo-dynamics to describe the biosphere’s functions, changingthe paradigm from a linear model of resource use to acyclic model.

Arising out of his definition of sustainability, Sir Mac-farlane formulated a number of principles that bear aresemblance to The Natural Step. While a comparison,shown in the table below, indicates that his frameworkis less universal or not as elegant as those developed byRobert, it should be remembered that these principleswere developed just four years after the publication ofSilent Spring, and earlier than some of the landmarkbooks focussing on unrestrained growth on a globalscale.

The Natural Step four Burnet’s Boyer principlessystem conditions

In order for society to besustainable, nature’sfunctions and diversityare not systematically1 ...subject to increasing That unrenewable mineralconcentrations of resources shall not besubstances extracted exhausted before effectivefrom the Earth’s crust; substitutes can be made

from always availablematerialsThat energy from fossilfuels shall be replaced intime by perpetuallyrenewable sources ofenergy

2 ...subject to increasing That the environment shallconcentrations of not be poisoned bysubstances produced by industrial and militarysociety; wastes3 ...impoverished by That adequate areas shall bephysical displacement, preserved to allow theoverharvesting, or other indefinite persistence of all

forms of ecosystem significant forms of wildlifemanipulation; and many areas of natural

beauty or special interestAndResources are used fairly To ensure that everyand efficiently in order individual being the fullestto meet human needs measure of health that isglobally. allowed by his inheritance

[17].

Although the definitions and principles enunciated by SirMacfarlane lack the universality of those that came later,it is a great pity that his early thinking was not recog-nized at the time. Had it gained a wider audience at thetime, it may have resulted in the development of concep-tual models on sustainability much sooner that the turnof the century, some 35 years later.

The lack of recognition of the contribution of thisearly pioneer of sustainability can be attributed to a num-ber of reasons. It was presented during a public radiobroadcast in which Sir Macfarlane briefly presented hisinsights on sustainable resource use in a lecture that dealtmainly with genetics. At the time few environmentalistshad an understanding of the wide-ranging impact humanactivities was having on the environment, and thereforethe conceptual leap presented by Sir Macfarlane failedto resonate at the time. It was probably during the“energy crisis” of 1973–74 that the Doomsday predic-tions about the limits to growth gained some credence,and allowed the emphasis to change from local pollutionto the use (and misuse) of resources in a global context.

This paper makes no suggestion that the ideas of SirMacfarlane Burnet have been plagiarized in any way,but merely that he was well before his time, it seeks toput the record straight and give due recognition to thisearly contributor for his ground breaking work.

References

[1] Daly HE. Beyond Growth. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.[2] Carson R. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.[3] Commoner B. The Closing Circle, 1971.[4] Ehrlich PR. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine

Books, 1968.[5] Meadows DH, Meadows DL, Randers JJ. Behrens III WW.

Beyond the Limits, New York: New American Library 1972,which was linked more firmly in the development of the sus-tainability paradigm in their subsequent book: DH Meadows, DLMeadows and J Randers Beyond the Limits: Confronting GlobalCollapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, Boston: ChelseaGreen, 1992.

[6] World Commission on Environment and Development. OurCommon Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

[7] The United Nations Conference on Environment and Develop-ment, at its meeting at Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992,reaffirming the Declaration of the United Nations Conference onthe Human Environment, adopted at Stockholm on 16 June 1972,and extended it to include the principles of ecological sus-tainable development.

341H. Blutstein / Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003) 339–341

[8] The private sector has been lead by the World Business Councilfor Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a coalition of over 100international companies established in 1995.

[9] McCormick J. The Global Environment and Movement. London:Bellhaven Press, 1989.

[10] Burnet FM. Biology and the Appreciation of Life, Boyer Lecture,Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1966 and cited in Macfar-lane Burnet Endurance of Life, Australia: Melbourne UniversityPress, pp. 220–222, 1978.

[11] Elkington J. Cannibals without Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of21st Century Business. Oxford: Capstone Publishing, 1997.

[12] von Weizsacker E, Lovins AB, Hunter LH. Factor 4: Doubling

Wealth—halving Resource Use, Report to the Club of Rome.London: Allen & Unwin, 1977.

[13] Hawken P, Lovins AB, Hunter LH. Natural Capitalism: The NextIndustrial Revolution. London: Earthscan, 1999.

[14] Hawken P. The Ecology of Commerce. New York: Harper Busi-ness, 1994.

[15] Nattrass B, Altomare M. The Natural Step for Business. Canada:New Society Publishers, 1999.

[16] Robert K-H, Hawken P, Holmberg J. A compass for sustainabledevelopment. Int. J. Sust. Develop. World Ecol 1997;4:79–92.

[17] The context of this statement is that “ inheritance” refers to gen-etic inheritance. (1997).