NEGOTIATED ENVIRONMENTS?: NEEDS, DEMANDS, AND VALUES IN THE AGE OF SUSTAINABILITY
本文批评英国可持续发展政策偏重满足物质需求，而将环境价值视为可协商，主张应批判性分析不同需求与要求，识别哪些更接近基本需求、哪些可替代或真正可协商。
In its response to the 1995 report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Sustainable Development, the UK Government supported the view that demand management is an integral part of sustainable development. In this commentary, the author suggests that, despite the emphasis on 'needs' in sustainable development, policy language and implementation still strongly tend to favour meeting demands for goods and services while environments remain negotiable. This presumption is reinforced in the planning process by a tendency to treat 'subjective' environmental values as a less valid basis for decisions than more 'objective' information. The author argues that the necessity for value judgement does not place such conflict beyond the realm of rational discourse; it should be a starting point for the more critical analysis of needs, demands, and choices. Because different demands for material goods and services and for environmental protection come into conflict, typically during the planning process, they all need to be questioned, to find out which are most closely aligned to basic needs, which might be satisfied otherwise, and which might be genuinely 'negotiable'. The current system and its policy framework fail to do this.