Sustainable Development and the Nigerian State

Development concepts have seen, in recent decades, broader and more scientific approaches. One of these approaches, which dominates and informs the approaches of the United Nations, is to interpret and apply development discourses with intergenerational character. From the post-war development approach to the innovative minds that made up the Brundtland’s Commission, the focus has been to integrate and interpret the three dimensions of sustainable development within available signs of the time—poverty and destitution, ever-widening economic gaps between the global North and South, the challenges of terrorism, climate change, etc. Within these general and shared concerns, the journey so far shows that there is still the need to shift to new paradigms that would be more inclusive and post-colonial. To do this, normative sustainability ethics should lead the way to investing in core values and developing action plans.