Rio20_nº6_EN_2_ENGLISH 04/03/13 16:23 Página 4
Rio+20 and culture Advocating for Culture as a Pillar of Sustainability Paper prepared by Jordi Pascual as coordinator of the Committee on Culture of United Cities and Local Governments.
1. The understanding of development has evolved This is a summary of the ideas that emerged during almost 10 years of discussions on the relation between culture, local policies and sustainable development. These discussions are quite new for the cultural sector. Discussions have mainly taken place in cities, promoted by NGOs, associations, civil society and local governments. Today development is not understood in the same way as it was in 1972, 1987 or 1992. The concept has evolved. Amartya Sen, Arjun Appadurai, Edgar Morin or Martha Nussbaum (to name but a few) wrote their main contributions to what development means today after 1992. The evolution of the concept “development” can be summarised as follows. Today, development means freedom, widening the choices, putting human beings -children, men and women- at the centre of the future. Most of human beings have the capacities but do not have some of the essential tools, skills or capabilities to understand the world and to transform it so that it becomes really sustainable. These capabilities are literacy, creativity, critical knowledge, sense of place, empathy, trust, risk, respect, recognition... These capabilities can be understood as the cultural component of sustainability.
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