ACCOUNTING FOR CHANGE: BRINGING INTERDEPENDENCE INTO DEFINING SUSTAINABILITY

Authors

Karen L. Nero, University of Auckland

Abstract

“Sustainability,” the key word of international development bodies currently intervening in the restructuring of the Marshall Islands economy, is defined within Western economic conceptualizations. I argue that such characterizations are incomplete: they fail to capture the full nature of the ongoing Marshallese economy by focusing too narrowly on transfers related to the Compact of Free Association and by their partial understanding of Marshallese food systems and easy dichotomies between imported and local foods. The segregation of external interventions by sector further distorts their possible impact. Structural imbalances within the Marshallese and other Pacific nations’ economies have been exacerbated by the ways in which earlier monetary transfers have been made and labeled, and by treating subunits of regional economies as if they were separable from the larger unit of which they have for the past century formed a part. To be useful as an analytical construct, sustainability must be defined at local, national, and international levels within the culturally and politically appropriate terms of what it is considered critical to sustain.

Recommended Citation

Nero, Karen L. (1999) "ACCOUNTING FOR CHANGE: BRINGING INTERDEPENDENCE INTO DEFINING SUSTAINABILITY," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 22: No. 3, Article 6.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol22/iss3/6