Name:

Reg: PGA0036

Course: TMM 613

Tutors Name:

Date: 26, April 2017

 Outline

I What strategies can Nigeria adapt to achieve sustainability

II Give detail analysis of STEPS approach and frame analysis with references to

sustainable development
III Why is it important to strive towards sustainable technological development
IV Technological innovation developments is a double edge sword

What Strategies can Nigeria Adapt to Achieve Sustainability?

 Economic development is considered by the Nigerian government to be its central task

and this has led to vested interest and unparalleled enthusiasm for growing the Nigerian

economy. The pattern of development pursued so far has created a series of social and

environmental problems. Severe damage is done to the Nigerian environment as well as natural

resources as a result of the efforts to transform the natural environment to achieve rapid

economic development. Environmental quality in Nigeria has continues to decline. Resource

depletion and environmental pollution have become serious problems requiring a rethinking of

governmental policies. James Robertson (2005) argues that modern society is going through a

fundamental transformation, reflected in many signs of institutional and cultural breakdown and

in myriad constructive social innovations and experiments and this is a symptom of an

underlying disorder. According to Ian Bartle and Peter Vas (2006), the need for modern industrial

society to be made sustainable is recognized worldwide. There is a growing demand worldwide

for a new policy shift in the direction of economic development and progress that will be people

and earth centred.

Strategies for Sustainability

An extensive growth model that relies on high input and heavy pollution is not sustainable. A

better environment will not emerge automatically in the absence of a strategy of sustainable

development. Some of the required elements to achieve high rates of sustainable economic

development are:

Sound Environmental Management

The long term viability of the Nigerian economy depends on sustainable and responsible

management of the environment. The march towards attaining sustainable economic

development starts from ensuring environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability is

the maintenance of the integrity of different environmental media and systems to ensure that

their functions and beneficial use are upheld for present and future generations.

Capable and Well-Equipped Human Capital

One of the barriers to the strengthening of economic development is lack of

entrepreneurial, marketing and management skills to take advantage of growth opportunities.

This is particularly so with many women who face barriers of all sorts. People are at the centre of

sustainable economic development. A skilled workforce is an important foundation for

sustainable economic development. A workforce that has acquired new knowledge and skills to

increase their productivity and revenue generating potential is essential. Nigeria needs to build

capable and well equipped human capital and effective demand driven skill training programme

are critical if the Nigerian workforce is to acquire the required skills to meet changing labour

market opportunities.

Nigerians must be motivated to develop new skills that will expand knowledge and meet

every challenge that limit their opportunities. It takes a diversely skilled and qualified workforce

that is well equipped to meet the demands of the economy if sustainable economic development

is to be attained. Employment potentials of Nigerians need to be improved upon for increased

access to and benefits from opportunities in the informal and formal business sector. Nigeria

needs to create economic opportunities that will enable those living in poverty to reach their

potentials with jobs, business ownership and investment opportunities.

A Government that is Accountable

Government must be willing to adopt effective and transparent public management of the

economy. Government must be prepared to provide a safe, stable and attractive business and

industry environment that will strengthen its ability to fulfill its responsibility for the welfare of
the people. Absence of infrastructure is a chronic barrier to poor economic performance.

Government can also provide infrastructures like the availability of reliable energy and

communication technologies, which lead to more productive and innovative enterprises.

Engaging the Private Sector

The private sector remains a driving force behind any sustainable economic development.

Higher levels of growth and poverty reduction can be achieved in Nigeria giving the presence of

a robust private sector. Sustainable economic development can be stimulated by enhancing the

productivity and competiveness of enterprises to generate new formal employment opportunities.

Nigeria should identify a few clusters that have the potential to grow, and develop a

comprehensive approach to encouraging the clusters to thrive. This will help to overcome

constraints faced by entrepreneurs, especially female entrepreneurs. Access to legitimate credit

and financial services need to be increased. A sustainable economic development requires

sustainable enterprises. It requires a new way of doing business. It requires business enterprises

taking steps to become greener in their operations as well as new and clean environmental

technologies with some companies specializing in their production while others are engaged in

making use of such production. James Nixon (2009) argues that sustainable economic

transformation is key a successful 21st century economy. A new way of doing business is

emerging out of this transformation. A new way of economic life that will empower Nigerians to

meet their needs and still be able to conserve the earth and its resources for present and future

generations is needed. One of the engines of transformation is green industries. Green industry is

depicted in resource efficiency, pollution prevention, recycling, the minimization of waste,

renewable energy transformation etc.

Building Economic Foundations

 The right conditions and institutional frameworks upon which to encourage investment,

innovation, and economic development need to be created. Capacity to ensure sound, transparent

financial and economic management must be built while public policies that encourage private

investment and reduce corruption must be enforced to the latter. This requires strong institutions

and balanced laws as well as fair and effective regulatory regimes to oversee competition, the

maintenance of standards, resource management, and property rights in the governing of the

economy. Fair and equitable labour codes and laws will serve as empowerment to disadvantaged

people in particular to ensure their engagement in the formal economy. This will enable them to

have access to land and resources, security of tenure and the capacity to make use of their assets

in a more productive and sustainable manner. Government policies that open markets to trade

and infrastructure investments is also required.

Building a Strong Financial Base

There is a growing awareness of the need for development efforts to focus on sustainable

long term economic development if poverty is to be reduced. A dynamic growing economy will

strive to increase revenue generation and create employment, resulting in higher personal and

household income which can be of benefit to the most impoverished. This will help to generate

the needed financial resources to invest in the well-being of people. Development assistance

plays an important role in helping nations to address knowledge and skill gaps, fill necessary

infrastructure gaps and institute policies and legislation that will promote sustainable economic

development and stability.

Effective Policies and Institutions

 It is not enough to make laws. The rule of law and political stability determine economic

development. The stringent enforcement of these laws rather than the letters of the laws

determine the effectiveness of such laws. Policies that will support natural resource management

and ensure environmental sustainability of economic activity and reinforce its long term viability

should be promoted. Nigerian government should be willing to build the necessary legislative

and regulatory business, industrial and financial framework upon which sustainable growth can

take place as well as effective mechanisms for enforcement. Transparent, appropriate regulatory

systems, adequate and properly enforced laws as well as efficient fiscal management and

resource allocation, sound public financial systems are all essential for a stable economic

development, the reduction of corruption and making an economy sustainable. Local

environmental officials, whose promotion is tied to effective enforcement of regulatory regime,

should be legally empowered and made responsible for the enforcement of environmental

standards.

Sustainable Economy Initiatives

Nigeria can assemble a Sustainable Economic Development Initiatives, drawing on

economic development best practices as well as environmental best practices to create an

integration of sustainability and economic development. Such sustainable economic initiative

includes formulation of the objective for the initiative, green programs etc. that can be made use

of to formulate an appropriate sustainable economic development strategy for Nigeria. This can

be in form of encouraging the emergence or growth of clean tech business cluster. Building a

culture of sustainability is critical to the integration of sustainability into every policy initiative.

Building a sustainable community engagement initiative can create a wide culture of

sustainability which reduces costs, obtain financial benefits and contributes to a prosperous
economy as well as contributing to the environmental and social health of the people. This will

help in better understanding of sustainability concept and enable people to participate in the

process of building sustainable economy.

Increased Agricultural Productivity

Agriculture remains the largest economic sector in many developing countries. It could

be a significant generator of employment, contributing to poverty reduction and food scarcity. It

is unfortunate to note that the ability of Nigeria to harness the growth potential of the agricultural

sector can be retarded. Improvement in agricultural productivity and innovation can be a driver

in economic development.

Give Detail Analysis of STEPS Approach and Frame Analysis with References to

Sustainable Development
 Using a Pathways approach, controversies over environmental and natural resource

management are viewed as expressions of alternative, or competing, pathways to sustainability.

This supports deeper understanding of the underlying causes of natural resource management

controversies. The framework is composed of two elements: the STEPS (Social, Technological,

and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Pathways approach and frame analysis. Many

sustainable development dilemmas are played out in specific places and consequently, the

Pathways approach is integrated with a place-based frame analysis. The resulting framework

guides empirical investigation in place-based contexts. This theorizing about sustainability

science can be used to cast light on contested natural resource management issues, in this case

mining in northern Sweden. By exposing the range of alternative Pathways to critical

norms of sustainable development, we ascertain whether action alternatives are compatible with

sustainable futures. The framework provides a way in which sustainability science can better

understand the origins of natural resource management conflicts, characterise the positions of the

actors involved, identify the potential for cooperation between stakeholders leading to policy

resolution and judge what Pathways help or hinder the pursuit of sustainable development. In

addition, it can enhance sustainability science by guiding integrative sustainability research at the

project scale.

Pathways to sustainability: the STEPS approach

They describe how contemporary responses to environmental and developmental

challenges often result in policy conflicts and failures, manifested at the local level.

Consequently, they argue for an approach that embraces the dynamic interactions between social,

technological and ecological processes; which takes seriously the ways in which diverse people

and groups understand and value these interactions; and acknowledges the role of economic and
institutional power in shaping the resulting choices. In short, they argue, we need to recognize

the essentially plural and political nature of our quest for pathways to sustainability (p. 2).

A useful contribution of the STEPS Pathways approach is its ambition to explore the

relationships between different ways to understand system change and the type of preferred

action. According to Leach et al. (2010a), narratives about actions aiming to promote

sustainability involve assumptions about the nature, or temporalities of the changes these

actions are intended to counter: are changes seen as short term shocks or long term stresses?

Furthermore, is the aim to control the causes or drivers of change, or to respond to them? (p.

59) Sustainability, according to Leach et al., is about responding to both shocks and shifts and it

requires both control and response actions. Combining these parameters, Leach et al. map out

four dynamic properties of sustainability: stability, durability, resilience and robustness (p.

59). These four properties may be seen as individually necessary and collectively sufficient

elements of sustainability. Consequently: Sustainable solutions are those that offer stability,

durability, resilience, and robustness in specified qualities of human wellbeing, social equity and

environmental quality. (p. 62)

Another contribution of the Pathways approach is its attention to different dimensions of

incomplete knowledge. They differentiate between risk, uncertainty, ambivalence and

ignorance (Leach et al. 2010a, p. 53). While risk refers to situations where there is confidence

that probabilities can be calculated across a range of known outcomes, uncertainty applies to

situations where there is confidence in the characterisation of outcomes but where sufficient

information to assign probabilities is lacking. Under the condition of ambiguity, it is the

characterization of the outcomes themselves that are considered problematic; and in a situation

of ignorance, neither
probabilities nor outcomes can be fully characterized. In recognizing these contrasting states of

knowledge, the Pathways approach offers tools to help gain insights into actors understandings

of sustainability challenges and of how they want to deal with them.

Why is it Important to Strive towards Sustainable Technological Development

 Sustainability assessment (SA) is one of the most complex types of appraisal

methodologies. Not only this does entail multidisciplinary aspects (environmental, economic and

social), but also cultural and value-based elements. Besides, SA is usually conducted for

supporting decision making and policy development in a broad context. Indeed, assessing

sustainability is increasingly becoming common practice in product, policy, and institutional

appraisals. Concepts such as Integrated Assessment and Sustainability Assessment1 are

introduced to offer new perspectives to impact assessment geared towards planning and

decision-making on sustainable development (SD) (Hacking and Guthrie, 2008). Examples of

current definitions of policy-oriented sustainability assessment are:

Sustainability assessment is a methodology that can help decision-makers and policy-

makers decide what actions they should take and should not take in an attempt to make society

more sustainable. The goal of sustainability assessment is to pursue that plans and activities

make an optimal contribution to sustainable development (Verheem, 2002). Clearly, a rising

concern has been voiced in scientific community and policy circles on whether various empirical

examples of sustainability assessment (SA) are really adequate. In fact, they should be able to

discriminate and able to evaluate in a solid and reliable manner whether new developments

meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet

their own needs (WCDE, 1987). Such concerns are often related to the intrinsic fuzziness of the

sustainability concept itself (sustainable development is, like social justice, and so on, a value-

laden concept that has many different dimensions and perceptions), and to the capability of

addressing environmental, economic and social issues and their interactions with robust and fit-

for-purpose measures (Bohringer and Jochem, 2007). Furthermore, a distinction between

integrated assessment and SA may be made, and in the present work, we aim at proposing how to
move from integrated assessment to sustainability assessment. The fundamental differences are

at both the ontological, methodological and epistemological levels. Performing a sustainability

assessment requires integrating sustainability principles, thresholds and targets in the evaluation,

as well as moving from a mere multidisciplinary to inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches.

Therefore, the major challenges for sustainability assessment are related to: the need of

identifying both scientific-based and policy-based demarcation line, which are able to specify a

boundary between what contributes to a sustainable development and what does not; and the

capability of performing the co-production of knowledge and solutions in a trans-disciplinary

setting. As a matter of fact, in common practice, there are no guarantees that the option selected

after an SA will contribute to a sustainable development in the sense previously defined. In

particular, from a semantic perspective, sustainability assessment should aim at understanding

whether the impact on the development of the ecosystem in which we live is connected to a

certain element envisaged in the ecosystem itself, subject to our capability to foresee such an

impact. As will be discussed in the remainder of the paper, a full understanding of the complex

dynamics involved in the introduction of a new policy or product is often beyond our capabilities

(at least with the current state of knowledge), especially for what concerns the impacts on social

and economic spheres. This is a crucial element that has been pointed out in a review of the state-

of-the-art overview of the sciencepolicy interface addressing several bottlenecks in the linkage

between science and decision making, especially when conflicting objectives are involved

(Castellani et al., 2013).

Indeed, the quest for sustainability is already starting to transform the competitive

landscape, which will force companies to change the way they think about products,

technologies, processes, and business models. The key to progress, particularly in times of
economic crisis, is innovation. Just as some internet companies survived the bust in 2000 to

challenge incumbents, so, too, will sustainable corporations emerge from todays recession to

upset the status quo. By treating sustainability as a goal today, early movers will develop

competencies that rivals will be hard-pressed to match. That competitive advantage will stand

them in good stead, because sustainability will always be an integral part of development.

Technological Innovation Developments is a Double Edge Sword

Technical Innovation means developing new ideas, products, services, and processes

which exploit technology. It may be driven by a new technology (How can we use this?) or by
needs (What technology might we apply to improve this?). At its best, technovation creates

valuable products and services no one has yet asked for or creates "disruptive" change (major

leaps in the way things are done). Every year technology challenges all over the world to build a

mobile application that will address a community problem. Since 2010, over 28 countries have

submitted to Technology and Innovation (Technovation), this makes global changes around the

world. Technology (from two Greek words: tchn and logos) means the ability of humans to

create things using hands and/or machines [28]. It is the application of knowledge to the practical

aims of human life or to changing and manipulating the human environment [31]. Technology

includes the use of materials, tools, techniques, and sources of power to make life bearable or

more pleasant and work more productive. Whereas science is concerned with how and why

things happen, technology focuses on making things happen. Technology can be internal or

external [20].

In the external view, technology means the systematic discourse about practical art.

Technology is the science about practical art just as entomology is the science about insects and

geology about planet Earth. Here logos belongs to scholars who take practical art and artists as

their topics of investigation but is foreign to and not a part of the art or artists. It neglects the

cognitive ability of the artists and concentrates on their products and social status [20]. The

internal view inherits the Greek notion of tchn containing its own logos, so that technology

means the systematic reasoning of practical art itself. In this view, art and reasoning are

inseparable entities that later enter into a marriage. They are intertwined cognitive potentials

inherent in every human being, because living in, coping with, and modifying the real world is

primordial to all human life. Technology is the explicit rendition of reasoning inherent in
practical art; the systematic abstraction of essentials; the articulation, generalization, refinement,

and development of knowledge involved in productive and creative activities [20].

Technovations success in changing world attitudes about technology and Innovation

rely on local country Products. Together, they come up with a creativity idea, conduct user

research, create a business plan, and build the world of Innovation. Countries that lead from the

technology and business Innovation help other countries that are less Technology to learn from

them and hence it reaches many area of the world. Technological change, particularly in

developing countries, is not only about innovating at the frontier, but also about adapting existing

products and processes to achieve higher levels of productivity as applicable to their local

contexts [14]. In this process, the ability of local firms and enterprises to access technological

know - how is fundamental to shaping their ability to provide products and services, both of the

kind that are essential to improve living standards, and that could also promote growth and

competitiveness [14].

There is no doubt about the potential of rapid technological progress to help the world

meet the defining challenges of our time. Yet many individuals in the developing world, access

are still a major challenge, hindering their ability to learn how to use technologies that would

improve their lives and promote enterprise development. That challenge is multiplied many times

over for national policymakers seeking to use technologies to address energy poverty, food

insecurity, environmental threats and job creation. The increasing of daily new Technology in

developed countries are a signals of the beginning of new era in developing country and in global

development. If we are to build on and expand the progress that has been made towards the

Millennium Development Goals, the international community will need to find innovative way

of closing this gap.Technology in developing countries is challenged by the lack of deep pockets
(Capital), by the nature of their organization still being innovative and by being in a rapidly

changing environment. For a successful management of technologies under these circumstances,

a management system has to be compact, flexible and adaptable. The Pocket concept (Pocket

Technology Management or technology and innovation management) aims at supporting

according to their entrepreneurial needs, possibilities and opportunities.

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