As briefly pointed out in the previous section both Tony Blair and George W. Bush link the term sustainability to the lexical item ‘development’ on multiple occasions, although to a somewhat different degree. From this perspective, it is interesting to briefly switch to an address offered by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2007. From this, several contextual aspects of his speech can be deduced: The setting was formal, Ban Ki-Moon was in a position that calls for relative neutrality and moderateness as he represents all UN members, and the main perspective of those taking part at the conference will be a political one, much in line with the UN Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore, Ban Ki-Moon mentions that the meeting is taking place on Bali (l. 9), which is worth mentioning for completeness sake but doesn’t seem to call any concrete contextual side notes to mind.
In his speech Ban Ki-Moon uses the term sustainable three times. What makes the speech especially interesting in light of this research is that in all three instances he speaks of ‘sustainable development’ (l. 31, 58, 79) This suggests that Ban Ki-Moon’s understanding of the connotations of the term sustainability is fairly uniform, and that it is closely linked to the development category.
Furthermore, much like in Bush’s case, it seems that Ban Ki-Moon has a main focus on the economic aspects of sustainability rather than on the environmental aspects. This becomes especially apparent when taking the co-text into account. His first mention of the term is as follows: "it is our chance to usher in a new age of green economics and truly sustainable development. New economies can and must grow with reduced carbon intensity even as they create new jobs and alleviate poverty" (l. 30-33). Clearly, the term sustainability is much more surrounded by financially loaded congruent terms such as ‘economics’, ‘economies’, ‘jobs’, and ‘poverty’ than it is by environmental terms, although he does mention ‘green’. Ban Ki-Moon’s second mention of the term looks especially much like the first one in terms of its surrounding words, as it reads: "together, we can spur a new era of green economics, an era of truly sustainable development based on clean technology and a low-emission economy" (l. 57-58).
A somewhat different focus can be found in the third use of the phrase ‘sustainable development’, as it focusses not so much on economy but rather on social factors: "I recognise the actions in [lesser developed] countries through new national climate plans, policies and measures for sustainable development. I welcome these actions and urge that, as
indicated in statements made during these negotiations, they pursue their expressed intentions to do still more" (l. 77-80). In this statement, it becomes apparent that the ‘sustainable development’ Ban Ki-Moon is talking about is one that mainly focusses on a socially and politically loaded issue: the friction between the right for lesser developed (in the original text called non-Annex I) countries to gain wealth, and the need for them to keep from using highly polluting techniques and resources. So the economic aspect seeps through in this statement too, but does so in a much less direct sense and is subordinate to the social and political message conveyed by the use of the term ‘sustainable development’ in this context. However, it is worth noting that this does not necessarily mean that the focus on environmental aspects of sustainability is much greater, since these mainly seep through in the ‘climate plans’ word choice, without any other more direct mention of aspects and terms that are clearly and directly linked to environmental issues.
Combining these three instances of Ban Ki-Moon’s use of the term sustainable and their broader textual context, it seems that his use of the term is rather narrow and uniform: in all cases the focus of the intended message appears to lie on (economic) development, as all utterances of sustainable are mainly surrounded by lexical items that show clear signs of congruency with the economic realm of sustainability, hence priming selective access in the audience. This suggests a clear direction in Ban Ki-Moon’s understanding of the properties and implications of the term sustainability towards the financial, political, and developmental aspects of the greater sustainability meaning category. However, this meaning can only be deduced from a broad textual analysis as offered above, no direct or easily observable markers of such an understanding of sustainability are available in Ban Ki-Moon’s speech in positions directly in front of or after the term sustainable (e.g. ‘economically sustainable’, or ‘sustainable economy’). This raises the question whether an audience that just hears the speech once, without any transcript, would pick up on this. Furthermore, more instances of Ban Ki-Moon’s use of the term, also in other contexts, would be needed to state whether this trend is typical for Ban Ki-Moon’s prototypical idea of sustainability or whether it is (incidentally) his focus in this speech only.
At least it seems that Ban Ki-Moon is not overly concerned with the issue of ambiguity, as he makes no noteworthy attempts of self-explanation and -elaboration, like for example Tony Blair did by adding the concrete term environmentally to his sustainability use and pointing out that he was speaking for his own person, opinionated, in cases where he focused on the green aspects of sustainability. Interestingly, Tony Blair did not do so in the instances where he talked about ‘sustainable development’, just like Ban Ki-Moon didn’t. A
possible explanation for this might be that they expect that their audiences, in both Blair and Ki-Moon’s cases professionals that have influential positions in their respective fields (mainly economic and business professionals in Blair’s case, politicians in Ki-Moon’s case), have a prototypical understanding of the term sustainability that comes fairly close to their use of the term in the context of ‘sustainable development’. In order to check whether there might be truth in this statement, it would be most interesting to turn to a speech delivered for a different type of audience, such as a political speech for a (potential) voting audience, resulting in a more diverse blend of laypersons and professionals all with their individual (dis)interests in the environmental, economic, durability, political, and many more aspects of sustainability.