GRASSROOTS APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The concept of sustainable development used in this paper is one of generating and maintaining development as a process through the interactions between social and economic forces. On the side of the social factors influencing development, the focus here is on the human element, which is variously displayed in the process concept. Sometimes, this factor is simply the human resources treated as technologically induced capital, and in which case, the generation of growth is seen as attainment of efficiency derived from the use of human capital. But the more important human factor in sustainable development is the establishment of social justice, moral entitlement and endogeneity of ethics as cause and effect in the process itself. These factors emanate from the premise of human self‐actualization in various ways, and they augment the development process by increasing returns to knowledge as an indigenous experience. Thus, ethics and morality in development constitute the sustaining factors of a development paradigm that becomes truly authentic, not imposed. Among the scenarios of such ethical and moral elements of development is the endogenous role of Islamic values towards describing its socio‐scientific world view.