The ethical reasoning behind sustainable development: a paradoxical opportunity for the reform of developing countries

This conceptual framework intends to explore the ethical reasoning behind the necessity of adopting a sustainable development agenda on the strategic level of policy making. The author investigates the ethical obligations to sustainability through a schema of four ethical theories and matching those standards to three levels: economic, social and environmental. The commentary put forward will argue that the ethical reasoning works as a more effective stimulant for countries to embrace sustainable agendas, where the law has so far failed. With the sweeping winds of change (Arab Spring) blowing in the Middle East region since the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia followed by the widely idealized revolution in Egypt; this article explains the paradoxical opportunity which developing countries as such hold now in adopting radical change and starting a whole new wave of sustainable strategies, which in the long term will present themselves as a huge leap forward towards a better future. Economic and business benefits are linked to a better quality of life socially and environmentally, where the laws have failed to deliver, and ethical reasoning emerges as a powerful tool forward as it did drive the revolutions asking for radical change.