Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development

• Sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.

• Development means improving people's lives. Sustainable development means extending progress without exhausting resources, beyond the future requirements.

True sustainable development

• The true, sustainable development aims at optimum use of natural resources with high degree of reusability, minimum wastage, least generation of toxic and maximum productivity.

 

1. Five Principles of Sustainable Development

• The principles of sustainable development involve safeguarding and using existing resources in a sustainable way to enhance the long-term management of and investment in, human, social and environmental resources, which is more important than ever due to the evidence of diminishing natural resources and the impacts of unsustainable development.

• Following are five important principles of sustainable development.

1. Living within environmental limits

2. Achieving a sustainable economy

3. Promoting good governance

4. Using sound science responsibly

5. Ensuring a strong, healthy and just society

• The principles form the basis of national sustainable development strategies and action plans. These principles helped formulate the national sustainable development strategy and these principles are used to assess all policies and actions.

• In addition to the five agreed principles a sixth principle is now added : To promote opportunity and innovation.

 

2. Sustainable Development Aspects

• Three aspects of sustainable development are recognised as :

1. Economic : An economically sustainable system must be able to produce goods and services on a continuing basis, to maintain manageable levels of government and external debt and to avoid extreme sectoral imbalances which damage agricultural or industrial production.

2. Environmental : An environmentally sustainable system must maintain a stable resource base, avoiding over-exploitation of renewable resource systems or environmental sink functions and depleting non-renewable resources only to the extent that investment is made in adequate substitutes. This includes maintenance of biodiversity, atmospheric stability and other ecosystem functions not ordinarily classed as economic resources.

3. Social : A socially sustainable system must achieve distributional equity, adequate provision of social services including health and education, gender equity and political accountability and participation.

Sustainable Development Multidimensional Concept

• Sustainable development is a multidimensional concept, which involves continuous decision making of interlinked issues such as environment, social community and economy. Fig. 4.2.1 shows important aspects of sustainable development.

• All the aspects are integrated and balanced without compromising the ability of present and future generations to meet their needs.

• Each of the three areas is commonly referred to as a system : Economic systems, environmental systems and social systems each have their own logic. It. is an impossible task to analyze all these systems at once.

• Different indicators can be used to measure different dimensions of sustaihability. Indicators imply measurement; measurement implies the theoretical definition of concepts to measure.

 

3. Agenda for Sustainable Development

• In 1992, Earth Summit was held at Rio de Janeiro of Brazil. A declaration of the summit is - "a new and equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of co-operation among states."

• Agenda 21 of the summit proposes - "sustainable development starts from environmental policy. Social and economic equity are the other requirements of sustainable development."

• The important points of this agenda 21 are -

1. Carrying capacity based developmental planning process.

2. A preventive environmental policy.

3. Structural economic change.

4. The enlarged role of environmental management tools like -

* Environmental Impact and Risk Assessment (EIRA),

* Environmental Audit (EA),

* Life Cycle Assessment (LCA),

* Natural Resource Accounting (NRA).

 

4. Objectives of Sustainable Development

1. To promote equity and fairness.

2. To improve quality of human life.

3. Sustaining of natural resources.

4. Protecting ecosystem.

5. To fulfill international obligations.

6. Considering economic and environmental in decisions.

7. To consider system as a whole.

8. Long term planning and implementation.

 

5. Factors Affecting Sustainable Development

1. Renewable and non-renewable resources.

2. Population growth and population density.

3. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita.

4. Consumption of energy and environmental resources.

5. Pollution.

6. Conservation / Use of land.

7. Poverty gap index.

8. Environmental awareness, education, literacy.

 

6. Threats to Sustainability

• Various threats to sustainability are

1. Resource depletion

3. Loss of resilience

2. Waste accumulation

4. Loss of regionality

5. Threats to biological diversity

6. Threats to food chain

7. Emerging diseases for animals

Review Question

1. Discuss the recent approaches to achieve sustainable development.

AU : May-16, Marks 12