Our planet earth has been much abused and misused so much so that it is clearly in trouble and we with it. We have so degraded our environment, so disrupted our biosphere, so stressed the physical carrying capacities such that the million of people on the planet ( and most certainly our cherished ways of life ) have been put in jeopardy.
Environmental problems such as ozone layer depletion, global warming, acid rain, chemical pollution of ground water, tropical deforestation, increasingly massive and deadly chemicals, oil and toxic spills, unregulated human activities, are all serious problems. Some if not all of these problems have been linked to development, or technological advancement.
The paradox however is that increasing development is with declining environmental quality. In other words, although development and technologies are expected to foster human well being directly, they also indirectly undermine human well being because of their adverse effects on the environment.
Sustainable Development.
Sustainable development is seen as development that meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations. Sustainable development emerged the late 1980's as a unifying approach to concern over the environment, economic development and the quality of life. The concept was first used in the conservation strategy (international union for the conservation of nature, 1980).
It stressed sustainability in ecological terms, and was far less concern with economic development. It argued for three priorities to be built in to development policies, namely, the maintenance of ecological process, the sustainable used of resources, the maintenance of genetic diversity. Our emphasis here is on the physical environment in it current state, economic and environmental relationship in terms of the human impact on the environment imply that any impact would be negative. For instance deforestation, pollution, just to mention a few, are two major developmental issues that their after effects are deadly, yet they aimed at economic development.
In essence the vision of sustainable development is to recognized the need for economic development and growth without depleting the future's viability of the resource base. It calls for a different attitudes to economic development in which the quality of growth is seen to be as important as the quantity of growth. This implies that the basic need of all people must be met in a way which provides for their needs with security and dignity. Also there are no absolute limits to development, therefore development potentials is a function of the present state of technology and social organization, combine with their impacts on environmental resources.
Brundtland report advanced the following list of objective for sustainable development policies.
* Reviving economic growth
* Changing the quality of growth.
* Meeting essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water, and sanitation.
* Ensuring a sustainable level of population.
* Conserving and enhancing the resource base.
* Re-orienting technology and managing risk.
* Considering or merging environmental and economics in decision making process.
Changes for the Actualization of Sustainable Development.
* A political system which allows for effective citizen participation in decision making process.
* An economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self reliant and sustained basis.
* A social system that provides solutions to tensions arising from our present form of disharmonious development.
* A production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development.
* Technological system that can search continuously for new solutions.
* An international system that foster sustainable patterns of trade and finance.
* An administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self correction.
As a concept and as a notion, sustainable development is concern about development that is less harmful to the environment and as such need all and sundry to be part for our future and the ones yet unborn.
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