Author and Page information
- This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/408/sustainable-development-introduction.
- To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
This web page has the following sub-sections:
What is Sustainable Development?
The idea of sustainable development grew from numerous environmental movements in earlier decades and was defined in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission 1987) as:
- Sustainable Development
- Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
This contributed to the understanding that sustainable development encompasses a number of areas and highlights sustainability as the idea of environmental, economic and social progress and equity, all within the limits of the world’s natural resources.
Little Progress So Far
However, the record on moving towards sustainability so far appears to have been quite poor.
Though we might not always hear about it, sustainable development (and all the inter-related issues associated with it) is an urgent issue, and has been for many years, though political will has been slow-paced at best. For example, there are
- 1.3 billion without access to clean water;
- about half of humanity lacking access to adequate sanitation and living on less than 2 dollars a day;
- approximately 2 billion without access to electricity;
- Sources(For sources to these figures quoted as well as additional facts and statistics, see this web site’s poverty facts and stats.)
And this is in an age of immense wealth in increasingly fewer hands. The inequality of consumption (and therefore, use of resources, which affects the environment) is terribly skewed: “20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures — the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%” according to the 1998 United Nations Human Development Report.
The Earth Summit in 1992 Attempted to Highlight the Importance of Sustainability
The 1992 Rio Earth Summit was attended by 152 world leaders, and sustainability was enshrined in Agenda 21, a plan of action, and a recommendation that all countries should produce national sustainable development strategies. Despite binding conventions and numerous detailed reports, there seems to have been little known about the details to ordinary citizens around the world.
In the 10+ years since Rio, there has been little change in poverty levels, inequality or sustainable development, as the World Development Movement notes. “Despite thousands of fine words the last decade has joined the 1980’s as another ‘lost decade for sustainable development’ with deepening poverty, global inequality and environmental destruction”.
As LEAD and Panos highlight, “In the ten years since Rio, sustainable development hasn’t been very high on international agendas” and criticizes both rich and poor nations alike:
In many countries — rich and poor — this is often because of a perception that sustainability is expensive to implement and ultimately a brake on development. Poor countries for their part usually lack the physical infrastructure, ideas and human capacity to integrate sustainability into their development planning. Besides, they are often quite skeptical about rich countries’ real commitment to sustainable development and demand a more equitable sharing of environmental costs and responsibilities. Many people also believe that environmental problems can wait until developing countries are richer.
… Ten years on, there is still no widely shared vision of what sustainable development might mean in practice. India sees the idea of a light ecological footprint as part of its cultural heritage. Japan, on the other hand, is debating whether the emphasis should be on the “sustainable” or on the “development” half of the equation.
— Roads to the Summit, LEAD International and Panos London, 30 August 2002 (Link is to a news report, which has a link to a Microsoft Word formatted document from which this was quoted.)
The Political Challenge
As hinted to above, how sustainability is viewed is itself a factor, as it has different meanings to different people. And this impacts how policies may or may not be pursued, and who may participate, who may be affected, and who may benefit.
Consider for example, the following:
[The late Anil Agarwal, founder editor of Down To Earth Magazine], made us understand that economists often missed the real measure of poverty. We needed to understand poverty not as a lack of cash, but as a lack of access to natural resources. This was because millions of people lived within what he called the biomass-based subsistence economy. For these millions, the Gross Nature Product was more important than the Gross National Product. For them, environmental degradation was not a matter of luxury, but a matter of survival. Development was not possible without environmental management. In fact, what was needed was to regenerate the environment for development. He made us look beyond “pretty trees and tigers” to see environmental issues not as people versus nature — a conservation perspective — but as people versus people.
… Sustainable development was, therefore, not about technology but about a political framework, which developed power and gave people — the victims of environmental degradation — rights over natural resources. The involvement of local communities in environmental management was a prerequisite for sustainable development.
… We have not made environment into a development challenge. Because we have still not learned how to use it sustainably. Therefore, environmental protection becomes an invariable conflict with development. A conflict between nature and jobs. Instead, what we need is policies and practices to use the environment for the greater enterprise of jobs and prosperity. Build green futures from the use of forests, land, water and fisheries. But we don’t know how.
We don’t know how because we refuse to learn the most basic lesson. We have to really trust people and communities. As yet, all we have done is use bureaucratic tricks to stall and obfuscate. We will have to make changes — effective and earnest — to devolve powers in the practice of managing the environment.
— Sunita Narain, Devolution has to happen. It will, Down To Earth Magazine, January 31, 2003
The above highlights the need to consider multiple angles and perspectives.
More focus is needed on developing technologies that are “environment friendly.” Advances in such technologies would have a profound impact on all manner of society. Yet, achieving sustainable development seems primarily a political task not a technological one, though technology may be one of the many factors that could play an important part in moving towards more sustainable development. Without the political will to overcome special interests, it will prove difficult and those without voices to be heard, such as the poor that make up the majority of the planet, would be impacted the most.
The rest of the pages on this site’s section on sustainable development hopes to introduce some of these challenges and look at primarily the political aspects affecting the issue of sustainability. (Over time this section is expected to grow.)
- Sustainable Development Introduction
- Addressing Biodiversity Loss
- Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development
- Poverty and the Environment
- Non-governmental Organizations on Development Issues
- Foreign Aid for Development Assistance
- Water and Development
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Energy Security
- Brain Drain of Workers from Poor to Rich Countries