SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

What difficulties are faced by poor countries in achieving environmentally sustainable development?

Environmental sustainable development

Introduction

Sustainable development is a term that has come to define human and environmental interactions in the 21st century. Sustainable development is the promotion of developmental patterns that will enable current human generations to meet their needs. The most popular definition of the term was coined by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. The report of the commission, Our Common Future, indicated that sustainable development was the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their particular needs. The concept embodies the consequences that the continued increase in human population and the uneven and unproductive use of natural resources have on the planet's environment. Sustainable development has become increasingly important in the last three decades in light of growing scientific acceptance that humanity's current developmental activities are have a detrimental effect on the global environment (Spaargaren, Mol, 2002, p. 323).

Sustainable development

The concept of environment and development is an attempt to integrate economic development policy-making and environmental considerations. It encompasses an acknowledgment that millions of people worldwide still live in poverty; that there is continued unequal access to the resources needed for a decent livelihood; and that there is a need for economic growth and that many human activities, including the quest for survival, put a strain on the environment. Since the early 1970s, environment and development has gradually gained momentum as an organizing concept for debates and policies on economic development and environmental conservation. It has found its way into the language of international bodies, and agreements addressing environment and development. The policies and legislation of many countries, subfield or related individual courses of study in academic institutions, and academic journal titles or focus areas, as well as becoming a convenient way to link disparate groups in the development-environment nexus (Lovell, 2004, p. 35).

Like many other concepts within the development discourse (e.g., development, sustainability, participation), the environment and development concept is both loaded and slippery, allowing for multiple interpretations among its users. Perhaps owing in part to the ambivalent implications of the root words that make it up the concept of environment and development conveys both optimism and a warning. It is optimistic in the sense that it conveys an idea that there can be encouraging links between economic growth and environmental conservation as long as enabling policies are in place. The concept also carries a warning that the natural resource base is not infinite and that if misguided policies pursued, economic growth through industrialization and overexploitation or misuse of natural resources could lead to environmental disasters that can negatively interfere with life as we know it today.

Last, a review of the institutional genealogy of environment and development leaves a strong impression that its goals and those of sustainable development are fairly similar. In that case, one of the substantial critiques of sustainable development, which is that it is an oxymoron seeking economic ...