Sustainable Development

Introduction

By the year 2200 there will be a lot more people living on this planet then there are now. Estimates range anywhere from 15 to 36 billion people. Where will these people live? How will they live? The answer is sustainable development. Sustainable development, 'meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. ' It also, 'requires meeting the basic needs of all peoples and extending to them the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes.' Sustainable development is being ignored in Chile, the Philippines, and Siberia, practiced in Madagascar and in Alaska, and examined in the Lake Baikal region of Russia. These Countries must learn from each other's failures and success to discover what sustainable development involves in their own country.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development has three divisions, economic, environmental, and social. If sustainability is to occur it must, meet these three divisions. In Chile, none of these divisions is being met. Economically speaking, almost 40% of the population is poor and as a result many make a living directly from the land clearing forests. In the IVth region of Chile, forest regions are being depleted at an amazing rate. This depletion of the forest in this region results in two main things, one, people must spend increasing amounts of energy traveling to the site of present cutting and two, the removal of the trees over time has lead to soil erosion and rapid desertification of the area. This soil erosion also removes many nutrients from the soil making the land poor for agriculture. The third division, social, is not met here either. The lack of organizations to relieve the negative effects of poverty on the environment has only contributed to the problem.

In the Philippines the environmental degradation is similar in nature but more catastrophic in result. There in the province of Leyte 6000 people were killed when flash flood ripped through Ormoc City in 1991. The floods were a result of logging of a forest in that region and conversion of that area into commercial farming practices such as sugarcane. This in itself did not because the floods, the conversion of the forest into farming left the heavy rain from a typhoon with nowhere to go. Normally the forest would have stopped any flash floods as it would have held the water let it out slowly, but with the forests gone there was nothing to delay the water from exiting the system. The economical effect of this that land and buildings were destroyed causing millions of peso's worth of damage. The social impact is easy to discern, those who lost loved ones, friends, and family can never get them back.

In Madagascar the same type of thing was happening. Locals were cutting down the forest and planting rice and cassava. It was estimated that this process of deforestation was costing the country between, ...