Discuss the meaning and nature of sustainable development.

Sustainable development

Sustainable development has an important role and place in the discourse on development. Sustainable development is the centre of debates and discussions among the development experts, environmentalists and national leaders of both developed and developing countries.

The United Nations and its agencies, as well as many international institutions, commissions, and world leaders, do recognize the significance of sustainable development.

Much before the Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainable development, in the early 1970s, the term sustainable development was coined by Barbara Ward, founder of the International Institute for Environment and Development in the early 1970s.

Sustainable development for her was largely about people, their economic and social well-being and aspirations for equity in their relationships with each other, in a context where environment-society imbalances could threaten economic and social stability.

The legacy of the concept of sustainable development is however attributed to the Brundtland Report or the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development entitled Our Common Future, which defines it as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Thus, it seeks to satisfy the compulsions of equity within the human generations and also between them. 

‘Sustainable development thus, is development that meets the needs of present and future generations.

Given the global and local effects of environmental decay, it is no surprise that sustainable development has become a catchword in development planning and resource management.

Nature of sustainable development:

Keeping in view what we leave or pass on to our children and grandchildren, we must think of the full range of physical and human capital, and natural resources that will determine their welfare.

Adopting the principle of sustainable development would necessarily require a fundamental change in thinking.

The data used for decision-making must reflect the true costs of resource depletion and pollution, as they affect future generations rather than just the short-term costs of profits of depleting income-producing resources.

When a country experiences rapid population growth or dramatic urbanisation, an increase in Gross National Product or GNP may hide or camouflage major development problems.

The same difficulty arises when the world demand for the raw resources from a country or a region rises to meet increasing global needs. 

In sum, until we are prepared to define sustainability in ways that take stock of both the external threat from food policies in the North and the internal threat from demographic pressure in the South, it will remain illusory.

Similarly, to cope with the growing problems of land pressures in India, it is necessary to check and control the population growth rate.

The sustainability aspect requires that environmental administrators aim at:

i) Maintaining ecosystem and related ecological processes, essential for the functioning of biosphere. 

ii) Sustaining biological diversity by ensuring the survival and promoting the conservation in their natural habitats of all species of flora and fauna.

iii) Observing the principle of optimum sustainable yield in the exploitation of living natural resources and ecosystems.

iv) Preventing or abating significant environmental pollution or harm.

v) Establishing adequate environmental protection standards.

vi) Undertaking or requiring prior assessments to ensure that major law, policies, projects, and technologies contribute to sustainable development.

vii) Making all relevant information public without delay in all cases of harmful or potentially harmful releases of pollutants, especially radioactive releases.

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