Basics and Importance of Sustainable Development

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

World Commission on Environment and Development (1987): Our Common Future

• The concept of sustainable development is rooted in sort of systems thinking.

• It helps us understand ourselves and our world. • The problems we face are complex and serious—and we can't address them

in the same way we created them. But we can address them.

Sustainable development require that we see the world as a system—a system that connects space; and a system that connects time.

• It contains within it two key concepts:– the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's

poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and– the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and

social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Importance of SD• “Sustainability is a concept that recognizes that natural systems are essential to provide both

economic needs and quality of life”(University of Florida, Understanding Sustainability series, 2012)

• SD is not limited to only one community rather it connects space and time. • SD needs cooperation amongst people from various societies, communities and countries.• SD is a continuous process. • SD is not contradictory to growth, profit and development. It helps in planning out limits. • All four pillars constitute the core of SDs which make the “way to life” for a person, society

and even to a country. • It helps in developing eco-friendly Global culture.• SD ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social challenges

facing humanity.

How can we get towards SD?

1. How do we define it?• What does it mean?• What is the objective?• What are the basic principles?

2. How do we know if we are moving there?• Indicators

3. How to move further?• From indicators to action

Sustainable Development includes three interdependent issues

•Society•Economy•Environment

A vision of sustainable development with three dimensions was developed in the second half of the 1980s, namely: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental balance.

The report Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report (1987), enshrined these three dimensions as the pattern to be used in local, national and global strategies for development.

The Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit of 1992 consolidated these three pillars as the paradigm of sustainable development.

Economic dimension• An economically sustainable system must be able to produce goods and

services on a continuing basis, to maintain manageable size of government and external debt and to avoid sectoral imbalances (maintain diversity) Jonathan Harris Tufts U

Capital: produces a stream of goods and services into the future– Financial capital– Manufactured capital; durable capital– Human capital; stocks of learned skills– Intellectual capital; accumulation of knowledge and skills not embodied in individuals – Social capital; Set of institutions and customs – Natural capital; renewable and nonrenewable

• Weak sustainability; man made and natural capital substitutable. Sum must be non-declining

• Strong sustainability; man made and natural capital with limited substitutability, each stock must be non-declining separately

Environmental dimension• A stable resource base, do not overwhelm the waste assimilative ability

of the environment nor the regenerative services of the environment, deplete non-renewables only to the extent we invest in renewable substitutes.

Sustainable development is (1) development subject to a set of constraints which set resource harvest rates at levels not higher than managed natural regeneration rates and (2) use of the environment as a waste sink on the basis that waste disposal rates should not exceed rates of managed or natural assimilative capacity of the ecosystem

D. Pearce

Jonathan Harris Tufts U

Social Dimension

• Achieve distributional equity, adequate provision of social services including health and education, gender equity and political accountability and participation

Jonathan Harris Tufts U