Sustainable Development

In this assignment the author shall discuss the relative extent to which creating sustainable development policies and concepts protect the environment from degradation. We shall critically examine the different approaches to the paradigm, such as UN summits to National policies and also by analysing the different forms of sustainability, and briefly the vagueness and hypocrisies of the term. In addition, we must look at the process of generating these policies and to what extent do they come to fruition. An important question is whether because of the sheer number of stakeholders, (for example countries in the UN or TNCs) that are a part of the process of creating sustainable development plans hinder any large scale change to current environmental policy.

The global environmental debate is a mixture of anxiety over the capacity of the planet to absorb changes wrought by human activity, and concern for the people of the future, whose plight will by no means be their choosing. The paradigm of sustainable develop has since been born out of such debate and in turn, played a major role in world, national and local politics.

Blowers et al (1996) postulates that amongst the general public there is a strong feeling that human activity will not only degrade the physical environment itself but will also ultimately threaten the world’s population. This sense of unease promotes the reasoning that we have an untenable relationship with the environment. It is therefore a necessity to re-mould and create a tenable and sustainable relationship. There are several means in which this may be achieved; the degree of success however, is questionable.

O’Riordan (2000) states that many of the most pressing challenges facing today’s environment ar...

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...tional political agenda. Global institutions such as the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) have helped drive the debate down to national and sub-national levels. Perhaps at these lower levels sustainability can be implemented more successfully, for example an individual having a sustainable lifestyle. However, at the global scale there are so many stakeholders involved in meetings such as UN Word Summits outcomes produced rarely include new solid sustainable development polices. Instead flimsy agreements in regards to emission cuts are produced and are often not met by the countries concerned. Under this premise large scale change to current policies on sustainability are unlikely at a global scale, only a complete unity of thinking would produce proper sustainable development policy, in turn preventing the environment from future large scale degradation.