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The nature of sustainable development
The nature of sustainable development
What is sustainable development essay
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This essay intends to address the argument that the concept of sustainable development robs the Poor World of any possibility of convergence with the Rich World. Sustainable development is the new buzz word in the game of development and economic growth. As such sustainable development will be examined at a conceptual level and its implications for the Poor World and LDCs will be drawn out. At a practical level a case study of climate change and how this environmental challenge can be addressed through sustainable development will also be examined. Through this case study it will be established that the concept of sustainable development robs the Poor World of any possibility of convergence with the Rich World if and only if the Rich World does not in this global push toward sustainable development support the Poor World both financially and technically. Essentially without this support the Poor World cannot and will not be able to concurrently purse the all important goals of economic development and environmental sustainability.
In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development conceptualised the idea of a sustainable society as one that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (cited in Meadows et al. 2004, p. 254). Herman Daly thus contends that in determining the sustainability of an economy’s economic output the following criteria must be meet, “its rates of use of renewable resources do not exceed their rates of regeneration, its rates of use of non-renewable resources do not exceed the rate at which sustainable renewable substitutes are developed and its rates of pollution emission do not exceed the assimilative capacity of the envi...
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...hington, DC, 2010, chp. 2.
United Nations Development Programme, 2006, Human Development Report 2006, New York, UNDP, pp. 263-273.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2010, UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún delivers balanced package of decisions, restores faith in multilateral process, United Nations, Bonn, Germany, 2010, pp. 1-2.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2011, The least developed countries – Reducing vulnerability to climate change, climate variability and extremes, land degradation and loss of biodiversity: Environmental and developmental challenges and opportunities, United Nations, Bonn, Germany, 2011, pp. 1-15.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 2010, Living planet report 2010 – Biodiversity, biocapacity and development’, WWF, Switzerland, 2010, pp. 1-9, 34 & 85-86.
The following case study critiques Upton’s vision to establish a sustainable community through implementing comprehensive sustainable strategy. The urban periphery development is thought to demonstrate superior execution of sustainable principles in development (Jackson 2007). As a parallel, the report focuses on the development of Upton’s design code and demonstrates how large -scale mix-use developments can incorporate sustainable practice and principles of urban growth.
Generational conflicts, political strife, environmental regulations, stakeholders in big oil, and many more hurdles affect the push to fully sustainable economies around the world and even here in America. In a world where coal, oil, and natural gas are limited, countries are gobbling it all up as fast as they can before other poorer countries come on the grid. Even though America and other countries gobble up these resources the life of the people is still a struggle to meet basic needs. Sustainability is an intermingling of resource use and protection of the “quality of life”, it is met by using resources sparingly and by recycling or reducing the use of other non-renewable resources to provide for our immediate need, but also to conserve and protect the needs of the next generation and to improve the quality of all the lives to come.
ed. “A Common-Sense Climate Index: Is Climate Changing? Noticeably?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 95 (1998): 4113-20. Thomas Wigley, “The Kyoto Protocol: CO2, CH4, and Climate Implications,” pp.
...i, X., . . . Johnson, C. A. (Eds.). (2001). Climate change 2001: The scientific basis : contribution of Working Group I to the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.
First of all, with rapid global demographic expansions after the invention of agriculture, poverty has long become a major cause and effect of global environmental issues. The limited natural resources like fossil fuels on earth could hardly satisfy the high demand of the growing population. Therefore the allocation of resources between rich and poor has been brought up to be a global concern. In the context of climate change, the developed countries always consume more natural resources than it’s needed and left the developing countries being the powerless victim of climate change. The inequality between rich and poor has correspondingly led to the consequence of imbalance in nature. To regain the balance and solve this inequality, the developed countries will have to control their use of resources and be willing to share and exchange their resources with the developing c...
Sustainability is a concept with a diverse array of meanings and definitions – a widely used glamorous, ambiguous, ambivalent and vague concept that is used by different stakeholder groups in various ways. Presumably to avoid noodling over a terminology or to avoid the confrontation with a definition, most widely the concept is broken down a planning process (c.f. e.g. Döring & Muraca, 2010). That is why most common sustainability is understood as sustainable development.1
Adaptation is a response to global warming and climate change, that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of social and biological systems to relatively sudden change and thus offset the effects of global warming. Most of developing countries are lack of infrastructure and financial resources, while their technological level is lower than general. These countries did not contribute to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even, they did not have enough resource and knowledge to support quality living place for people. In addition, climate change is global in both its cause and effect dimensions.
Solomon, S. (Ed.). (2007). Climate change 2007-the physical science basis: Working group I contribution to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC (Vol. 4, pg 501). Cambridge University Press.
Toscano, J. (2003). Globalization and sustainable development. In B. H, & R. W, Achieving Sustainable Development: The Challenge of Governance Across Social Scales. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. If we follow this definition, it becomes easy to see that the vast majority of the “developed” world has not, and is not developing sustainably. The idea of sustainable development requires us to consider how our action of developing will affect other countries, and future generations. Many people believe in “the butterfly effect”, where the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of t...
Humans have become a threat to our own way of life by consuming more resources than needed, blind to the consequences that we may face in the future. As of 2016 the world population is at 7.4 billion and it is estimated to be at 11.2 billion by the year 2100. However 10 billion is the maximum population that can be sustained in terms of food security, only one of the many factors to global sustainability. Due to the fact that human consumption exceeds the amount of resources available, the United Nations “recognizes that eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge” in A/RES/70/1. Sustainable development is not only required to fulfill the necessities of the present but to guarantee the capability for future generations to satisfy theirs.
In class we discussed what sustainable development meant to us; each group had its own definition. Our group’s definition was that sustainable development is for the long term for future generations, for the basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and job. The basic will increase over time and our resources will diminish, which why sustainable development is important. Sustainable development is important for future generations so that they end up with a world better than ours. Sustainable development is achievable if society works together to meet everyone’s basic needs and create a better world.
Sustainability development has three components: environment, society, and economy. If you consider the three to be overlapping circles of the same size, the area of overlap in the center is human well-being. As the environment, society, and economy become more aligned, the area of overlap increases, and so does human well-being. Therefore, education for sustainable development (ESD) is the use of education as a tool to achieve sustainability. Simply put, ESD is a way to make the world a safer, healthier, and more livable place for us and future generations (McKeown, 2002, pgs 7-9).
‘Development that meets the needs of the present with the ability for the future generation to meet their own needs.’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) Sustainable development requires three key components: economy, society and environment, sustainable development can be success through striking balance in those factors. These three components are indispensible, they compel to depend on each other. On the other words, we can only gain a decent and energetic environment and society if the economy is strong with a healthy a stable growth rate.
Harris. J.M. 2000 Basic Principles of Sustainable Development, Global and Environment Institute Working Paper 00-04, USA