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Sustainable development

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Sustainable development

For some, the issue is considered to be closely tied to economic growth and the need to find ways to expand the economy in the long term without using up natural capital for current growth at the cost of long term growth. For others, the concept of growth itself is problematic, as the resources of the Earth are finite. Conserving the biodiversity is also vital to sustainable development and reducing poverty, as stated in the Madagascar Declaration.

The 2005 UK Sustainable Development Strategy has the objective of enabling all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life, without compromising the quality of life of future generations.

Environmental degradation

Environmental degradation is the damage to a local ecosystem or the biosphere as a whole due to human activity. Environmental degradation occurs when nature's resources (such as trees, habitat, earth, water and air) are being consumed faster than nature can replenish them. An unsustainable situation occurs when natural capital (the sum total of nature's resources) is used up faster than it can be replenished. Sustainability requires that human activity, at a minimum, only uses nature's resources at a rate at which they can be replenished naturally:

Consumption of renewable resources State of environment Sustainability
More than nature's ability to replenish Environmental degradation Not sustainable
Equal to nature's ability to replenish Environmental equilibrium Sustainable growth
Less than nature's ability to replenish Environmental renewal Sustainable growth

The long term final result of environmental degradation will be local environments that are no longer able to sustain human populations.

In the shorter term, destruction of the world's rainforests is occurring in places such as the Amazon. The need for a sustainable development scheme is urgent, as exploitation of the rainforest is increasing. A solution would be to guard areas of great importance and sustain tree production in plantation sites. This would balance the current deforestation with afforestation and could prevent the destruction of ecosystems and soil erosion due to desertification. However, Brazil is currently in global debt and cannot afford to prevent much of the current deforestation without help from more economically developed countries.

Popularization of the concept

The first major manifestation of the popularization of sustainable development occurred at the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) in 1992.

The conference was prompted by publication of Our Common Future (1987), the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission. The report called for strategies to strengthen efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development. A series of seven UN conferences on environment and development followed. The Brundtland Commission coined the most widely used definition of sustainable development, which contains 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.

Sustainable development demands ways of living, working and being that enable all people of the world to lead healthy, fulfilling, and economically secure lives without destroying the environment and without endangering the future welfare of people and the planet.

The precise meaning of sustainable development has been widely debated. For example, two years after the Brundtland Commission's Report popularised the term, over 140 definitions of sustainable development had been catalogued. However, the term "sustainability" has since been defined with reference to scientific principles (see The Natural Step).

The position of the United Nations Environment Programme:

The intensified and unsustainable demand for land, water marine and coastal resources resulting from the expansion of agriculture and uncontrolled urbanisation lead to increased degradation of natural ecosystems and erode the life supporting systems that uphold human civilization. Caring for natural resources and promoting their sustainable use is an essential response of the world community to ensure its own survival and well being. (source: Sustainable Management and Use of Natural Resources)

Many people reject the term sustainable development as an overall term in favor of sustainability, and reserve sustainable development only for specific development activities such as energy development.

Sustainable development is one of the issues addressed by international environmental law.

Sustainable development in the law

A few countries have introduced the principle of sustainable development into their laws. Among them is Poland. The article 5 of the 1997 Constitution reads,

"The Republic of Poland shall safeguard the independence and integrity of its territory and ensure the freedoms and rights of persons and citizens, the security of the citizens, safeguard the national heritage and shall ensure the protection of the natural environment pursuant to the principles of sustainable development."

In principle it means that the Constitutional Tribunal may scratch any law it deems incompatible with the principle of sustainable development. However, as in the last decades the environmental regulations have, with few exceptions, only become stronger, it's unlikely that the Tribunal will exercise this power anytime soon.

In France in 2004, along with the lists of human rights set out in the 1789 Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen and in the preamble of the 1946 constitution of the Fourth Republic, an Environmental Charter was added to the Constitution, recognizing among others a duty to preserve the environment and the right to live in a "balanced and health-respecting" environment.

The Venezuela Constitution of 1999 mentions the desirability of sustainable development.

The proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe also includes sustainable development as one of the European Union's objectives.

In the United Kingdom, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 imposes on planning officials a duty to exercise their functions with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development (although their definition of sustainable development, in addition to the protection and enhancement of the environment, the prudent use of natural resources and sustainable economic development, also included social cohesion and inclusion.)

Criticism

Many environmentalists have criticized the term "sustainable development" as an oxymoron, claiming that economic policies based around concepts of growth and continued depletion of resources cannot be sustainable, since that term implies resources remain constant. Resources such as petroleum are consumed much faster than they are created by natural processes, and are continually being depleted. It is argued that the term "sustainable development" is a term invented by business to show capitalism as ecologically friendly, thereby placating people promoting environmentalist values.

However, technologies such as renewable energy, recycling and the provision of services can, if carried out appropriately, provide for growth in the economic sense, either without the use of limited resources, or by using a relatively small amount of resources with a small impact. In the latter case, even the use of small amounts of resources may be unsustainable if continued indefinitely.

See also

Template:Energy Sustainability Template:Sustainability and energy development group

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