Sustainable Development

By D. Govind Singh
 Sustainable development

Earth has enough resources to satisfy everybody's needs but not their greed

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while
preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for
future generations.

Definition: In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defines
sustainable development as 'development which meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.'

Sustainable development is much more than environmental protection. It is a wider concept of

economic growth, which ensures fairness and opportunities for dignified life for all, without
further destroying recklessly, the world's finite resources.

The field of sustainable development can be conceptually broken into three constituent parts:
Economic Sustainability, Sociopolitical Sustainability and Environmental Sustainability.

Examples of principles related to Sustainability

Economical

 Elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty

 Work as worship
 Moderation
 Be content w/little
 Voluntary giving
 Profit sharing

Social

 Equality of women and men

 Elimination of all forms of prejudice
  Unity in diversity
 Universal compulsory education
 Trustworthiness

Environmental

 Interdependence of all life

 Nature a reflection of the Divine
 Humility – Earth source of all our wealth
 Unity in diversity
 Cleanliness
 Kindness to animals

The United Nations conference on environment and development (Earth Summit) at Rio de
Janeiro in 1992 exhorted the world to abandon those practices that are self destructive in favor of
sustainable development (Agenda 21). Ten years after the first ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio. (It was
therefore also informally nicknamed "Rio+10".) The World Summit on Sustainable
Development, WSSD or Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26
August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss sustainable development by the United
Nations. WSSD gathered a number of leaders from business and non-governmental organizations
that reaffirmed their commitment to the Rio declaration. It was emphasized that poverty
eradication, changing consumption and production patterns and protecting and managing the
natural resource base for economic and social development are overarching objectives of and
essential prerequisites of sustainable development.

The first discernible change in attitudes towards environment was reflected in the Earth Summit
held in Stockholm in 1972. Serious concern was expressed at the rate at which exhaustible
resources were being depleted. The impetus to the debate was provided by the famous study
'Limits to Growth'; undertaken by a team of scientists from MIT in America headed by Donnela
Meadows. The Club of Rome, a gathering of wealthy businessmen and politicians, funded the
project. Several computer simulation models incorporating resource depletion, growing pollution
and industrial output pointed to an impending environmental catastrophe. There was a serious
question mark over whether traditional economic policies designed to raise real income could be
continued, given the limits to growth.

However, the predictions of ecological doom have turned out to be wrong. Actually, the known
reserves of 'finite' resources have grown since the publication of the report of the Club of Rome.
In 1980s and early 1990s the focus shifted to the quality of the environment: how growth could
be achieved without jeopardizing the environment. The focal point of the debate shifted from
resource depletion to pollution. Good environmental policies would help growth; and economic
growth, if sensibly managed, would help the environment. The shift occurred essentially due to
the failure to persuade the rich nations not to get richer by further cornering and over-exploiting
precious resources.

The earlier models of economic growth were capital oriented and stressed investment in
machines and infrastructure to achieve desired levels of incomes. In this process technological
progress played a crucial role. The thrust was on technologies, which aimed at source reduction.
The green revolution, the application of high technology to agriculture – increased food output
manifold but made it vulnerable to pests, diseases and climate variations; technology and capital
matter, but so do free inputs of nature. Thus the 1980s showed that it was wise to appreciate
growth that is environmentally sensitive and distinguished these limits from absolute limits to
economic growth. Sustainable development was broadened to mean a process in which natural
resource base was not allowed to deteriorate. The emphasis was placed on environmental quality
and natural inputs in the process of development. Today, natural habitats are recognized as
valuable resources. Tropical forests protect watersheds, and regulate climate. They also house
valuable species. Wetlands purify water, protect inland area from storm surges, and provide a
major source of bio-diversity.

The preservation of the global environment raises serious issues about the growth and
distribution of global income and wealth. Developing countries are, obviously, not satisfied with
their present lot and cannot be expected to sustain their poverty in the name of environmental
protection. On the other hand the affluent countries cannot be allowed, forever, 85% of the
world's resources to maintain their present profligate consumption pattern. The concept of
sustainable development should, then, emphasize not only the future but also the present.

The Polarized World

Today, we live in a world of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, It is common to speak of a North\South

divide into the developed world (i.e., U.S., Europe,) and the underdeveloped world (i.e., Asia,
Africa, Latin America.). Widespread unemployment, poverty and exclusion exist, in a world that
continues to grow wealthier all the time. For the rich it is a world of consumer's paradise of
immediate gratification, of hot images and cool gadgets. On the other hand, one fifth of the
world's population i.e., over one billion people exist in conditions of absolute poverty and are
unable to feed, use clothes and provide houses to themselves properly.

These various constituents of the divided world into the haves and have-nots differ greatly in
their access to the resources of the Earth. The developed countries with less than one quarter of
the world population consume 80% of the world's resources. For example, the per capita
consumption of food, energy and material resources in the developed world in 16 times
compared to its counterpart in the underdeveloped world. The affluent life style that most in rich
countries and many in poor countries enjoy, consume an inordinate share of the world's natural
resources. The rich form just 23% of the population, occupy 5o% of the land area, account for
60% of the energy consumed and earn 85% of the world's income. An average American
consumes over two tons of steel every five years in the form of cars, and eats 112k.g of meat and
consumes 7822 kg of oil equivalent in the form of energy every year. The corresponding figures
for an average Indian is 5o kg of steel, 2kg of meat and 231 kg of oil. The per capita
consumption of food, energy and material resources in the developed world is 16 times
compared to its counterpart in underdeveloped countries. What is alarming is that the gap
between the rich and poor is only widening as part of the modernization process. The share of the
poorest 20 % of the world population in global income is estimated to be a miserable 1.1 %,
down from 1.4 % in 1991 and 2.3 % in 1960. These inequalities are even more pronounced
within nations.
The problem has been further compounded by market-led globalization and liberalization which
was adopted as a development policy world-wide at the instance of the World Bank and the
I.M.F. in the early nineties. More people live in poverty today than five years ago: The policy of
globalization and liberalization, powered by free flow of capital and information technology
revolution, has further widened inequalities within and between nations. Many Economists
believe that liberalization which was meant to be a crisis management exercise should not have
been adopted as a long term policy of development. The disastrous consequences are there for
everybody to see. The central problem of the globalizing economy is its unequal sharing of
benefits: distribution of income, employment opportunities and excess to social services such as
health and education.

Ecological Disaster

Thanks to science and technology, more and more people are consuming a more amazing array
of goods today, than at any other time in history. It is a dream world coming true, where
chemists and bio-engineers fiddle with genes, where the life style of the rich and the prosperous,
as epitome of success in a consumerist society, are beamed by satellites to every part of the
globe, where multinationals flourish by picking up beauty queens from the fashion industry as
role models to endorse and market their products. The newly acquired production potentialities
have generated enormous wealth. But, of course, one is not sure whether these have generated
the kind of wealth which makes people happy. The modern economy with all its glamour masks
a disfigured planet. The exuberant life style and wasteful consumption meets it curse in the
ecological disaster that threatens all life on earth. It has scarred the land and stained the seas,
eroding the very foundation of nature, which threatens to destroy humanity's only means of
survival.

The unprecedented growth in production and consumption of material wealth is leading to

environmental stress through impacts that are both global and local. These impacts can be
classified in to four forms:

 Physical changes
 Chemical changes
  Direct biological changes
 Social pathologies

Physical Changes

Deforestation: Millions of poor people depend on forests for their need of energy, fodder of
animals and food. The world’s forests, which also bind soil and prevent erosion, regulate water
supplies and help govern the climate, are shrinking. Between 1980 and 1990, an estimated 8% of
the total world tropical forest was cut, burnt or otherwise destroyed. As a region loses its forests,
it loses its ability to trap and absorb water, and so clearing woodland deepens the natural process
of soil erosion.

One disastrous consequence of the practice has been the pressure on woodlands, especially the
tropical forests that are the reservoirs of most of the earth's animal and plant species. In the past
decade tropical forest area has shrunk from 4.7 to 4.2 billion acres (1.9 to 1.7 billion hectares).
According to an estimate as much as 17 million hectares of tropical rain forest, an area about the
size of Japan, are destroyed every year. One of the causes for deforestation is commercial
logging. Demand for industrial timber is expected to go up from around 1.6 billion cubic meters
a year in 1995 to 1.9 billion cubic meters in 2010 driven by rising standards.

Soil Degradation and Desertification: Since 1945 nearly 2 billion hectares of productive land has
been degraded. This amounts to losing one sixth of the world’s fertile area undermining the
earth’s capacity to support human life. Indeed the earth's 6 billion people are already running out
of land. According to Washington's world watch institute the average amount of grain land per
person has dropped in 30 years from over 0.2 hectares to a little more than 0.1 hectare. Much of
the cultivable land is losing its arability because of urbanization, chemical pollution, and
desertification and overuse of water. Eighty percent of the damage has taken place in
underdeveloped countries. In China, for instance, 1.1 million hectares of grain land was lost
annually from 1990 to 1994 as it was converted to industrial sites and put to other uses. The
current policy of creating SEZs in India by acquiring fertile agricultural to be handed over to
multinationals for setting up factories under the cultivable of promoting industrialization, in spite
of country wide protests. The policy will only compound the plight of the farmers, thousands of
whom, bereft of any means of livelihood, have taken their own lives since the beginning of the
current century. China, the world's largest grain producer in the past, has already emerged as the
second ranking grain importer, trailing only Japan. The present import figure of 16 million tons
is expected to reach a whopping 210 million and 370m tons, annually by 2030. According to
world watch institute the world has lost 200m hectares (500m acres) of tree growing area since
1972, an area about one-third the size of continental U.S. At the same time the world farmers
have lost about 500m tons of topsoil, an amount equal to the tillable soil coverage of India and
France combined. Farmers, the world over have boosted their yields and fought against
desertification by resorting to heavy doses of inorganic fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation water,
but with disastrous consequences. Agricultural chemicals gradually poison the soil; and irrigation
also deposits a harmful residue, when the water evaporates, it leaves behind various salts- the
saline process which renders the land useless for cultivation. According to World Bank report
1993, some degree of saline affects 28% of the U.S' irrigated land, 23% of China and 11% of
India.

Marine life depletion: Land, rivers, even whole seas have been converted into sewers and
industrial dumps. More than half of the world's people live within 100 K.M. of a seashore and
the oceans are already a mess, littered with plastic and chemicals, threatening all marine life.
Some of the visible reasons are the garbage dumps, the oil spills, and the sewage discharge
which flow from this humanity into the sea. But the actual threats, accounting for 70 to 80
percent of all marine pollution, are the sediments and contaminants that flow into the seas like
topsoil, fertilizers, pesticides, and industrial wastes. As a consequence, many of the world’s fish
species are already starting to die. The rich countries have already, depleted their stock of fish.
They now import large quantities from developing countries that catch more fish than they can
do. In 1995 fish exports from developing countries were worth $23 billion. If the trend in over-
fishing continues it could hurt the poor countries, as their people rely more heavily on fish for
their protein requirement than the rich in the north.

Water Stress: Clean water is our most precious resource in terms of both quantity and quality.
There is a serious threat to the availability of water as depletion all over the world is becoming
irreversible as a result of groundwater over-pumping and aquifer depletion. Since 1950, demand
for water and its consequent withdrawal have nearly tripled. It has gone up from 1365 cubic
kilometers a year to 3760 in 1995.At the same time the availability of water has declined from
about 16800 cubic meters per capita per year in 1950 to 7300 in 1995. According to human
development report, 20 countries with 132 million people suffer from water scarcity with less
than 1000 cubic meters per capita per year, the minimum required for human health. If the
present trend continues 25 more countries would be added to the list of the deprived category by
the year 2050.

Chemical Changes

Global warming and Ozone layer depletion: The two great dangers threatening the balance of
gases in the atmosphere that sustain life on earth are global warming and the thinning of the
ozone layer. Most scientists agree that all the smoke and fumes and exhaust that human activities
generate will eventually alter the earth's climate. The threat comes from carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases produced mainly in the industrial world by the burning of fossil fuels. It is
estimated that the total world wide manufacturing output increased from about $2500 billion in
1975 to about $4000 billion in 1990 and the trend continues unabated. The developed world
generates nearly 10 times as much carbon dioxide from energy use as their counterpart in the
developing countries. While the average American is responsible for between 4 and 5 tons of
carbon per year, the average Indian or Chinese share is 0.4 and 0.6 respectively. CFC's
(chlorofluorocarbons) have been and still are widely used for refrigeration. Despite the 1987
Montreal Protocol which calls for a phase out of CFC's and other ozone depleting chemicals by
the year 2006, the assault on the stratosphere continues unabated.

In order to avert the impending danger, an agreement was made under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) known as the Kyoto Protocol. Named
after the Japanese city where it was concluded in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol is an international
agreement to address global warming and delay climate change. Countries that ratify this
protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or
engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases.

As of December 2006, a total of 169 countries and other governmental entities have ratified the
agreement. Notable exceptions include the United States and Australia, the two biggest polluters
in the World today. The United States, although a signatory to the protocol, has neither ratified
nor withdrawn from the protocol. The signature alone is only symbolic, as the protocol is non-
binding over the United States unless ratified. The United States is, as of 2005, the largest single
emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Other countries, like India and China,
which have ratified the protocol, are not required to reduce carbon emissions under the present
agreement despite their relatively large populations.

Acid rain: In many parts of the World, the architectural treasures like Taj Mahal are eroding,
soils and lakes are becoming abnormally acidic, endangering flora and fauna, aquatic life, crops
and human heath. Scientists attribute much of the damage to acid rain: rain or snow carrying
dissolved acids. Acid rain, which until recently, was a hazard to central Europe, only, is now
spreading to underdeveloped countries also. It appears that it is an imminent threat in India too.
Industrial areas with pH values (water acidity) close to critical levels have been recorded in
Delhi, Nagpur, Pune, Bombay and Calcutta. There is a strong link between acidity of rain and
industrial growth. The Burning fossil fuels results in the production of noxious gases which are
emitted, mainly from coal based power stations and heavy industrial plants. According to an
estimate, total emission of SO2 from fossil fuels, in India, increased from 1.38 million tons in
1966 to 3.20 million tons by 1980.

Bio-Diversity Loss

Humans, as the dominant species, have been responsible for major habitat changes leading to a
loss of genetic and species diversity. Tens of thousands of plant and animal species that shared
the planet with us in 1972 have become extinct It is estimated that by the year 2020, 10 percent
to 20 percent of the earth's 10 million species of plants and animals will be wiped out, thank to
mans endeavor to conquer nature. What is not appreciated is that, once a species becomes
extinct, it is lost forever. Recent experimental studies regarding ecosystem support have amply
highlighted the fact that we have so foolishly ignored: the more species living in an ecosystem
the higher its productivity and the greater its ability to withstand drought and other kinds of
environmental stress. Each species is a masterpiece of evolution, offering a vast source of useful
scientific knowledge because, it is so well adapted to the system in which it thrives.
The protests at the W.T.O. meeting in Seattle amply demonstrates that policy makers all over the
World are obsessed with commercial interests at the cost of social, cultural and environmental
issues. The commercial exploitation of biodiversity to support the profligate life style of the
industrialized world, and the affluent elite in underdeveloped nations, in total defiance of the
natural laws, is a sure recipe for ecological disaster. The message is clear: whether it is crocodile
reserves in Colombia or international whaling or commercial logging, forces of big business,
which defeats all effort to save animals and plants, have to be contained.

Social Pathologies

The deterioration of the physical environment has been accompanied by a corresponding decline
in health and well being of the people. Whereas malnutrition and infectious diseases are the giant
killers in underdeveloped countries, the industrialized countries are beset by social pathologies
which have been appropriately termed as the diseases of modern civilization. According to Karl
Marx, every technological change brings, in its wake, a cultural change as well. There is an all
round increase in stress related disorders of which the principal killers are heart diseases, cancer
and stroke. The social fabric of society seems to be fracturing, leading to the emergence of a sick
society. Psychological depression, schizophrenia, violent crimes, accidents, suicides, drug abuse
is on the rise.

Conclusion

The world has more than enough resources to accelerate progress in human development for all
and to eradicate the worst forms of poverty from the planet. Advancing human development is
not an exorbitant undertaking. For example, it has been estimated that the total additional yearly
investment required to achieve universal access to basic social services would be roughly $40
billion, 0.1% of world income, barely more than a rounding error. That covers the bill for basic
education, health, nutrition, reproductive health, family planning and safe drinking water and
sanitation for all.