Sustainable Development

Depending where one looks you will find various definitions aimed at describing sustainability in a manner most favourable to the users point of view. Earlier definitions were driven by egocentrics who viewed economic growth as incompatible with environmental protection and predicated solutions based on minimal resource exploitation and organic agriculture. Image In contrast, the cornucopian techno-centrists argued for free market forces as these would lead to a general improvement in the quality of life, lower birth rates and a concomitant decrease in population growth and therefore in resource depletion. These two opposing views have given way to a new view that the worlds resources are in principle sufficient to meet long-term human needs. However, this optimistic view is predicated on the resolution of a number of key areas. Poverty is recognised as an important cause of environmental degradation and therefore recognises that economic development has a crucial role to play in contributing to poverty alleviation. The critical issues on which the debate has come to focus are, therefore, the uneven spatial distribution of population relative to natural carrying capacities, international interdependencies in resource utilisation and the extent as well as degree of inefficient or irrational use of environmental resources. The global intervention required to redress this imbalance has to do with managing the utilisation of natural resources correctly. This management requirement has come to be termed sustainable development. ImageIts objectives are quite concrete: development only takes place if the resource harvest rates are at levels no higher than managed or natural regeneration rates permit, and the use of the environment as a waste sink occurs only on the basis that waste disposal rates should not exceed the managed or natural assimilation capacity of the environment. Sustainable development was defined by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development in the 1987 Brundtland Report as those paths of social, economic and political progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In 1993 a year after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro the World Congress of Architects defined sustainability for the architectural fraternity as follows: Sustainability means meeting our needs today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. A more Recent And Broader Definition is the Following of 1996:

ImageThe concept of sustainability relates to the maintenance and enhancement of environmental, social and economic resources, in order to meet the needs of current and future generations. The three components of sustainability are:

* Environmental sustainability which requires that natural capital remains intact. This means that the source and sink functions of the environment should not be degraded. Therefore, the extraction of renewable resources should not exceed the rate at which they are renewed, and the absorptive capacity to the environment to assimilate wastes should not be exceeded. Furthermore, the extraction of nonrenewable resources should be minimised and should not exceed agreed minimum strategic levels. * Social sustainability which requires that the cohesion of society and its ability to work towards common goals be maintained. Individual needs, such as those for health and well-being, nutrition, shelter, education and cultural expression should be met. * Economic sustainability which occurs when development, which moves towards social and environmental sustainability, is financially feasible. With sustainable development as the goal of economic, social and environmental policy, what is needed is the redirection of economic activity in order to detach it from environmental and social degradation. Once this has been achieved there will no longer be a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.