Sustainable development is the concept of needs and limitations imposed by technology and society on the environment’s ability to meet the present and future needs.

World Commission of Environment and Development (WCED) has defined sustainable development as “a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction investments, the orientation or technological development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations”.

Thus, the concept of sustainable development provides framework for the integration of environmental policies and development strategies having implications at international, national regional and local levels. Development should not endanger the natural systems that support life on earth. Many people in the industrial world today operate with the frontier mentality, which is a human-centered view based on the three erroneous basic ideas:

  • The world has an unlimited supply of resources for human use;
  • Humans are apart from nature, and
  • Nature is something to overcome.

With this attitude towards nature, technological advanced increase our ability to use earth’s resourced and thus, increase the damage.

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However, the realization is growing fast that we are in a world of limits, and ever-increasing growth of material consumption can only damaged, the life-giving physical components of the environment.

Hence, the concept of sustainable development leads us to new resource consumption strategies, which are:

  • Conservation or reduction of excessive resource use,
  • Recycling and reuse of materials and
  • More use of renewable resources like solar energy rather than non-renewable resources such as oil and coal.

Sustainable development also requires meeting the basic needs of all deprived people in this world and extending to all, the opportunities to satisfy their aspirations for a better life. Otherwise, the world, in which poverty and inequity are endemic, will always be prone to ecological and other crisis.

In Gandhiji’s word, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not any man’s greed.” The view of frontier society and the concept of sustainable society are compared in below-

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Equity and the Common Interest

Ecological interactions do not respect the boundaries of individual ownership and political jurisdictions. For example, the irrigation practices, pesticides, and fertilizers used on farm affect the productivity of the neighboring ones, especially among small farms.

The interdependence of various components of the earth was recognized to some extent by traditional social systems, which enforced practices such as community control over agriculture or traditional rights relating to water, forests and land. But with the surge of technological progress the responsibilities of decision-making are being taken away from traditional communities.

Interdependence is not simply a local phenomenon. Rapid growth in production has extended it to the international plane with both physical and economic manifestation. There are growing global and regional environmental hazards such as over consumption of fossil fuels leading to global warming or excessive use of chlorofluorocarbons leading to depletion of ozone layer.

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Inequalities sharpen when a system approaches ecological limits. For example, when urban air quality deteriorates, the poor, living in vulnerable areas suffer more health damage than the rich, who live in cleaner neighborhood and also have the means to find a remedy or when mineral resources become depleted, late-comers to the industrialization process loss the benefits of cheap raw materials. Globally, wealthy nations are better placed financially and technologically to cope with the effects of resource depletion and environmental degradation.

We can say that our inability to promote common interest in sustainable development is often a product of the neglect of economic and social justice within and amongst the nations.

However, the search for common interests would be less difficult if all developmental and environmental problems are tackled in totality for the betterment of whole mankind. Also our growing knowledge of the global interconnection would create a more thoughtful approach to development.