“It is critical for us to cultivate consciousness and compassion toward our environment, create awareness, galvanize people, and build sustainable innovations for sustainable development.” Dia Mirza
Sustainable Development – the buzzword of the 21st century. We have all heard this term on several occasions from world leaders, local government officials, environmentalists or from the average Joe on the street but what does sustainable development actually mean and where did it all stem from?
Let’s take a deep dive into history.
Sustainable development has its roots in ideas about sustainable forest management which were developed in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. In response to a growing awareness of the depletion of timber resources in England, in his 1662 essay Sylva, John Evelyn argued that sowing and planting trees had to be regarded as a national duty of every landowner, in order to stop the destructive over-exploitation of natural resources. Building upon the ideas of Evelyn and French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in 1713, Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a senior mining administrator published Sylvicultura economics, a 400-page work on forestry. This further developed the concept of managing forests for sustained yield.
Carlowitz’s work influenced others, including Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Ludwig Hartig, eventually leading to the development of a science of forestry. This, in turn, influenced people like Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the US Forest Service, whose approach to forest management was driven by the idea of wise use of resources, and Aldo Leopold whose land ethic was influential in the development of the environmental movement in the 1960s.
Following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, the developing environmental movement drew attention to the relationship between economic growth and development and environmental degradation. Kenneth E. Boulding in his influential 1966 essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth identified the need for the economic system to fit itself into the ecological system with its limited pools of resources. Another milestone was the 1968 article by Garrett Hardin that popularized the term “tragedy of the commons“.
In 1968, the think tank known as the Club of Rome was created bringing with it the recognition that over-exploitation of natural resources accompanied economic and demographic growth. Due to this, they advocated for zero growth. This group consisted of scientists, economists, national and international civil servants, and industrialists from 53 countries. It considered the complex problems that faced all societies, whether industrialized or developing. In 1971, this private international association sounded an urgent alarm by publishing ‘The Limits to Growth’ which, broadly speaking, presented the idea that economic development was incompatible with the long-term protection of the planet.
Then, in 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm gave birth to the first true notion of sustainable development, which was called ‘eco development’ back then. This founding conference was held in an atmosphere of conflict between ecology and the economy. Thanks to the support of personalities such as Maurice Strong, Professor René Dubos, Barbara Ward and Ignacy Sachs, social equity and ecological caution were incorporated into the economic development models which ultimately led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
As the years passed, the urgent need to implement worldwide solidarity to deal with the risks of chaos disturbing nature’s balances kept increasing. In the 1980s, when the general public became aware of environmental atrocities such as acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, and the greenhouse effect this dawning awareness helped to drive progress a little further. Soon enough, the media started covering these topics, making them more accessible to the general public.
In 1980, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its world conservation strategy. This document is one of the original sources of the expression ‘sustainable development’. The concept was born of the following observations: the North/South divide (creating the potential for future conflicts), the search for human development and the ecological risks which give rise to the urgent need to safeguard the environment.
The term ‘sustainable development’ remained virtually unnoticed until its revival in the Gro Harlem Brundtland report ‘Our common future’, published in 1987. Named after the Norwegian Prime Minister and the Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) at the time, the report aimed to clarify the concept of sustainable development as ‘development that fulfils the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to fulfil theirs’. Since then, the concept of sustainable development has been accepted all over the world.
Sustainable development ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social, political, and economic challenges faced by humanity. Thus the three pillars of the concept are Economic, Social, and Environmental. If any one pillar is weak, then the system as a whole is unsustainable. The most popular way to visualize the three pillars is shown below.
Social Sustainability
Social Sustainability is the ability of a social system, such as a country, family, or organization, to function at a defined level of social well-being and harmony indefinitely. Problems like war, endemic poverty, widespread injustice, and low education rate are symptoms of a system that is socially unsustainable.
Environmental Sustainability
Environmental Sustainability is the ability of the environment to support a defined level of environmental quality and natural resource extraction rates indefinitely.
Economic Sustainability
Economic Sustainability is the ability of an economy to support a defined level of economic production indefinitely. Since the Great Recession of 2008, this is the world’s biggest apparent problem that endangers progress due to environmental sustainability problems.
Many of the challenges facing humankind, such as climate change, water scarcity, inequality and hunger, can only be resolved at a global level and by promoting sustainable development: a commitment to social progress, environmental balance and economic growth. However, the concept of sustainable development unfortunately has been and still is, subject to criticism. It has been argued that there is no such thing as the sustainable use of a non-renewable resource since any positive rate of exploitation will eventually lead to the exhaustion of the earth’s finite stock. It has also been argued that the meaning of the concept has opportunistically been stretched from ‘conservation management’ to ‘economic development and that the Brundtland Report promoted nothing but a ‘business as usual’ strategy for world development, with an ambiguous and insubstantial concept attached as a public relations slogan.
‘Business as usual’ scenarios present clear risks because the evidence is mounting that: (a) The impact of climate change threatens to escalate in the absence of adequate safeguards and there is a need to promote the integrated and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems and take mitigation and adaptation action in keeping with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities;
(b) Hunger and malnourishment, while decreasing in many developing countries, remain persistent in other countries, and food and nutrition security continues to be an elusive goal for too many;
(c) Income inequality within and among many countries has reached an extremely high level and continues to rise, invoking the spectre of heightened tension and social conflict;
(d) Rapid urbanization, especially in developing countries, calls for major changes to the way in which urban development is designed and managed, as well as substantial increases of public and private investments in urban infrastructure and services;
(e) Energy needs are likely to remain unmet for hundreds of millions of households unless significant progress in ensuring access to modern energy services is achieved;
(f) The recurrence of financial crises needs to be prevented and the financial system has to be redirected towards promoting access to long-term financing for investments required to achieve sustainable development.
Over the years, the global challenges to sustainable development have been driven by a broad set of “megatrends”, such as changing demographic profiles, changing economic and social dynamics, advancements in technology, trends towards environmental deterioration, unsustainable consumption and production patterns and climate change.
There is no doubt that the world is faced with challenges in all three dimensions of sustainable development. However, achieving sustainable development will require global actions to deliver on the legitimate aspiration towards further economic and social progress, requiring growth and employment, and at the same time strengthening environmental protection.
We will also need to be inclusive and take special care of the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable. Strategies need to be ambitious, action-oriented and collaborative, and to adapt to different levels of development. They will need to systematically change consumption and production patterns, and might entail, inter alia, significant price corrections; encourage the preservation of natural endowments; reduce inequality, and strengthen economic governance.
As a part of a new sustainable development roadmap, the United Nations approved the 2030 Agenda, which contains the Sustainable Development Goals, a call to action to protect the planet and guarantee the global well-being of people. These common goals require the active involvement of individuals, businesses, administrations and countries around the world.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call upon all countries to achieve 17 broad development goals by 2030.
According to the United Nations, all 17 Goals interconnect, meaning the success of one affects that of the others. . For example, dealing with the threat of climate change impacts how we manage our fragile natural resources, our achievement of gender equality and also our progress toward the eradication of poverty. Similarly, fostering peace and inclusive societies will reduce inequalities and help economies prosper. In short, this is the greatest chance we have to improve life for future generations.
While the SDGs have become a central aspect of development planning, my questions for you all are:
How likely are we to achieve these targets if we continue with our current policy prioritization?
Are we on the right path?
Are we quite close to achieving these SDGs and only need to make a few critical policy choices to get us to the right path? Or, are we badly off track to achieve the SDGs with few options to bridge the gap between current levels and indicator goals?
There is no doubt that the SDGs are extremely valuable. While six years (since inception) is too short a time to see real progress toward economic transformation, which must happen if the goals are to be achieved in full, the SDGs have had a considerable positive impact — including in research and higher education. Institutions globally are supporting the SDGs, and staff and students are taking on responsibilities, from eliminating single-use plastic, to switching to renewable energy. The cross-cutting nature of the SDGs has also fuelled research, providing scientists with opportunities in varying fields, from the environment, engineering and health policy, to development economics and beyond.
Nevertheless, these bright spots cannot mask what is still a bleak trend. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, blames a lack of funding from governments of developed countries as the cause for the slow progress of the SDGs. The goals come with a price tag of between US$5 trillion and $7 trillion per year, and the shortfall has been put at $2.5 trillion.
But there is a larger obstacle. While the monitoring of the progress of the goals is extensive, working towards them a voluntary effort, while the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (a UN-affiliate) produces an annual report that shows how well countries are performing on the SDGs, it is not compulsory for countries to report on how they are doing.
To be achieved, the SDGs need to become mandatory, not necessarily in the legal sense, but in the sense that nations have to know that there is no other alternative. One analogy is the way in which countries report their economic data. There is no international law that says every country must report data, such as on consumer spending, that go into calculating its gross domestic product (GDP), but for more than 50 years, these data have been collected at a granular level and are now reported every quarter by national statistics offices in most countries. Every agency of government understands that a nation’s economy must always be seen to be growing, and so the data underlying the GDP must also always be increasing. This explains the massive national effort to make sure that everyone works toward what could be called the ‘GDP goals’. The SDGs are unlikely to be achieved unless they, too, sit at the apex of a similar national effort.
For the goals to be met, everyone needs to do their part: governments, the private sector, civil society and the general public. The SDGs affect all 7 billion people on Earth and for them to be met, it is crucial that everyone is aware of and has knowledge of them. Only then can we take action and contribute to making the world a better place. Time is short and there is a lot to do when a decade is all we have!
Written By- Khadija Stewart of Ecovybz Environmental Creatives
