Green

The meaning of sustainable development

The sustainable development is defined as economic development where resource use is aimed at meeting human need while preserving the environment for now and for generations to come, according to Wikipedia. The concept originated with the Brundtland Commission that was appointed by the United Nation in 1983 and completed a report in 1987. The sustainable development contains three parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability.

The environmental sustainability calls for activities to meet human needs while preserving the life support system indefinitely. An example will be harvesting wood while preserving biomass and biodiversity. The economic sustainability identifies the economy and the environment to be single interlinked system. The sociopolitical sustainability includes human capital, knowledge capital and natural capital.

Whatever the way you define sustainable development, it is our common future that we are dealing with. It contains the concept of needs and idea of limitations. The governments throughout the world are taking steps to implement the concept of sustainable development. The ever increasing number of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) especially from those wealthy nations are stepping into fill any gaps created by government programs. In 1970, worlds rich governments agreed to give 0.7 percent of their gross national income as official international aid.