SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

INTRODUCTION

Development is a complex process with many of its components intricately connected. For example, Economic development can either promote or distort the pace and direction of social development. But both the economic and the social developments are vital for a total development.

In both the developed and the developing Countries, efforts to achieve quick results in economic development have damaged the natural resources. Intensive cultivation, deforestation, Wet-land exploration, coastal zones and over fishing all due to population growth, had affected the ability of renewable resources to renew themselves. The future generation needs these resources for their living. Talking more now from the nature leaves less for the future. This leads disastrous situation. The present generations cannot take away completely all the natural resources without leaving for the future generations.
The developmental activities, therefore, should be altered, while nature provides what is needed for the present generation, it should retain the productive capacity for the future.

This type of development is termed as ‘SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ‘.   It is a development, which involves both the economics and the social criteria without destroying 

the natural system, that is environmental protection forms a component of development.

It is quite clear that long-term economic development is inter-linked with environmental protection. It is the common observation also that continued economic development requires adequate safe water supplies, efficient energy use, continued productivity of forests and farm lands and preservation of natural areas.  Practising sustainable development paradigm assures

a lovable future. This concept of development poses a challenge because people must learn to live on the ' world ecological interest ' and not on the ' ecological capital ‘. To accomplish sustainable development, a number of areas, as detailed below, have to be organized.

1. Improving energy efficiencies
2. Saving Forest 

3. Safeguarding biodiversity

4. Adopting water resource management 

5. Managing coastal zones and ocean fisheries 

6. Arresting pollution

7. Planning cities better

8. Accomplishing the second green revolution

9. Stabilizing world population & Stopping environmentally destructive subsidies.

DEFINITION AND CONCEPT 

Commission On Environment and development brought the term sustainable development into common use in its seminal report called '' Our Common Future ''.

Despite a wide acceptance of the concept of sustainable development, no single definition

  is yet available which everybody accepts. Most of the definition are built upon view expressed by the ' Brandtian Commission ‘, which defines sustainable development is a type of development that meets the needs of present generation without compromising the ability of  

  future generation to meet their own needs.

   There are three basic components of sustainable development & those are

   I)  economic system,

   ii) social system, and

  iii) environmental system.

Usually there are two principles of sustainable development, namely, 1) life style improvement, and 2) environment protection.

Life Style Improvement

Both the economic and social systems are responsible for the improvement of life style. The economic component of sustainability requires that society pursue the growth path that generates optimal flow income while maintaining the basic stock of man – made capital, human capital and natural capital. There are three are three basic goals of an economic system, namely, I) increasing production of goods, ii) satisfying basic need and iii) improving equity.

The economic development of a particular area should not be considered as a total development of the area. Economic development is an only a part of the total development and it should not be the ultimate aim. The main aim or objective should be such that the improvement in the life style of human beings gives the dignity and fulfillment to the life. To get this development, along with economic progress, the social development is also required.

The social dimension of sustainable development is built on the twin principles of ‘’ justice and equity ‘’.

The justice principle is indicating that all citizens should have access to minimum standard of security, human right and social benefits, such as, food, health, education, shelter and opportunity of self – development.

Environment Protection

The development should be always based on the conservation of the ecological and the environment systems.  All kind of living organisms including human beings depend directly or indirectly upon the environment for their existence. So it is quite necessary to conserve the quality of environment. No development becomes sustainable without the proper conservation of both natural resource and bio-diversity.

RULES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

 The basic implication of the concept of sustainable development that one may comprehend from definition involving inter generation a stock of ‘quality of life ‘assets no less than those we have inherited. This can be interpreted to mean the followings.

1. The next generation should inherit a stock of wealth, comprising man-made assets and environmental assets.
2. The next generation should have a stock of environmental assets no less than that inherited by the previous generation.

3. The components of the inherited stock should be man-made assets, natural assets and human assets.

The first interpretation stresses all capital assets, man-made and natural. The second emphasizes on natural capital only and third includes human capital besides natural and man-made capital. Based on the classification of capital sustainability of development process me be verified. The dilemma or conflict here is weather sustainability rule should be defined in terms of natural capital alone or in terms of aggregate capital stock, where aggregate capital stock includes the followings.

I) Man made capital

ii)  Human capital

iii) natural capital

                     An essential condition for sustainable development is that a nation’s stock of capital should not declaim through time. There are two variants to this rule. For a week sustainability, the rules are non-declining through time.

                                             environmental economist Kerry Turner has argued that literally, there can be no such thing as overall 'sustainable development' in an industrialized world economy that remains heavily dependent on the extraction of Earth's finite stock of exhaustible mineral resources:

“

It makes no sense to talk about the sustainable use of a non-renewable resource (even with substantial recycling effort and use rates). Any positive rate of exploitation will eventually lead to exhaustion of the finite stock

”