What is Sustainable Development?

The notion of sustainable development may be interpreted in a variety of ways, but at its foundation is a development strategy that seeks to balance many, often conflicting, objectives against a knowledge of the environmental, social, and economic constraints we confront as a community. 

 

The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 Global Goals devised by the United Nations to serve as a road map for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. 

 

Global climate change, groundwater depletion, ocean overfishing, deforestation, water and air pollution, and the battle to feed a globe of billions are all severe natural resource and environmental concerns. 

 

India is the world's third-largest energy user and producer of greenhouse gases, ranking 63rd on the Global Sustainability Index.

 

What is Sustainable development?

 

Sustainable development is essentially an action plan that assists us in achieving sustainability in any activity that uses a resource. Furthermore, it needs both immediate and intergenerational replication. We will assist you comprehend the concept and its benefits by writing an essay about sustainable development.

 

Through sustainable development, we build organizing principles that assist to preserve the limited resources required to meet the requirements of future generations. As a consequence, they will be able to have a happy life on Earth.

 

This notion was promoted by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. According to their research, the concept is defined as "progress that fulfills the requirements of the present without jeopardizing future generations' ability to satisfy their own needs."

 

In other words, they wanted to protect future generations from depleting the natural world's resources. As we all know, advancement is generally driven by a single demand. As a result, the long-term consequences are overlooked.

 

As a result, this strategy causes a great deal of harm. As a result, the longer we pursue unsustainable development, the more severe the repercussions will be. One of the most prevalent is climate change, which is a hotly disputed topic all across the world.

 

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Is Sustainable Development all about the Environment?

 

One of the guiding concepts of sustainable development is to live within our ecological boundaries. Climate change is one of the consequences of not doing so.

 

However, the aim of sustainable development extends well beyond the environment. It is also about ensuring that society is robust, healthy, and just. This includes satisfying the different needs of all individuals in current and future communities, encouraging personal well-being, social cohesion and inclusion, and fostering equitable opportunity. 

 

Already, climate change is wreaking damage on our surroundings. As a result, the necessity of the hour is for sustainable development. We must ask ourselves if we are willing to leave a burnt world with a deteriorating environment for future generations.

 

We must pursue sustainable growth in order to rectify the damage we have caused. This will aid in the promotion of greater social, environmental, and economic thinking. Most significantly, it is not difficult to achieve.

 

That world must be viewed as a system that connects space and time. Essentially, it explains how water contamination in South Africa would eventually affect water quality in India. Similarly, it applies to other things as well.

 

Also Read | Technology in Climate Change

 

National Sustainable Development Strategies

 

A national sustainable development strategy (NSDS) is defined as "a coordinated, participative, and iterative process of ideas and actions aimed at achieving economic, environmental, and social objectives in a balanced and integrated way." The following five concepts have been derived to distinguish an NSDS: 

 

• Country Ownership and Commitment;  

 

• Integrated economic, social, and environmental policy across sectors, territories, and generations;  

 

• Broad participation and effective partnerships;  

 

• Development of required capacity and enabling environment; and  focus on outcomes and means of implementation.

 

Because institutions, capacities, and sustainable development objectives differ between nations, there are no viable or acceptable 'blueprints' for an efficient NSDS. As a result, each country must decide for itself how to create and implement plans for achieving its long-term development goals.

 

Also Read | Economic Activities

 

Types of National Sustainable Development Strategies

 

Because countries' institutional, developmental, and biophysical situations differ, the coverage and structure of NSDS varied. However, there are four major categories of NSDS distinctive. 

 

1. Firstly, several nations launched entirely new strategic procedures in order to create their NSDS. This sort of "Generic NSDS" is most common in nations that previously had no broad socioeconomic plans in place or had discovered their conventional strategy procedures as unprepared for the adoption of sustainable practices. 

 

2. Second, many low-income nations have included concerns for sustainable development into their poverty-reduction programmes (PRS). 

 

Whereas early PRS procedures were usually focused on economic growth and social infrastructure investment, several nations discovered that PRS processes were well adapted to environmental concerns and the integration of policy across regions, while avoiding the dangers of duplicative methods. The JPOI expressly states that NSDSs can be expressed as PRS.

 

3. Third, nations with existing mechanisms for comprehensive development strategies frequently seek to expand on these strategies in order to integrate concepts of sustainable development. 

 

Countries, in fact, emphasised in Agenda 21 that an NSDS should be based on current policies and objectives. Furthermore, duplication of strategy procedures with identical goals is often a source of confusion and waste of resources. 

 

To increase consideration of long-term concerns, the NSDS in countries such as Zambia includes two independent documents: a long-term vision document (usually covering a 20 or 30 year horizon) and a four or five year development plan that implements the vision.

 

4. Lastly, some nations pick policies that focus on the environmental and natural resource components of sustainable development while also including links to the economic and social dimensions of sustainable development.

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Sustainable Development Cycle

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Sustainable Development and its Pillars

 

There are three major pillars in sustainable development and we need to discuss it thoroughly to understand it:

 

1. Economic Sustainability

 

The objective of reducing severe poverty and ensuring equal pay for everybody. The goal of economic sustainability is to keep capital intact. Whereas social sustainability seeks to create social equity, economic sustainability seeks to raise living standards. 

 

It refers to the effective use of assets to preserve corporate profitability over time in the business setting. Critics of this concept recognise that a significant gap in present accounting standards is the failure to reflect the cost of environmental harm in market pricing. 

 

A more contemporary approach to economics recognises the model's limited inclusion of ecological and social components. New economics includes natural and social capital and questions the capitalist credo that continuous expansion is desirable and greater is better if it risks harming the ecological and human systems.

 

 

2. Environmental Sustainability

 

The principle of preserving the planet's natural equilibrium while minimizing the influence of human activities on the environment. Environmental sustainability seeks to increase human well-being by safeguarding natural capital (e.g. land, air, water, minerals etc.). 

 

Environmentally sustainable initiatives and programmes guarantee that the requirements of the people are satisfied without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. 

 

Environmental sustainability, as defined by Dunphy, Benveniste, Griffiths, and Sutton (2000), focuses on how businesses may produce positive economic outcomes while causing no harm to the environment in the short or long term. 

 

According to Dunphy et al. (2000), an ecologically sustainable firm tries to incorporate all four sustainability pillars, and each must be addressed equally in order to achieve this goal.

 

 

3. Social Sustainability

 

The aim of ensuring equal access to fundamental resources and services for all. As a result, the concept of sustainable development is development that is economically efficient, environmentally sustainable, and socially equitable. 

 

The objective of social sustainability is to protect social capital by investing in and producing services that form the foundation of our society. 

 

The notion encompasses a broader vision of the world in terms of communities, cultures, and globalization. It involves protecting future generations and acknowledging that what we do has an influence on people and the globe. 

 

Social sustainability focuses on sustaining and increasing social quality through principles such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and honesty, as well as the value of interpersonal interactions. Laws, knowledge, and shared notions of equality and rights can all help to foster and support it.

 

The three pillars of sustainability concept asserts that in order to achieve comprehensive sustainability, problems must be handled in respect to all three pillars of sustainability and then maintained. 

 

Although they may overlap in certain circumstances, it is critical to determine the precise type of green business to focus on, as each of the three has distinct qualities. Businesses must make a strategic choice in order to successfully integrate the selected method into their policies and processes.

 

Also Read | What is Green Economy?

 

 

How does Sustainable Development affect you?

 

Everyone is affected by how we approach development and the end results of our collective actions have very significant effects for people’s lives. Poor community design can be taken as an example because they lower the quality of life for those who are living half of their life in those areas. 

 

Depending on importation instead of locally grown food puts people at danger of scarcity. Sustainable Development offers a method for making better judgments about challenges that can influence everyone. We ourselves can only guarantee that people should have easy access to healthcare and leisure facilities. 

 

And this can be done by making sure that health plans into the development of new communities are included. By promoting better sustainable food systems we can definitely be sure that in the long run there will be enough food for everyone.

 

In the end of the day, it’s all about surviving and a proactive sustainable development method can make life a little better than it is now. There are 17 sustainable development goals set by the UN. You can read them below:-

 

1. Poverty should end as soon as possible

 

2. There shouldn’t be hunger

 

3. Good health and well being of everyone, not just the humans.

 

4. Education should be of optimum level

 

5. Gender equality is a must

 

6. Clean water and sanitation is a must too

 

7. Affordable and clean energy makes every life a little better

 

8. Decent work and economic growth is important

 

9. The three I’s: Innovation, Industry, and Infrastructure

 

10.  Reduced Inequalities

 

11.  Sustainable cities around us

 

12.  Responsible consumption and production of food

 

13.  Climate Action should be immediate

 

14.  Life below water should be best

 

15.  Life above the land should be best

 

16.  Justice should be fast and effective

 

17.  Build Partnerships for every objectives

 

Also Read | An Overview on Global Warming

 

Why do we need to act now?
 

India as a country is enterprising and on the cusp of digital transformation, which will heavily impact its future. With India being the world's youngest country, its youth must be involved early and action in order to establish and sustain a long-term momentum that can enable the country to see its ambitions through and drive Sustainable Development Goals action. 

 

Cities are home to more than 70% of the world's population. Cities now utilize 80% of global material and energy supply and emit 75% of total CO2 emissions. 

 

As citizens, we must encourage market enterprises to develop creative and sustainable goods in order to obtain cost-effective energy-saving solutions. Reduce deforestation and encourage afforestation, and our ecosystem must become carbon neutral. We must limit the use of renewable resources and replace them with non-renewable resources.

 

This indicates that the pace of extraction should not be greater than the rate of regeneration. We cannot have decent jobs, economic progress, or food security until we first take care of the environment, which includes the land, forests, and seas. If we can all work together to accomplish these 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the world will be a better place for everyone.

 

Also Read | AI for Environmental Sustainability

 

Why do we need Sustainable Development?

 

“Population needs to be stabilised for sustainable development.” - Atal Bihari Vajpayee

 

The human population is increasing and is anticipated to reach 10 billion by 2100. A growth of this magnitude implies an increase in demands and, as a result, higher individual consumption. 

 

Human activities have an indisputable impact on the climate in order to satisfy these demands. Climate change will set back current development achievements and limit further progress if we do not address it.