SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Sustainable development is a widely used concept now-a-days in businesses and politics. Every country looks at achieving sustainability in their development projects and business organizations look at sustainability in their businesses. Sustainable development has been defined in different manners but the main purpose of sustainable development is to combine growing concern about environmental issues with socioeconomic issues. The purpose of this article is to explain the concept “sustainable development”.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
In the past, environment has been viewed as a separate area from humanity and it was protected through some specially secured forests or parks in countries. Environment protection was an individual country’s problem and was not a global problem. Humans require natural resources for their lives and there should be a mechanism to manage these resources, rather than exploiting continuously, because we need to ensure in the long run, the availability of these natural resources for humans continuation (Dryzek, 1997). The concept sustainable development is a result of a growing concern about world’s environmental issues and socio-economic issues to do with poverty and inequality and concern about healthy future generations (Hopwood, Mellor, & O'brien, 2005). The term sustainable development first has been discussed in 1980 in the world's conservation strategy (IUCN, 1991). The fundamental objective of sustainable development is to meet the needs of present human needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. We use present resources and natural environment and in the consumption process we create definite impact for the environment and the society through production process and social influences. This shows our common future without just focusing on individuals.every human being has to depend on the society for their sustenance. How much ever innovations we do, still we are dependent on the society, because those innovations also happen at the cost of natural resources available currently, and at end, it is our environment. It says ecology and economy are becoming ever more interwoven – locally, regionally, nationally and globally (Wackernagel et al., 1999). The need of environment for our present and future existence is unavoidable. Therefore, protecting the environment is a planet wide requirement but not a countrywide or nationwide requirement. Environmental problems are global but not local. Our individual actions impact over environment and it is not our problem only. It has become a worldwide problem, and some become international problems such as releasing pollution that crosses boundaries, moving polluting industries to another location ,and using up more than an equitable share of the earth’s resources etc. According to Hopwood, environmental problems threaten people’s health, livelihoods and lives, can cause wars and threaten future generations (Hopwood et al., 2005).
When we look at not only developing countries like Sri Lanka but also developed countries also, their growth models have failed continuously. This is proved by recent global economic crises in the world. They could not eradicate global poverty or inequality globally or within counters. Still the gap between rich and poor countries are going on. But the world is moving towards the capitalist economy and this is dominated by larger scale multinationals. While they have their profit motives, moving towards sustainable development is a challenge. If there is economy growth, that will be benefitted for societies but economic growth means using more and more resources in the environment and production waste therefore is unstoppable,and this challenge the sustainable development concept. According to Daily 1993, sustainable development has to be qualitative rather than quantitative improvements (Daly & Townsend, 1992). There are two types of views about sustainability: strong sustainability and weak sustainability. Weak sustainability views the damage and the natural resources gap created by manufacturing and using natural resources and environment can be filled by new technology. This believe that the natural resources consumption is an event but not a disaster. Worlds can go ahead without natural resources. On the other hand strong sustainability criticize this view and their point is that human made capital cannot be replaced with multitude of processes vital to human existence such as the ozone layer, photosynthesis or the water cycle (Hopwood et al., 2005). We need to understand non-human species, natural system and biodiversity have their own rights and values in themselves (Naess, 1989).
CONCLUSION
Sustainable development is a concept used by politicians of every country and business organizational policy makers. More than the past, now human attention has moved towards sustainability, because with the rapid development of economies, the negative impacts for the natural environment has increased. Natural environment pollution and economic growth go together up and down. This article talks about different views about sustainable development. While the world scholars argue over the topic, multinational businesses can grow their business at the cost of natural resources but they also stand with governments to protect the environment irrespective of different views of sustainability. Finally this is a very important topic as mainly this is not about the present but this is about our future generations of the world.
When we look at not only developing countries like Sri Lanka but also developed countries also, their growth models have failed continuously. This is proved by recent global economic crises in the world. They could not eradicate global poverty or inequality globally or within counters. Still the gap between rich and poor countries are going on. But the world is moving towards the capitalist economy and this is dominated by larger scale multinationals. While they have their profit motives, moving towards sustainable development is a challenge.