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Essay on Sustainable Development!
The Brundtland Commission, in its report, defined sustainable development as the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
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It contains within it two key concepts – the concept of “need”, in particular, is the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment ability to meet present and future needs.
Thus the goals of economic and social development must be defined in terms of sustainability in all countries – developed/developing, market-oriented or centrally planned. Interpretation will vary, but must share certain general features and must flow from a consensus on the basic concept of sustainable development and on a broad strategic framework for achieving it. Development involves a progressive transformation of economy and society.
A development path that is sustainable in a physical sense could theoretically be pursued even in a rigid social and political setting. But physical sustainability cannot be secured unless development policies pay attention to such consideration as changes in access to resources and in the distribution of costs and benefits.
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For centuries, vital natural resources like land, water and forests had been controlled and used collectively by village communities thus ensuring a sustainable use of these renewable resources. The first radical change in resource control and the emergence of major conflicts over natural resources induced by non-local factors was associated with colonial domination of this part of the world. Colonial domination systematically transformed the common vital resources into commodities for generating profits and growth of revenues.
The first industrial revolution was to a large extent supported by this transformation of commons into commodities, which permitted European industries’ access to the resources of South Africa. The transformation of commons into commodities has two implications — First it deprives the politically weaker groups of their right to survival, which they had through access to commons; second, it robs from nature its right to self-renewal and sustainability by eliminating the social constraints on resource use that are the basis of common property management.
With the collapse of the international colonial structure and the establishment of sovereign countries in the region, this international conflict over natural resources was expected to be reduced and replaced by resource policies guided by comprehensive national interests. However, resource use policies continued along the colonial pattern and, in the recent past, a second drastic change in resource use has been initiated to meet the international requirements and the demands of the elites in the developing world, leading to yet another acute conflict among the diverse interest.
The most seriously threatened interest in this conflict appears to be that of the politically weak and socially disorganised group whose resource requirements are minimal and whose survival is primarily dependent directly on the products of nature outside the market system. Recent changes in resource utilisation have almost wholly by-passed the survival needs of these groups. These changes are primarily guided by the requirements of the countries of the North and of the elites of the South.