The measurement of the development sustainability in agriculture: experiencing the web of statistical indicators (original) (raw)

Sustainable development: The way for future, where are we?

Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 2009

Sustainable development is a common agenda for global concern, which everybody agrees upon, but bringing this global concern into public policies is a difficult task. The most accepted definition of sustainable development according to the Brundtland's report is, "To meet the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". It advocated the idea of "sustainable growth". (1) According to The World Conservation Strategy report (1980), by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), for development to be sustainable it must take into account the social and economic factors as well as the ecological ones.

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainability had been a global talk for the last decade, deriving from it the sustainable development as an escapism from the current deterioration affecting our ecosystem. Sustainable development is focused development to meet the present needs without compromising the chances of upcoming generations to meet their needs from this point many organizations started to monitor globally the threatened future of the nations to develop a sustainable ecosystem. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), the Brundtland Commission main objective was to unite countries to adopt sustainable development. Gro Harlem Brundtland, The Chairperson, appointed the Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, in 1983. At that time, the UN understood that there was a massive deterioration in the environment and natural resources. Taking a step forward, the UN established the Brundtland Commission. (LeGates and Stout, 2007) Under the slogan of Our Common Future, the commission explained that the city is a man-made construct and that the character and the urban quality are defined by the relationship between the city and the surrounding. Going through the urbanism history, it's quite significant that each city has its own character and each city shows the development of the urban life and its effect on the environment. Recently, sustainability and ecological urbanism had become dominant forces in urban planning. (LeGates and Stout, 2007) The main goal for seeking the concept of sustainable development is to meet the needs of the present without compromising the chances of the future generations for a better future. According to the previous many steps acted as a response for this goal sparkling the vision of sustainability; Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was released in 1992,The Kyoto Protocol on global climatic changes in 1997-99 and The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.On contrast to all the previous response, The Brundtland report had faced many oppositions seeing that it attacks capitalism for governments regulations of economy as mentioned by the conservatives at the very beginning. Comparing the opening of this century to its closure, we will find out that a profound change took place and that the speed of this change is terrifying leading to cumulative pollution and shortage in basic resources and elements as water and soil. All the nations around the world are merely affected; developing countries faces desertification, pollution and poverty, industrial nation's faces toxicity, all the

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ITS DIMENSIONS

In 1983, the United Nations set up the World Commission on Environment and Development called 'the Brundtland Commission' to examine the problems related to this area. The Commission in its report entitled "Our Common Future" published in 1987, used and defined this concept of sustainable development for the first time by Ms. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the then Prime Minister of Norway and the chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) as " Meeting the needs of present generation without compromising with the needs of future generations. " This report insists on the need to protect the diversity of genes, species, and all terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in nature. This is possible in particular via measures to protect the quality of the environment, and by the restoration, development, and maintenance of habitats that are essential to species. This implies the sustainable management of the use of the animal and plant populations being exploited. In other words, it is the rational management of human, natural, and economic resources that aims to satisfy the essential needs of humanity in the very long term. Sustainable development implies the fulfillment of several conditions: preserving the overall balance, respect for the environment, and preventing the exhaustion of natural resources. Reduced production of waste and the rationalization of production and energy consumption must also be implemented. Sustainable development is presented as a more or less clean break from other modes of development, which have led and are still leading to worrying social and ecological damage on both a worldwide and a local scale. In order to be sustainable, development must combine three main elements: fairness, protection of the environment, and economic efficiency. A sustainable development project must be based on a better-developed mode of consultation between the community and the members it comprises. The success of such a policy also depends on consumers accepting certain constraints and citizens observing certain requirements with regard to transparency and participation. History: Faced with the over-exploitation of natural resources that accompanied economic and demographic growth, the think tank known as the Club of Rome, created in 1968, advocated zero growth. This group unites scientists, economists, national and international civil servants, and industrialists from 53 countries. It

A Progress Report on Sustainable Development Research

Forum for Development Studies, 2014

The year 2012 was the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Common Future, the 1987 UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) report which first defined and helped popularize the term 'sustainable development'. Artur Pawłowski's book, which amounts to a progress report on research and thinking on sustainable development during the past quarter of a century, provides an opportunity to take a critical retrospective look on the advances that have been made-or the lack thereof. The concept of 'sustainable development' was originally formulated as a compromise between two radically opposed (and according to some, ultimately irreconcilable) agendas. As reflected in the name of the commission that produced Our Common Future, its creation in 1983 was based on the hope that the advocates of environmental protection and those of economic development could somehow be made to see eye to eye and move forward in pursuit of common goals. Though the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment ('the Stockholm Conference') is now usually remembered as the event that set in motion global environmental policy debates culminating in more recent milestone developments like the Rio Summit of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, its organizers were surprised by the amount of opposition they encountered from the developing countries, in what has since come to be known as the North-South debate. The paradigm then in vogue among the advocates of environmental protection-a product of 'the radical 60s'was reining in economic development or seeking 'zero growth' (Meadows et al., 1972; Pak, 2011). As epitomized by the famous Founex report of 1971, the South's response to the advocates of environmental protection was that its 'environmental problem' was of an altogether different type from what is usually discussed in the North, since what the developing countries required first and foremost was the improvement of the living environment for their people, which required more economic growth and development, not less (United Nations, 1971). Though the concept of 'sustainable development' was finally formulated in 1987 as a compromise between such two seemingly intractable perspectives, and though it has since been embraced, if only in principle, by both the Northern and Southern mainstream, some have remained skeptical as to whether such a compromise is indeed possible, not just in words but in fact. Is not 'trying to have it both ways' wishful thinking if not pure fantasy?