Development should be perceived as a multi-dimensional process involving the re-organization and re-orientation of entire economic and social systems. Development is a continuous process which has to be extended over a long period to lead a country to a stage of self-sustained growth or to a self-generating economy. It is an evolutionary product of the idea progress.
Progress can be achieved by generating wealth through maximization of productivity of labour and capital.
Friedman defined growth as an expansion of the systems in one or more dimensions without change in the structure and development as also as an innovative process leading to the structural transformation of social systems. For eg;
growth can be compared with change in body whereas development can be compared with the change in body and mind together. Growth refers to quantitative improvement in the scale
of physical dimension while development signifies improvement in both physical and non-physical dimension.
Development is the conservation and management of the natural resources base and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner so as to assure this attachment and continued satisfaction of human needs of present and future generations. Such sustainable development in agriculture, forestry and fisheries section conservation of land , water, plant and animal genetic resources , technically appropriate , economically viable and socially acceptable.
SUSTAINABILITY
The term sustainable development refers to keeping an effort going continuously or the ability to last out and keep from falling. Sustainability implies that human use of enjoyment of the worlds natural and cultural resources should not in, in overall terms , diminish or destroy them. Thus sustainability is the ability of an activity or development to continue in the long term without undermining that part of environment which sustains it.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The term sustainable development comes into common usage after the use by the World commission on Environment and Development (WCED) headed by Dr. Geo Halem Brundland.
Sustainable Development.Sustainble development is now widely accepted as a primary goal economic and social activity.
Sustainble development suggest that the primary focus of environmental protection efforts on the international level should be to improve the human condition. It also implies the integration of environmental and social concerns into all aspects of economic policy. Principle 4 of the Rio Declaration states that inorder to attain the sustainable development , environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.Injecting sustainability concept in developmental policies has broad implication for macro and micro economics.Regarding macro economic policies , the move towards sustainable development requires for example traditional national accounting system be changed to better measure over all qualities of life.
Intergenerational Equity and Responsibility.
Sustainable development as defined in our common feature is closely associated with the goal of intergenerational equity.
Sustainable development recognizes each generation’s responsibility to be fair to the next generation by leaving an inheritance of wealth no less than they themselves have
inherited.At a minimum, meeting this goal may require emphasizing the sustainale use of natural resource for subsequent generation and avoiding any environmental damage.
Common but differentiated Responsibilities.
Sustainable development was common challenge to all countries but because of the different development path, industrialized countries may be asked to carry more of the immediate burden.
The developed countries explicitly acknowledged the for the central responsibility for the present environmental degradation and its remediation. To accomplish sustainable development, a number of areas have to be organized such as,
1) Improving energy efficiency 2) Saving forests,
3) Safeguarding biodiversity,
4) Adopting water resource management,
5) Managing coastal zones and oceans fisheries.
6) Arresting pollution, 7) Planning cities better,
8) Accomplishing a second green revolution, 9) Stabilizing world population, and
10) Stopping environmentally destructive subsidies.
Guidelines for Sustainable Development
The following guidelines are suggested for achieving sustainable development:
1) Reduce the input of matter and energy resource in production process to prevent excessive depletion and degradation of planetary resources.
2) Use energy more efficiently and economically
3) Shift from exhaustible and potentially polluting fossil and nuclear fuels to less harmful renewable wind energy or solar energy.
4) Avoid wasting non-renewable and use them no faster than the rate at which a renewable resource used sustainably can be sustained.
5) Recycle and use the matter discarded as waste.
6) Use locally adaptable, ecofriendly and resource efficient technology, which will use less of resources and produce minimum wastes.
7) Utilise resources as per carrying capacity of the environment.
8) Adoption of 3-R approach, ie., reduce,reuse,recycle approach to minimize scarce resource use.
9) Emphasise pollution prevention and waste reduction instead of pollution clean-up and waste management.
10) Study before the construction of dams, major highways, mining, industry etc whether they can seriously damage ecosystems and bio-diversity before they are begun.
11) Insist and implement the technique of pollution control of toxic and hazardous gases in existing industries.
Global Environmental Concerns
1) Population explosion enhances the ecological demands which resulting degradation on natural resouces.
2) Almost half of the world’s original expanse of tropical forests has been cleared.Within the next 30 to 50 years there may be little of these forests left.
3) Millions of hectares of grass lands have been overgrazed, some especially in Africa and the Middle East,have been converted to desert.
4) Between 25 % and 50 % of the world’s wet lands have been drained, built upon, or seriously polluted.
5) An estimated 36,500 species of plants and animals become extinct each year, mostly because of human activities.
6) About 8.1 million square kilometers of once-productive land (crop land, forests, grasslands) have become desert in the last 50 years. Each year almost 61,000 square kilometers of new desert are formed.
7) Top soil is eroding faster than it forms on about 35 per cent of the world’s crop land. Crop productivity on one-third of the earth’s irrigated crop land has been reduced by salt build up in top soil.
8) Most of the wastes we dump into the air, water, and land eventually end up in the oceans. Oil slicks, floating plastic
debris, polluted estuaries and beaches, and contaminated fish and shellfish are visible signs that we are using the oceans as the world’s largest trash dump.
9) In developing countries 61 per cent of the people living in rural areas and 26 per cent of urban dwellers do not have access to safe drinking water. Each year 5 million people die from preventable water diseases.
10) Water is withdrawn from underground reservoirs (aquifers) faster than it is replenished by precipitation.
11) In the world’s population more than one out of every four live in absolute poverty.
12) It is estimated that 70 per cent of the surface water resources are polluted and that in large stretches of major rivers, water is not even fit for bathing, leave alone drinking.
13) Environmental pollution although typically associated with industrialization, is a great and growing concern in developing countries.
14)Use of fertilizers and pesticides pollute the environment.
15) Over the past few years air pollution has been increasing as a regional or global problem, not a local one.
Acid rain may fall to earth thousands of miles away from the places of emission of sulphur dioxide world and nitrogen oxide.Thus the clouds generated in the developed world may rain in the territory of the developing world.
16) Emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning and other human
activities may raise the average temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere several degrees by 2050.This would disrupt food production and flood low-lying coastal cities and croplands.
17) Chlorofluorocarbons and halons released into the lower atmosphere are drifting into the upper atmosphere and reacting with and gradually depleting ozone faster than it is being formed.
18) Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbons dioxide are now 26 per cent higher than the pre-industrial concentration and continue to rise higher and higher with ‘green house effect’.