What is global sustainable development and why is it important?

Target Audience:11 grade students.

Global Sustainable Development is a process whereby development is met of the present needs without compromising the ability of development of future generations. These needs consist of the limitations of technology, and social organizations regarding the environment’s potential to meet the needs globally. It is a way to ensure the growth of a city while wisely preserving land and resources. The current state of the earth’s natural resources is in a risky state; these resources include water, land surface biodiversity, and even the atmosphere. Due to the need for natural resources, instead of maintaining such resources for sustainable development in the near future, the natural resources are slowly being washed out by the current generations and thus making it an unsustainable development.

 

The people of the current generations are slowly exploiting the little number of natural resources left in the world. The exploitation of water will be used up by the year 2025. The use of land to build new and modern agriculture, it has received an increase from 1.8 tons to 2.5 tons of cropland. Such increases in exploitation could cause the lands of this world to be degraded as well as less productive. The current generations are also causing air pollution that might cause damage to the atmosphere; more than 2 million people are already suffering at the current stage of air pollution per year.

 

Although there are many causes as to why the current generation’s development is unsustainable, there is always room for improvement. Such improvement for impactful climate changes for environmental sustainability includes recycling products to save natural resources. For instance, when using stationary, plastic, metal scrap, or even paper, we could actually purchase recycled materials or even leave them to get recycled after use. Such a small act could make a difference in the current environment as well as for future generations. Mainly by using recycled paper, more trees would be saved and therefore more trees and plants to refresh the current polluted air. Though using recycled materials could be useful to the environment, there are much more things that we could do the help in environmental sustainability. Even computers or even electronics could be sent for recycling instead of leaving them for dumping in the landfill.

 

We could also start by using fewer fossil fuels as such resources are non-renewable compared to the likes of paper or plastic. Fossil fuels are usually converted into coal, oil, or natural gas when being burned. Thus, causing a huge release of C02 into the atmosphere and causing air pollution. With air pollution rising, it is also damaging the earth’s ozone layer and is getting closer to global warming. This is also one of the reasons why car developer companies are slowly trying to create fuel-efficient cars and even electrical cars to make them both functional as well as more environmentally friendly. Polluting the environment with chemicals that are used daily, could affect our human body system as well. Such product that includes harmful chemical includes personal care products, pest control products, and even plastic products. Some of these products that produce toxins are harmful to our human body as well as the environment. We could also try to lower the current population as there are currently 6.8 billion people alive on earth and if the current population keeps the current increase rate, there would be an estimated amount of 8.1 billion by the year 2025. Therefore, the need for such natural resources will seek increase amount as well. By the time it has reached such a large number of populations, it would be as good as impossible to recover from such environmental unsustainable development. This is a sign that we should start acting soon before it’s too late. We should also keep in mind that such changes include social, cultural, and economic factors.

Do you understand what the term global sustainable development means?

Will the information above impact the way how you treat the environment?

References

1:Clark, William; Harley, Alicia (2020). "Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 45 (1): 331–86. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-012420-043621.  This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

 United Nations General Assembly (1987) Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to document A/42/427 – Development and International Co-operation: Environment.

 United Nations General Assembly (20 March 1987). "Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future; Transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to document A/42/427 – Development and International Co-operation: Environment; Our Common Future, Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development; Paragraph 1". United Nations General Assembly. Retrieved 1 March 2010.

 Purvis, Ben; Mao, Yong; Robinson, Darren (2019). "Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins". Sustainability Science. 14 (3): 681–695. doi:10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5. ISSN 1862-4065. CC BY icon.svg Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

 "Sustainable Development". UNESCO. 3 August 2015. Retrieved 20 January 2022.

 Brown, James H. (1 October 2015). "The Oxymoron of Sustainable Development". BioScience. 65 (10): 1027–1029. doi:10.1093/biosci/biv117.

 Williams, Colin C; Millington, Andrew C (June 2004). "The diverse and contested meanings of sustainable development". The Geographical Journal. 170 (2): 99–104. doi:10.1111/j.0016-7398.2004.00111.x. S2CID 143181802.

 Berg, Christian (2020). Sustainable action : overcoming the barriers. Abingdon, Oxon. ISBN 978-0-429-57873-1. OCLC 1124780147.

 Purvis, Ben; Mao, Yong; Robinson, Darren (2019). "Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins". Sustainability Science. 14 (3): 681–695. doi:10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5. ISSN 1862-4065. CC BY icon.svg Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

 Ramsey, Jeffry L. (2015). "On Not Defining Sustainability". Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 28 (6): 1075–1087. doi:10.1007/s10806-015-9578-3. ISSN 1187-7863. S2CID 146790960.