Sustainable Development

1. Sustainable Development Dr. S.M. Talekar Head, P.G. Dept. of Botany Mrs. K.S.K. College Beed

2. Introduction The idea of sustainable development grew from numerous environmental movements in earlier decades. Summits such as the Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, 1992, were major international meetings to bring sustainable development to the mainstream. However, the record on moving towards sustainability so far appears to have been quite poor. The concept of sustainability means many different things to different people, and a large part of humanity around the world still live without access to basic necessities.

3. History of Sustainability • 1962: Rachel Carson publishes “Silent Spring” • 1970: • First Earth Day celebration – April 22nd • Nixon establishes EPA • Fueled by industrialization and overpopulationimpacts • 1972: First UN conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden

4. History of Sustainability • 1983 – UN establishes World Commissionon Environment and Development • Purpose: examine world’s critical environment and development problems and formulate solutions • 1987: Brundtland Commission Report • 3 components of Sustainable Development:Environmental protection, Economic growth,and Social equity • Defined Sustainable Development as… “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

5. History of Sustainability • 1992: Rio Earth Summit • Over 178 governments adopted… • Agenda 21: a global blueprint and plan of action for sustainable development in the 21st century • The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development • 27 principles that express the rights and responsibilities of nations as they pursue human development and well-being • The Forest Principles • A guide for the management, conservation, and sustainable development of all types of forests • 2002: Third UN conference on Environment and Development, Johannesburg, South Africa

6. The Triple Bottom Line • People, planet, and profits • Equity, environment, economy • TBL coined by John Elkington of “SustainAbility” (UK) in 1995 • Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1997) • The Chrysalis Economy: How Citizen CEOs and their Corporations Can Fuse Values and Value Creation (2001) • www.sustainability.com

7. Sustainable Development: GoI Definition • Social well being – The CDM project activity should lead to alleviation of poverty by generating additional employment, removal of social disparities and contribution to provision of basic amenities to people leading to improvement in quality of life of people. • Economic well being – The CDM project activity should bring in additional investment consistent with the needs of the people. • Environmental well being – This should include a discussion of impact of the project activity on resource sustainability and resource degradation, if any, due to proposed activity; bio-diversity friendliness; impact on human health; reduction of levels of pollution in general; • Technological well being – The CDM project activity should lead to transfer of environmentally safe and sound technologies that are comparable to best practices in order to assist in up-gradation of the technological base. The transfer of technology can be within the country as well from other developing countries also.

8. Sustainable Development Sustainable development: what does it mean and how is it to be achieved? We begin by asking whether sustainable development can be defined in relatively succinct terms. A number of definitions can be found in the contributions to this volume. Several authors cite the famous Brundtland Report Definition – ‘development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’

9. The Sustainability “Stool” Education for Sustainable Development Developing Systems Thinkers Economic Principles Social Principles Environmental Principles Spiritual Principles

10. Examples of Spiritual Principles related to sustainability Economic Environmental Social Elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty Work as worship Moderation Be content w/little Voluntary giving Profit sharing Interdependence of all life Nature a reflection of the Divine Humility – Earth source of all our wealth Unity in diversity Cleanliness Kindness to animals Equality of women and men Elimination of all forms of prejudice Unity in diversity Universal compulsory education Trustworthiness

11. CSD Indicators of Sustainable Development Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) to develop an action-oriented international programme of work on sustainable tourism, to be defined in cooperation with the World Tourism Organization (OMT/WTO), UNCTAD, UNEP

12. CSD Framework

17. Environmental Education We recognize the increasing complexity of our 21st Century world, and the increasing need for education and training that will help communities and institutions address issues of environmental health, sustainability, globalization, peace and conflict resolution, equity and justice. Educational experiences are aimed at preparing the generation of today and tomorrow for decision making, civic participation, and lifestyles that are healthy and sustainable.

20. Awareness about the following issues are needed. • Difference between sustainable development and environmental • sustainability. • Unique definition for sustainable development. • Will depending on Science and Technology alone deliver environmental sustainability?

21. Sustainable development and environmental sustainability • Definition • “ Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs” • The resource base is not inexhaustible. • sustainable development is economic development. • Without environmental sustainability it is impossible to achieve sustainable development.

22. Science, technology and environmental sustainability • Role of science and technology in delivering environmental sustainability: • sustainable development and global environmental sustainability achieved not only with the application of science and technology alone. Example : USA. • progress towards sustainable development is dependent upon a fundamental change in societies’ attitude to nature and the environment. • to bring about this change of attitude is education in moral and ethical philosophy. In the young minds it is essential to reinforce the environment-respecting moral values.

23. NEED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION • All major natural resources in the country are in grave danger of irreparable damage. • A society cannot survive if its natural resources are rendered unfit for use by its people. • The only hope of salvaging this grave situation is by making the youngaware that they need to proactively begin to protect the environment they will inherit. • Science and Technology can help in a limited way but cannot deliver it.

24. Environmental Issues • Rise in Production - Use of High Yielding Variety seeds, chemicals, Pesticides & insecticides. • Short term and long term effects. • Soil and water conservation.

25. Poverty and the Environment The causes of poverty and of environmental degradation are inter-related suggesting that approaching sustainable development requires understanding the issues from many angles, not just say an environmentalist or economics perspective alone. This section introduces some of the issues on the international summit (August 26 - September 4, 2002) where thousands of delegates met to discuss various issues comprising sustainable development. Of course, there was a lot of controversy including differences between the global North and South on all sorts of issues such as corporate-led globalization, privatization of energy, water, health, etc. In addition there was also concern about motives and influences of large corporations on the outcomes of the Summit.

26. Components of an Ecosystem

27. Consumers get their energy from the carbon bonds made by the producers. Another word for a consumer is a heterotroph. Based on what they eat, we can distinguish between 4 types of heterotrophs: consumer trophic level food source Herbivores primary plants Carnivores secondary or higher animals Omnivores all levels plants & animals Detritivores --------------- detritus

28. Processes of Ecosystems This figure with the plants, zebra, lion, and so forth illustrates the two main ideas about how ecosystems function: ecosystems have energy flows and ecosystems cycle materials. These two processes are linked, but they are not quite the same (see Figure).

29. Food Chains and Webs: A food chain is the path of food from a given final consumer back to a producer. For instance, a typical food chain in a field ecosystem might be: grass ---> grasshopper --> mouse ---> snake ---> hawk Note that even though I said the food chain is the path of food from a given final consumer back to a producer we typically list a food chain from producer on the left (or at the bottom) to final consumer on the right (or at the top). Note to international readers: In Hebrew or Aramaic, or other languages which are read right-to-left, is it customary to list the food chains in the reverse order? By the way, you should be able to look at the food chain above and identify the autotrophs and heterotrophs, and classify each as a herbivore, carnivore, etc. You should also be able to determine that the hawk is a quaternary consumer. The real world, of course, is more complicated than a simple food chain. While many organisms do specialize in their diets (anteaters come to mind as a specialist), other organisms do not. Hawks don't limit their diets to snakes, snakes eat things other than mice, mice eat grass as well as grasshoppers, and so on. A more realistic depiction of who eats whom is called a food web; an example is shown below

30. FoodChains and Webs

32. Intergenerational equity and the social dimension Sustainable development has always been about more than just a sophisticated articulation of concern for future generations. Another prom inenttheme has been intragenerational equity, that is, the distribution of income, environmental burdens and other relevant factors within the currently existing generation. This tradition owes much to the Brundtland Commission, for which concern about future generations was only part of the story: concern for poverty in the present generation was also important, indeed for the WCED arguably the highest priority. Explanations vary as to why present generation inequities might make development unsustainable.

33. Growth, consumption and natural wealth An important connection between recent attempts to understand the determinants of poor economic performance and the measurement of sustainability is the finding of a negative and significant relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth. This is the so-called ‘resource curse hypothesis’ or ‘paradox of plenty’. It is a paradox, because common sense suggests resource-rich countries have distinct long-term economic advantages over (otherwise similar) resource-poor countries.

34. Progress in measuring sustainable development Consumption, economic growth and environmental degradation impact sustainable development in complex and often apparently contradictory ways. The question is: how do we know whether overall we are on a sustainable development path? If the rhetoric of policy makers committed to sustainable development is to be judged against the reality of performance, then the means must be found to measure and monitor sustainable development. Put another way, in the absence of such information we cannot even broach the question of whether development is sustainable.

35. Climate and sustainable development Sweden recognizes the challenge that addressing climate change poses to development processes in industrialized as well as developing countries. Sweden has undertaken an ambitious approach to addressing climate change that has involved all sectors of our economy and mobilized the whole society. This strategy involves a portfolio of measures that the government has taken which stem from a strong political will to implement concrete, ambitious and lasting measures, an extensive nation-wide information and awareness campaign and a basket of policy instruments such as the electricity certificates to promote renewable energy, carbon dioxide taxes and other incentives to enhance the use of biofuels. without changing our lifestyles and the way we produce and use products and services, we will find it very difficult to achieve any long term progress in efforts to address climate change. Assessments of the overall effect of the policy instruments in the Swedish strategy have shown that our emissions in 2010 would be in the range of 20% higher in 2010 if they had not been applied. As such, the result of the implementation of the climate change strategy shows that it is possible to decouple economic growth from emissions reduction.

36. Conclusion •Effective policy must be implemented to curb consumption by the affluent •We need moral education to instill genuinely environment respecting moral values in the young student society. •Conventional educational methodology is no longer adequate for the real needs of tomorrow •Though there are definitional and implementation flaws, environment NGOs and activists need to be given credit and accolades for creating a nation-wide awareness of the crisis of environment deterioration.

37. Future student generation must acquire knowledge and skills in technologies and keep pace with rapid advances in practically in all areas. • The communication perspective opens the door to another kind of tools that environmental educators can use in order to improve the educational practice. • Minds onexperience is also needed with Hands onexperience.

38. Thanks Dr. V. R. NAGARALE Reader & Head Department of Geography S.N.D.T. Women’s University, P.G.S.R., Karve Road Pune -38 vr_nagarale@yahoo.co.in