Sustainable development and climate change
Sustainable development and climate change are critical areas of focus as humanity grapples with the consequences of environmental degradation and resource depletion. Sustainable development seeks to address interconnected global challenges like poverty, inequality, and hunger while ensuring that natural resources can support future generations. This concept, popularized during the 1992 Earth Summit, emphasizes a harmonious relationship between human activities and the environment. However, despite the establishment of frameworks such as the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress has been slow, hindered by political inertia and persistent inequality.
The urgency of the situation is underscored by alarming statistics on access to clean water and energy, particularly in the context of a world where wealth is increasingly concentrated. Sustainable agricultural and forestry practices are vital, as traditional methods often prioritize profit over ecological balance, leading to resource overexploitation. Additionally, a transition to sustainable energy sources, including renewables like solar and wind, is essential for mitigating climate change impacts. Global collaboration and a shift in philosophical approaches to development and resource management are necessary to achieve the ambitious targets set for 2030 and beyond, highlighting the intricate ties between social justice, economic stability, and environmental health.
Sustainable development and climate change
In the face of climate change and dwindling environmental resources, sustainable development is key to maintaining the ways of life and standards of living to which industrialized nations have become accustomed, while protecting Earth’s environment and the interests of future generations.
Background
Sustainable development aims to address a number of interrelated global issues, including poverty, inequality, hunger, and environmental degradation. The concept emerged out of numerous environmental movements begun in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was one of the first major international events to bring sustainable development into the mainstream. The Kyoto Protocol of the late 1990s explored ways to stimulate sustainable development through technology and investment. When the Paris Climate Agreement was finalized in 2015, and put into action in 2016, the framework emphasized the importance of equitable access to sustainable development. However, the progress in sustainable development has been quite slow across the globe. Many challenges and a lack of political will are responsible for this less-than-satisfactory progress. For these reasons, the United Nations (UN) released the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, which set the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that member nations would adopt to influence their policies. The seventeen goals addressed human rights issues such as poverty, hunger, health, and education. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 showed that significant changes would need to be made to meet those goals.
Progress and History
The term “sustainability” was first officially defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, also known as the Brundtland Commission) as entailing “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Although it means many different things to different people, sustainable development generally refers to in terms of environmental, economic, and social progress and equity, all interconnected and operating within the limits of natural resources. At the heart of such development is the goal of a healthy and harmonious relationship between humans and natural resources, such that the latter can continue to provide for future generations of the former.
Sustainable development has been an urgent global issue for many years, although the record on moving toward achieving the goal has been quite poor. For instance, the world has failed not only to protect the interests of future generations but also to meet the needs of present generations. As of 2022, 2.2 billion people lived without access to clean drinking water, 2.8 billion people lacked access to basic sanitation, and more than 770 million people lacked electricity, according to the United Nations. These alarming statistics come in an age of immense wealth that is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands.
In the years since the Rio Earth Summit, sustainable development has ranked very low on international agendas. As a result, poverty has deepened, global inequality has widened, and environmental degradation has heightened. According to the 2022 World Inequality Report, the richest 1 percent of the world's population held 38 percent of global wealth, while approximately 10 percent of the population held 76 percent of global wealth. Given the tremendous inequality of wealth and resource partitioning that still exists, it is no wonder the term “sustainability” bears quite different meanings to different people.
Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry
Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, agricultural productivity increased dramatically. This increase has helped improve the lives of billions, but at the same time it has weakened nature’s ability to deliver other key services, including clean air and water, protection from disasters, preservation of biodiversity, and prevention of soil erosion. Environmentally damaging industrial agriculture threatens future sustainability. Sustainable development seems to be the best option to halt or even reverse environmental degradation and grow food now without jeopardizing key services later.
Sustainable development must begin with a transformation of fundamental philosophies on agriculture. Many current agricultural systems are operated on business models that are geared solely toward making money and profit. In other words, crops are not grown for people to eat but rather are produced for consumers to buy. This practice leads to a major diversion of land use from food production to profit generation. It also makes food less nutritious and less tasty, as crops are bred for shelf life and uniform appearance (qualities that are evident to shoppers in supermarkets and that facilitate lucrative high-volume models of production) rather than nutritional content or taste (qualities that are invisible until after one makes a purchase).
Much of the best agricultural land in the world is used to grow cash crops such as cocoa, cotton, tea, tobacco, and sugarcane or is converted to rangelands for high-demand livestock. Profit-driven operations have also led to overexploitation of natural resources. Mathematical ecologist Richard Levins commented about the necessity of changing attitudes on farming, saying, "Farmers in sustainable agriculture are concerned about feeding their families and paying their bills, but those are not their only goals in life. They set out to protect the land, improve their quality of life, and enhance the communities in which they live. Their day-to-day decisions are not guided by a single-minded search for profit, but by a delicate balancing act among many goals."
Because people rely on trees and plants to build houses, produce paper, make furniture, and provide medicines, pressures on forests are staggering. Sustainable forest management is the only way to maintain the long-term health of the world’s forests. In 1993, the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) defined sustainable forest management as "the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfil, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems"; this definition was later adopted by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which continued to put out reports on sustainability and forests in 2022, including "The State of the World's Forests" and "Exploring Our Forests." Without the preservation of these vital components, forests will eventually cease to provide society’s members with the goods and benefits to which they have grown accustomed, including many valuable species that are essential to modern medicines. The loss of these species will be irreversible and permanent.
Sustainable Energy Sources
Among the most important resources that must be sustained are energy resources. Alternative and renewable energy sources, particularly clean energy sources, are necessary components of any plan of sustainable development. Such sources include biofuels, geothermal power, solar power, wind power, and wave power. In the short term, any technology that improves energy efficiency may be considered a component of the transition to sustainable energy practices.
Biofuels in particular can be produced from almost any organic carbon source, although most are produced using plants and plant-derived materials. The first generation of biofuels includes vegetable oils, biodiesel, bioalcohols, and solid biofuels such as wood, grass cuttings, domestic refuse, and dried manure. The most common use of these substances is as liquid fuel for transportation. Two common strategies are employed to produce biofuels: sugar and starchy crops are used to produce ethanol through yeast fermentation, while natural plant oils, such as canola, soybean, and palm oils, are extracted and processed for use as biodiesel.
Production of first-generation biofuels is highly controversial because it requires direct use of grains and takes away land from growing food crops, exacerbating world hunger. Moreover, biofuel crops, particularly corn, are extremely hard on soil, making them among the least sustainable crops in the world. The low of such crops is also cause for concern. As a result of these factors and related debates, technologies are being developed for second- and third-generation biofuels. Second-generation biofuels are produced using lignocellulosic biomass, which is theoretically capable of much greater energy efficiency than is corn, as well as from a variety of nonfood crops, or from agricultural residues and wastes. Third-generation biofuel is also called algae fuel or "oilgae" and is derived from low-input/high-yield algae, which produces thirty times more energy per unit of area than do land crops. However, the algae used as feedstock is much more costly than the feedstock used for second-generation biofuels, which has hampered development, and the resulting product tends to be less stable than other biofuels.
In general, sustainable economic development improves the economy without undermining society or the environment. There are various definitions of sustainable business or economic development from different sources, most of which share many common characteristics. The Lowell Center for Sustainable Development defines sustainable production as "the creation of goods and services using processes and systems that are non-polluting, conserving of energy and natural resources, economically viable, safe and healthful for workers, communities, and consumers, and socially and creatively rewarding for all working people."
Context
By and large, current societies and socioeconomic practices are unsustainable. As a result, future generations will have a poorer, more polluted world to live in. Everyone depends on nature and ecosystem services for the resources necessary to live decent, healthy, and sustainable lives, including clean air, drinkable water, nutritious food, clothing, shelter, and so forth. Human activities in recent decades have pushed Earth to the brink of massive species extinctions, threatening humanity’s well-being. While the and subsequent technological advancements have served to improve the living standards of millions, the associated environmental degradation remains a heavy price.
Anthropogenic scourges of the planet have become significant barriers to sustainable development. Better protection and more efficient uses of various natural assets are vital if humans expect to inhabit the earth in harmony with the planet’s many other species and their ecosystems. Real sustainable development must recognize the interconnectedness between human beings and the environment if true environmental and social justice is to be obtained. Measures must be taken and technology must be developed to conserve natural resources, to secure alternative forms of energy, to develop an economy friendly to the environment, and to preserve cultural diversity and heritages. These goals can be achieved only through coordinated global efforts, across all sections of government, business, and local communities.
The Sustainable Development Report 2024 showed that meeting the UN's goals by 2030 would be extremely challenging. Though progress had been made in reducing child mortality and increasing global access to energy, large investments would be needed to continue to spur the development of clean energy. Additionally, the report noted that additional progress was necessary in combatting peace, security, and wealth inequality.
Key Concepts
- biofuels: energy sources derived from recently dead organisms, most commonly plants
- carrying capacity: the maximum population that can be supported indefinitely with the available resources and services of a given ecosystem
- community: a group of people who live and interact within a specific geographic or social sphere
- ecosystem services: all the interdependent organisms and nonbiological factors that combine to provide the conditions necessary to the sustainable existence of life within a given ecosystem
- sustainability: the ability of an environmental or environmentally dependent system to continue indefinitely without exhausting the means of its reproduction
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