sustainable development (SD)

Introduction
There is no single definition of sustainable development (SD); however, one is encouraged to adopt the definition that is most relevant to the local context. With more than eight dozen definition of sustainable development, it is clear that achieving a consensus is unlikely. However, having a single definition for all contexts is not necessarily important because by having a discussion to
develop a single definition, we develop a more comprehensive understanding of SD. Sustainable development is best given a generic definition that incorporates economic, social, and environmental essentials that are contextualized locally. This ensures that the definition of sustainable development responds to the changing demands and complexities of each context, which makes it more relevant to the local stakeholders. Sustainable development is development the exploitation of both renewable and non-renewable resources in a way that does not compromise the availability of the same resource for future generations.
The prime goal of sustainable development is to ensure that the available resources are equally distributed amongst the human population and exploited a manner that guarantees their services for many generations to come. In economics, it involves the development of policies rationally by integrating environmental concerns in decision-making. Sustainable development therefore involves the exploitation of natural resources with the aim of not producing waste products that significantly alter the ecosystem, and ensuring social stability. Maintaining a good quality environment ensures that the options available to the current generation are available to future generations. This guarantees the human basic right of participation in the society and the decision-making process. It is best to have a broad definition that is tailored to meet the local needs, which enables formulation of policies to address specific local issues.
Sustainable Development
The traditional definition of development only incorporated economic goals; however, recent developments demand the objective of development to go beyond increasing income to include objectives, such as freedom, equity, safe environment, health, and education. It is therefore imperative that economic objectives balance with social and environmental concerns. The current globalized development affects everyones life regardless of his or her location, income, or economic activity. Although sustainable development has many definitions, three main components are unalienable from SD. These include environment, social, and economic factors. The relative significance of the three components is based on an individual or societys system of values (James, 1997).
The classical definition of sustainable development given by the United Nations defines SD as meeting the current need of the society without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. however, it is important to understand that intergenerational equity is impossible without intra-generational equity. For the humans to achieve intergenerational equity, they must first achieve present-day social equity. This is impossible to achieve when the economic activities of certain groups of people jeopardize the lives of other groups of people living in other parts of the world. For example, most of the greenhouses gases that are to blame for the current changes in atmospheric temperature are emitted in developed nations. However, most of the countries adversely affected by the resulting high temperatures and floods are the low-lying under-developed countries in Asia and Africa. Another example of unsustainable development is pharmaceutical companies that millions of dollars in profits and in the process make their products unaffordable to millions of poor people (Tatyana, 2004).
Another possible name to give SD is equitable and balanced development. For development to be sustainable thus continue indefinitely, it must balance the interest of different groups of people within a single generation, and balance the interest of different generations. This is in three major sectors, i.e., social, economic, and environmental. Balancing the many diverse objectives is an enormous challenge even for the government. In the case of a country, the government would have to compare the greater value of national security against slow economic growth and irreversible environmental damage. There is no scientific method for doing this comparison. In the current government system, the government employs a democratic system to reach decisions. Such decisions reflect the needs of the majority, however, even in such a case there is a possibility that the needs of the future generations are not represented in the decisions because they cannot vote. To ensure the available resources are available to future generations, it is imperative that the population is educated to reflect the interest of future generations (Center for environmental education (CEE), 2007).
Efforts have been made to align economic approaches with environmental and society needs, however, the integration of the three components is not whole because environment and society economic are sub disciplines in the economic study. The current economic system does not therefore serve it whole purpose, which is to satisfy the needs of the current generations, and fashion the needs and wants of future generations. For the world top achieve SD, the economic system must shift to become people and earth-centered. The new pattern of life emerging from this system encourages the sustainable exploitation of resources by ensuring non-wasteful consumption. There is a growing sense among many people across the globe that the current system in the society is not working for either the current or future generations. This stems from the current system tendencies to destroy the environment, communities, cultures, and transfer wealth to rich in the society (John & Michael, 2002).
At the heart of this global problem lies two assumptions: the economy is the most important institutions in the society and economic values and logic can guide decision-making towards collectively preferred outcomes. These assumptions are flaw because they are based on concepts of a production-focused society. The two assumptions have a number of problems. The assumptions place economic production at the heart of human endeavor, which is not the case. The resulting system treats human knowledge and activities as commodities in an economic system. These make a job the primary relationship that an individual has with the society (CEE, 2007). This leads to a self-centered thinking system within the society where the dominate issues covered are expenditure and monetary exchange. Other issues such as scarcity, competition, and commercial secrecy dominate interact, especially at a group level. Any resource available is evaluated only on terms of its economic value (Tatyana, 2004).
Economic growth ensures better standards of living; however, it does not necessarily lead to a better quality life. To ensure better standards of living, economic growth must be accompanied by environmental conservation and social stability. The biggest handles to sustainable development in the world today are poverty and war, however, environment conservation is paramount to ensure a habitable future for coming generations. Poverty eradication is the focus of most of the governments in the world because poverty is not only a social evil by itself, but also because it is an obstacle to achieving the main objectives of SD. War and poverty are inherently destructive to SD goals, such as clean environment and personal freedoms. SD places humans at the center of concern by developing strategies that enable humans live in harmony with nature (Perrings, 2006).
The reason take poverty and war are the most pressing issues opposing sustainability is because poor people while participate in any economic activity that brings immediate economic gain regardless of the long-run sustainability of the venture. War on the other hand threatens human life resulting in the exploitation of an available means to ensure survival or mutual destruction. There are three obvious rule of SD. The rate of harvest must equal the rate of regeneration. For example, the current rate of fishing in the world is unsustainable in the long-term. Developed countries do large-scale fishing in the deep ocean. The large ships drag the net for miles along the seafloor. This not only destroys the fishs breeding grounds, but also captures not target organisms. Sustainable yields demand the computation of the current reproduction arte and limit the fishing rate to or below that value (Morse, 2008).
 The second principle is addresses a challenge that poses a more immediate threat to the existence of humans on these planet. The emission of waste should equal the natural assimilation rate of the waste compounds. The immediate problem is the burning of fossil fuels. Fossils fuels produce carbon dioxides and other compounds that have a greenhouse effect on the earth atmosphere. The natural processes of assimilation of these compounds involve the plant growth, which is very hard to quantify in a global scale. However, there is the option of exploiting renewable sources that have no waste products. The third principle of SD addresses the issue of renewable energy by limiting the rate of exploitation to the rate of creation of substitutes (Baumgartner & Korhonen, 2010).
SD is achievable only through Sustainable Consumption (SC). Common economic considers growth as a benchmark for measuring the success of an economy or society; however, growth is not sustainable because the capacity of the earth to regenerate is finite. SC is achievable by developing workable solutions that address the issue of social and environmental imbalance by ensuring the development of a more responsible behavior. These include the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of products and services of the human population as a whole. The entire human population must act in one accord and reevaluate the lifecycle and setup of the society to achieve SC. The aim of SC is to ensure the basic needs of every human on the planet are met, while reducing excess and minimizing environmental degradation (Nejati, Amirul Shah Bin, & Azlan, 2010).
Translation into sustainable development presents a major challenge despite the availability of all the necessary tools for achieving it. Most of time human try to change the environment to fit their needs instead of adapting to the environment as the millions of species on the earth today have done for millions of years. Because humans share the same resources, notably the atmosphere, cooperation is paramount to ensure the sustainable utilization of these universal resources. The millennium development goals developed by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro provide the framework for global cooperation on the issue of SD. Agenda 21 developed in this summit identify poverty as the greatest handle to SD. The framework developed by the summit enable the focusing of efforts towards SD (Patzelt & Shepherd, 2011).
Agenda 21 outline targets and sets a deadline for the world to achieve those targets. The deadline set by the agenda is 2015. The main issue the agenda address includes reducing poverty by reducing the number of people living below the poverty line by half. The agenda seeks to increase literacy by ensuring primary education is accessible universally. Gender imbalance is also another issue that the agenda addresses. Improve access to medical care and reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Another objective of the summit is ensuring the sustainable exploitation of the environment and reducing the number of people without access to clean water by half. This is to be achieved by fostering cooperation among the donor countries, non-governmental organizations, and governments in developing countries (Singh, 1999).
Countries are asymmetrically gifted with natural resources. Some countries have very fertile soils and rarely make any effort to produce high quality agricultural products. Others have to invest heavily in artificial soil amelioration if they are to achieve good productivity. Some countries have fossil fuels that they export to other countries that lack this resource. However, as evidenced by the case of Japan and Korea, countries need not have huge natural resources to achieve development. Japan and Korea are high-income countries despite the lack of natural resources. This economic development enable the countries to use the available resources in a more efficient and sustainable manner. In SD, the productivity with which economies use their productive resources is the main indicator of economic development. Productive resources include physical, human, and natural capital. These calculations are challenging because of the difficulty of placing a specific value on human and natural resources (Hopwood, Mellor & O'Brien, 2005).
The productivity with which countries use their productive resource is difficult to calculate therefore economist use Gross National Product (GNP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to calculate productivity. GDP and GNP provide the rough estimates with which different countries use their sources. The productivity measured may be a result of the available natural resources in the country or the superior productivity of an economy. GDP and GNP do not provide a true measure of productivity because of the focus only on economic productivity. However, the two serve as indicators in the comparison of countries, especially those countries endowed with similar natural resources (Tatyana, 2004).
Conclusion
The only available definition of Sustainable Development (SD) that is universal accepted is broad. Such a definition can only apply to the specific sustainability issue by modifying the definition to fit local context. The lack of a single universal accepted definition means that discussions are ongoing in the academic community to try to develop a common definition. However, as many scholars note, the lack of a definition is advantageous because it ensure one understands the sustainability scope in different geographically separate areas. SD stems from understanding that the earth has finite resources and if not used appropriately they will diminish. To ensure the availability of these sources for future generations demands a reengineering of the society to eliminate social evils such as poverty and war. This is achieved by developing a unitary global order that control production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of goods and services to ensure resources are exploited sustainably.




 References
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