An Analysis Of Sustainable Development

Can Development be sustainable?

The words Sustainable Development make up a popular phrase of today. The ambitious ideas behind sustainable development maybe slightly different in the heads of each environmentalist but the same concept will always arise- Sustainable development is a way for the generations of today and generations to come to meet the needs of the world without exhausting natural resources. This requires us to make human life better today without compromising the quality of life for future generations. It will mean that people in the developing countries will eventually have the quality of life that the people of the western countries have, thus world equality will be met.

However, as I said before sustainable development is very ambitious and requires time, effort, cooperation and money.
An example of sustainable development would be cutting down trees for wood, energy etc. but replacing each tree with a new tree, using coppicing or pollarding. It is sustainable in that there will still be trees for future use and it is development as people can get what they need from the trees.

What about the energy resources that cannot simply be replaced? Crude oil is a non renewable energy source that is fast running out. It is possible to obtain energy from other resources but these are often far more expensive than using crude oil and so are abandoned. When the non renewable energy resources run out and we are forced to used these expensive resources what will happen to the developing countries?

The Johannesburg summit has come up with many targets to beat poverty but there is no Big Idea that is going to make a huge difference.

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It has been said to be more focused than Agenda 21 and there is a wider cooperation. "One of our major challenges is making sustainable development go to scale, to make something that has worked in a dozen places work in a thousand places." DESAI a spokesperson at the summit said. This quote is what makes sustainable development so hard, it will work in small patches but what we need is for it to work on larger areas.

In conclusion I believe in the ideas of sustainable development and it is probably going to be the most successful way of bringing equality of life into the developing world. However the whole world needs to participate in it and contribute-full effort has to be put into this project it would have to be a high priority on the to do list of each country. It is also requires money that a lot of countries are just not prepared to give. In answering the question Yes I think development is sustainable but not in the quantity that we need, yes we can introduce sustainable development to small areas and they will get better but more is needed. Sustainable development needs to be achieved before the depletion of the non renewable resources and for it to occur that quickly a Great Plan is needed.