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Bc Dorin Paul University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, 1st 3rd Universitatii St. Oradea, dbac@uoradea.ro Sustainable development - as a well defined concept - has emerged from a series of Conferences and Summits, where influential people have tried to come to an agreement on how to tackle the burning issues of the 21st Century: poverty, increasing inequality, environmental and human health degradation. The present paper presents the most important stages, where the actors have created and defined the concept of sustainable development and its principles. Key words: sustainable development, environment, economic growth.
Introduction
Sustainable development has become the buzzword of both the academic and the business world. Sustainability has been present for the last decades in academic papers, syllabuses of Faculties, boardrooms of local authorities and corporations and offices of public relations officers. Unfortunately, sustainability has become a fashionable concept in theory, but it is considered extremely expensive to be put in practice by major corporations, firms and local or national governments. What people tend to neglect and forget is the evolution of the concept of sustainability. Although the history and evolution of a concept might seem unimportant, it could help us predict the future trends and flaws that will appear. And it will help us ensure that the 21st century will be the Sustainability Century (Elkington, 1997, p.18).
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Another Malthusian worth mentioning is Lester Brown. He has published numerous books (latest: Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble in 2006 and Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization in 2008) and articles dealing with the troubles that our civilization will face after we will exhaust our fossil fuel reserves. In 1974, Lester Brown has set up the World Watch Institute164 and later on the Earth Policy Institute165. Both of them are presenting facts regarding the global use of natural resources and also presenting viable alternatives for our consumption trends (Brown, 2006, p.17). The main purpose of the above mentioned Malthusians was to provide a useful reminder to the society and to the local, national and international authorities that if we continue our consumption trends we could find ourselves in trouble.
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equality, 3) reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, 4) reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, 5) integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies, 6) reducing by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. Unfortunately, the world still has to tackle this dangerous blend of indifference and concealment and ultimately rebuild the trust between people, business and government, desperately needed if we are going to stand any chance in achieving the Millennium Development Goals to combat poverty, disease and deprivation by 2015 (Gorbachev, 2006, p.157) The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 was a landmark in the business of forging partnerships between the United Nations, governments, business and NGOs to gather resources for addressing global environment, health and poverty challenges176. The Johannesburg Summit reconfirmed the Millennium goals and complemented them by setting a number of additional ones such as halving the proportion of people lacking access to basic sanitation; minimizing harmful effects from chemicals; and halting the loss of biodiversity. Some authors consider the summit a progress in moving the concept [of sustainable development] toward a more productive exploration of the relationship between economic development and environmental quality (Asefa, 2005, p. 1). The WSSD fills some gaps in the Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals and addresses some newly emerging issues, including to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015; to use and produce chemicals by 2020 in ways that do not lead to significant adverse effects on human health and the environment; to maintain or restore depleted fish stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield on an urgent basis and where possible by 2015; and to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity (Nelson, 2007, p. 166). The Johannesburg Conference confirmed a trend, which appeared since the 1992 Conference, of the increasing importance of the socioeconomic pillars of sustainable development. The environmental agenda at the two previous UN conferences had been sustained by peaks in the public attention cycle of major developed countries. WSSD incorporated the concept of sustainable development throughout its deliberations and was initially dubbed the implementation summit. Inevitably demands for additional financial resources and technology transfer continued but much of the debate had already been pre-empted by the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 (Vogler, 2007, p. 439).
Conclusions
If we follow all the conferences from 1972 to 2002 we can observe that there was the shift in the political debate from a primary emphasis on environmental issues at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, through a shared focus on environmental, social and economic development at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, to arguably a primary emphasis on poverty alleviation at the Millennium Summit in 2000 and at the Johannesburg World Summit in 2002. This does not necessarily mean environmental protection has been effectively sidelined, of interest mainly in its capacity to alleviate poverty. Rather, it would appear that what began as a call to protect the environment in the service of human development has become a more specific call to prioritize improvements in the well-being of the very worst-off now and in the future. The biggest challenge of sustainable development remains the global consciousness from households to boardrooms regarding the importance of tackling the challenges of the Industrial Revolution: a limitless human and environmental exploitation.
References
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