Sustainable Development: Responding to Environmental Crisis

Sustainable Development: A Response to Environmental Crisis

We are witnessing a paradigm shift. Awareness of resource limits and global environmental problems are challenging the traditional view of economic progress. The new environmental paradigm emphasizes:

• Environmental quality impacts economic development.
• Investing in the environment is profitable.
• Natural resource use has an environmental cost.
• Environmental protection requires citizen involvement.
• Major environmental problems are global and require global solutions.

Sustainable development aims to guide economic growth to meet societal needs while respecting environmental limits, ensuring future generations’ needs are not compromised.

International Agreements on Sustainable Development

Rio Summit (1992)

The Rio Summit established sustainable development as an international priority. Agenda 21, a plan of action, emerged from this summit, promoting sustainability criteria across all human activities at global, national, and local levels.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol committed signatory countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. This was to be achieved through emission quotas for each country. While some countries exceeded their targets, others, like the United States, faced challenges in meeting the protocol’s strict requirements.

Sustainability Indicators

Scientists are developing methods to assess the impact of human activities on natural systems. Key indicators include:

1. Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint measures the area of ecologically productive land (crops, pastures, forests, aquatic ecosystems, etc.) required to generate the resources used and assimilate the waste produced by a population. It is expressed in hectares per inhabitant per year and helps compare lifestyles and environmental awareness across countries.

2. Biocapacity

Biocapacity refers to the maximum number of individuals a territory can sustain with its resources. It is expressed as the number of productive hectares available per person. Since 1987, humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the planet’s biocapacity.

3. Ecological Deficit

The ecological deficit is the difference between the ecological footprint and biocapacity. It indicates whether a country is living within its own resource limits or relying on resources from other countries.

Examples:

• USA: -5 ha/inhab./year (ecological deficit)
• Bolivia: +15 ha/inhab./year (ecological reserve)

Reducing the ecological footprint involves improving resource management, building, and producing more efficiently, or reducing population.

4. Energy Intensity

Energy intensity measures the amount of energy used per unit produced by the economic system (e.g., energy spent per euro).

5. Human Development Index (HDI)

The Human Development Index assesses a country’s development level by considering life expectancy at birth, GDP per capita, literacy rate, and access to education.