Sustainable development

Idea behind sust. develop.

• Economic development can and must be achieved w/out:

  • Environmental harm

  • Risking future generations’ needs

Brundtland Report (1987) definition of sustainable development

• Development that meets the needs of the present w/out compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

2 threats to future generations

1. Consumption

2. Materialism

🇺🇳 and sust. develop.

• Major focus via 2015 SDGs

  • Provide a framework for SD w/17 targets for 2030

SDG 13

• Taking urgent action to tackle CC and its harmful impacts

  • Gives 🇺🇳 a means by which it can tackle CC and support nation-states in doing this too

2 types of sustainability

1. Weak

2. Strong

Weak sustainability

• Accepts desirability of econmic growth but also the need to limit it to prevent threats to long term

  • I.e. getting richer slower

Weak sust. — capital

• Need to ensure that natural + human capital = same for both future and current generations

  • Therefore can substitute human for natural capital

    • I..e better roads/ariports etc. compensate for loss of land/habitat

Strong sustainability

• Need to preserve and sustain natural capital

• Ecological scale > > economic gains

  • Nature has a right oe xist, has been borrowed and should be passed from generation → generation intact