Sustainable development

Sustainable development is a method of using natural resources for the human civilization with out hampering the balance of environment in order to use these resources for the future civilization. "Sustainable development" - this term is first used by the Brundtland Commission. This commission introduced the most conventional and popular definition of sustainable development that says sustainable development "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Sustainable development is closely associated with issues like natural carrying capacity of the environment and increasing demands and social challenges of human civilization. In the year 1970, the term sustainability was introduced to define an economical condition which is in equilibrium condition with primary ecological support systems. “Limits of growth” are also noticed by the ecologists; hence they demonstrated an alternative of a steady state economical condition to sort out the environmental issues with due attention.

From conceptual perspective, sustainable development may be divided in to three basic segments. They are environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability. In this concept, importance is given to both strong and weak sustainability and deep ecology. Environmental factors are not the solely focused area in sustainable development issue. As per the outcome of United Nations 2005 World Summit, economic development, social development, and environmental protection are three “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development. But, lots of arguments and discussions made through several international forum regarding these three pillar issue. United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Convention on Biological Diversity strongly argue that there are four pillars in sustainable development, not there. Apart from economic, social and environmental factors, cultural factor is also an integral part of sustainable development. UNESCO, 2001 is strongly raises this cultural issue and explain the concept by stating “…cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature”; it becomes “one of the roots of development understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence" So from this particular perspective, cultural issue is the number four segment of sustainable development. Economic Sustainability is an integral part of sustainable development. It is clearly mentioned in Agenda 21 that economic sustainability is one of the interdependent pillars and plays key role to achieve considerable achievements for the countries. Agenda 21 also states that every single person is using and providing information simultaneously in sustainable development. It also emphasizes on change of dimension while doing business. It introduces new business approach of involving cross sector co ordination blended with associated environmental & social factors together. All these factors are included in new business development process which differs from old ways of doing business only sector wise. A powerful integration is the basic elements of new age business development process. In addition to that, Agenda 21 also explains the importance of public opinion in any kind of decision making process. It says mass opinion and participation in a decision making process is the backbone in order to achieve economic sustainability. According to Hasna (ref. Hasna, A.M., Sustainability and Engineering Philosophy : The Paradigm. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 2007. 3(4): p. 7.), sustainability is defined as a continuous methodology to ensure developments in every single phase of human life. Sustainability sorts out the conflicts or difference of opinions while achieving the same target. Sustainability comprises of three crucial segments like economic development, environmental condition, and social structure. Sustainability works assuming these three factors as bottom line to produce useful technology for the development of mankind. Sustainability is a never ending process with constant evolution and very dynamic in character. The process of achieving sustainability is very crucial though there is no pre fixed destination for sustainable development, it is ever evolving. It is an endless process to ensure perfect balance is social system in the future. Sustainable development differs from Green development in certain aspects. Green developments mainly concentrate on sustainability in environmental conditions over economic and cultural conditions. Sustainable development focuses on overall sustainability where latest Green Development methodology is unattainable. Let’s take a suitable example. A plant equipped with latest infrastructural facility has higher maintenance cost. So this plant will not at all have a sustainable feature in locations with lesser financial strength. A plant with highly sophisticated machines even may be shut down in areas with low financial resources. On the contrary, a community maintained plan with simple equipments will have higher sustainability in the same area. So, the perspective of sustainability is not same in all parts of the world, environmental conditions are not the sole parameter in this case.

There is another strong view point on this issue. A group of researchers define environment as a combination of culture and nature together. "Sustainable Development in a Diverse World", the network of excellence backed up by European Union focuses on cultural diversities as a basic ingredient while developing new age concept for sustainable development.

At the same time, some of the researchers consider environmental & social conditions as scope for making new development strategies. This assumption is true for several sustainable organizations framing global requirements as new working scope for private organization where they can implement new methodology to invent innovative solution from entrepreneurial perspective. In fact, this particular business concept is accepted as a study material in business school worldwide, where budding manager learn to explore the social and environmental issues as new opportunity.