Sustainable

Development :
a brief overview

Which city in Malaysia is

considered
as
developed?
Developing?
Why did you say so? Reasons?

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE

Population Growth & Economic Development

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE

Population Growth & Economic Development

however:
1.1 billion extreme poverty, lacking
sufficient income to meet their basic need
for food, clothing & shelter
850 million remain malnourished
20,000 die every day lack of essential
needs

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE

Global Economic Production continue to rise

Per capita income growth in developing
country has improved, 1.5% (1990), 3.4% (2000)
However, developing countries is falling far
behind the developed countries due to great
inequalities in wealth

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE
The decline of ecosystem
Around the world:
Groundwater supplies
deplete
Agricultural soils degrade
Overfishing the oceans
Cutting forest faster than
they can regrow

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE
Nearly every measure we use to assess the
health of ecosystem tells us we are
drawing on them more than ever &
degrade them an accelarating pace

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE
The global atmospheric changes:
Main concern:
Depletion of ozone layer has led to international
action: Montreal Protocol 1987
Global climate change due to CO2 Kyoto
Protocol 1997

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE

Loss of biodiversity
Rapidly growing human population with its growing
appetite for food, water, timber, fiber & fuel is
accelerating the conversion of forest, grassland &
wetlands to agriculture & urban development

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE
Loss of biodiversity
Result:
o Loss of wild plants and animals that occupy
those natural habitats
o Pollution degrade habitats destroy the species
o Hundreds of mammals, reptiles, fish, birds &
butterflies are exploited for their commercial
values many are hunted, killed & marketed
illegally save the tiger!

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE

Loss of biodiversity

No one knows exactly how

many species is losing, the
exact number of species
becoming extinct can only
be extimated

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PICTURE
So the question is.
Shall we continue to erase living species from the
planet, or do we have a moral responsibility to
protect & preserve the amazing diversity of life
on Earth? Once a species is gone, it is gone
forever
Your answer?

THREE STRATEGIC THEMES:

Sustainability the practical goal that our

interaction with the natural world should be
working toward
Stewardship the ethical & moral framework
that informs our public & private actions
Science the basis for our understanding of
how the world works and how human system
interact with it

SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT

a kind of development that meets the

needs of the present without compromising
the ability of the next generations to meet
their own needs.

The basic idea: to maintain and to improve

the well being of both human & ecosystem

concern with extraction of resources while at the

same time allowing the environment to replenish itself
The goal is to ensure that there will not come a time
when development will be halted due to lack of
naturally occurring materials as a result of
environmental degradation.

TRANSITIONS:
Demographic transition
Resource transition
Technology transition
Political/sociological transition
Community transition

The issue of sustainability

can be divided into three
constituent parts:
environmental sustainability,
economic sustainability and
sociopolitical sustainability.

Scopes and
definitions:

Environmental Sustainability
We seek equilibrium between the
amount and the processes of
extractions with the ability of
the environment to tolerate it
without sliding into a point
where there will be an
irreversible slide in ecological
balance.

 The

environment from which we

extract food and raw materials is
more often than not disturbed, the tip
of ecological balance moved over a
long period of time into point where
there is a steady degradation until
such time when it can no longer
support itself, hence dying out and
denying us a steady source of much
needed materials in the future.

An unsustainable situation occurs when

natural capital (the sum total of nature's
resources) is used up faster than it can be
replenished
Theoretically, the long-term result of
environmental degradation is the inability
to sustain human life. Such degradation
on a global scale could imply extinction
for humanity. wikipedia

Consumption State of
Sustainability
of renewable
environment
resources
More than
Environmental Not sustainable
nature's ability
degradation
to replenish
Equal to
Environmental
Steady-state
nature's ability
equilibrium
economy
to replenish
Less than
Environmental
Sustainable
nature's ability
renewal
development
to replenish

Economic Sustainability

Economic sustainability refers

to the ability of the economy to
supply the demands of the
market with rooms for profit to
ensure a steady growth over a
period of time.

Economies are measured through

this:
Gross domestic product : the total
financial value of the final goods and
services rendered in a country over a
one-year period.
Positive growth is indicated by an
increase in the GDP over the two year
period while a negative growth is
indicated by the opposite.

Demand for
goods and
services

Supply of the
raw materials
needed to
sustain the
economy

Economic
performance

Environmental
sustainability

High

High

Positive

Negative

Low

High

Negative

High

Low

Negative

Positive/Ne
gative*
Positive

Low

Low

Positive/Ne
gative**

Positive

* depends whether raw materials can be stored for future use

** depend more on market dynamics such as the difference between the product face

Econo
mic
growth

Point of
Equilibrium

Environm
ental
sustainabi
lity

Sociopolitical Sustainability
Man

is said to be a political
animal. (Aristotle). Anything that
has a power relationship can be
considered as political.

 Although

there is no direct cause and

effect relationship between
environmental sustainability and the
sociopolitical scene, it is essential to
look at the power structures in given
societies, even in the global level, to
understand the policies implemented
in certain areas, with regards to
development sustainability.

Modernist
countries

Economic development
Post-modernist countries

If there is one country that bears most

responsibility for the lack of progress
on international environmental
issues.it is the United States
James Speth, Former administrator of
the U.N Development program

The Environment in the

Century
In September 2002, U.N
General Secretary addresses
the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, South Africa.
Unfortunately, delegates
failed to agree on many
crucial issues, & the meeting
was judged to be failure

st
21

The Environment in the

Century

st
21

Compenhagen Climate Conference 2009

essential for the worlds climate and the
Danish government and UNFCCC is
putting hard effort in making the
meeting in Copenhagen a success ending
up with a Copenhagen Protocol to
prevent global warming and climate
changes

GOOD NEWS!
Environmental degradation CAN
be slowed down and reversed
People CAN be freed from hunger
& poverty
Peoples behavior toward the
environment CAN be transformed
from exploitative to conserving