Sustainability

Sustainable development

What is sustainable development? In 1987 the Bruntland report developed by the United Nations provided the following definition of sustainable development: “ Development is sustainable if it meets the needs of the present generations without jeopardising the possibility of meeting the needs of future generations”. However, what do we mean by development? What do we mean by needs? The problem is undoubtedly complex. The development of a country implies two growth concepts: a quantitative concept, i.e. the growth of the quantity of goods and services that the inhabitants of the country can purchase; and a qualitative concept, i.e. the growth of the quality of life, depending not only on the quantity of consumers’ goods but also the quality of the environment (water, earth, air) and the characteristics of society (greater or lesser degree of democracy, providing greater or smaller opportunities for personal development and self-realisation) in which a person lives. In the light of this definition of development, understanding what the needs of mankind may be is easier: they are the set of goods and services provided by the economic system (e.g. the industrial production), environment (e.g. leisure facilities supplied in parks) and the social organisation in a country (e.g. the possibility of free expression of one’s ideas and the possibility of choosing the government). All those goods and services contribute to improve human existence. A society growing and developing in a sustainable way is a society capable of maintaining or improving the lives of its members by means of those goods and services over the years. In other words, the possibility of achieving a certain prosperity level today should not jeopardise the possibility of maintaining the same (or higher) prosperity level tomorrow. In order to implement this situation, human beings need to be particularly careful about how they use the resources available, especially the environment and the resources subject to depletion. If a certain prosperity level is achieved today through the exploitation and irreversible degradation of the environment, this means that tomorrow we will not be able to benefit from the services provided by the environment and to produce and benefit from the same prosperity level. In the light of the complex nature of the sustainable development concept, there is no technical and automatic solution leading to its implementation. The problem needs to be faced also with the tools of politics and economics, always bearing in mind its international dimension.