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Sustainable Development; Critics and different views

Sustainable development is a wide spread concept. This is because it deals with almost each and every aspect of life. Different public and private organizations, socialists and environmentalists presented their views about the Sustainable development and defined this concept in different ways. Sustainable development is an integrated approach that includes economy, environment and society. All of these three elements should be kept in balance but it is difficult to manage them in equality.

"Three Sectors: Economy, Environment, and Society" is the first and most basic view. This model divides sustainable development into economy, environment and society. These are three interconnected rings and where these intersect each other; sustainable development takes place. It is the most simple model and mutually exclusive as well. It means that there is a trade-off between these three elements. Economic growth can destroy environment or society and vice versa. Also there is an issue of compartmentalization; it means the economist will focus on economy, environmentalist will work for environment, and socialist will give priority to society. This trade-off causes separation between them. The approach of weak sustainable was raised by capitalists; it says that the natural capital can be substituted by manufacture capital. But in my point of view no one can ever substitute the feeling of a fresh breath while sitting in the middle of a jungle or park after a morning walk with anything else. This approach towards sustainable development emphasizes more on technical fixes, and it does not address the deep-rooted implications like unemployment, illiteracy, poverty or cultural issues etc.

"Political Reality: Prioritizing the Economy" is the second view. It describes the reality of today's priorities. The will power of government authorities and other large organizations is majorly depends on economy and its growth. For example, British government defined sustainable development as a high level of economic growth. That clarifies the lack of integration in the three key elements of sustainable development. The economic growth only provides an average growth rate and here the inequality rises among intra-generations. By seeing the average growth, political authorities defines their governance level but there should be more of an equitable approach. They believe that trickledown theory will satisfy the needs of poor also, but that is not happening. In India, only 1% of the elite class earns 60% of the total income. Inequity in three elements is the major drawback in this view towards sustainable development. In the critics, environmentalists raises questions like; can we pay the loss of any animal's life in monetary terms? Capitalists count everything in monetary terms but they cannot reverse the impact of CFC's on ozone layer by paying money to the government as carbon taxes. These taxes can reduce the impact on environment but they cannot save or preserve environment from human interventions.

"Material Reality: Nesting Economy in Society and Environment" is the third view and fulfills the limitation of the three integrated circle model. It says economy is a subset of society and environment. Social interactions and economy are human activities that are incurred within the environment. Human cannot survive without social interactions and economics as well in the today’s world, which is why human activities are the part of human life and are not separate from environment. Human is extract materials from environment to form clothes, shelter, food, energy and all the other modern consumer goods and the waste produced is also left in the environment to meet human needs. Economic activities are the monetary activities which include transfer of commodities with cash but there are other non-monetary activities as well that are the part of human life. For example, mother works in her house but not gets paid and the indigenous knowledge about the pharmaceuticals and herbs are not gained by investing in education. These non-monetary activities are because of the social interactions of humans. This is the reason why the economy lies in and is a part of social interactions.

"Multi-Layered and Multi-Faceted" is a fourth view and presented a major drawback of three sector model including. That model defines each element as a unified entity. But that is not the case. Environment, economy, and society have different scales in different areas and also in same area. All the forests and deserts in the world have different and unique temperature and rainfall patterns. Like desert in Pakistan is fertile but the desert in Middle East have no fertility in its soil and almost shrubs does not grow. Even in a single tree, environment can be different. Societal norms and values are different for different areas. In western world there is a culture of individualism and in east there is a culture of collectivism. It is also seen that the poor have strong society structure and social values as compare to the rich. Economic condition and growth is different for different areas. Even in a single town, some of the areas might be developed economically and some might be under-developed. This model defines that all three elements are not constant, these varies with time, place, and even they can vary at the same place. These are diverse elements but the capitalism destroys the diversity for monetary benefits and put the humanity and environment on risk. Three sector model was simple and ignored the richness in three elements of sustainable development.
"Change of Viewpoints: Breaking Down the Boundaries" is the fifth view and points out a major drawback of previous studies. There was a bold boundary in all the previous studies between economy, environment and society. In reality there are no boundaries in-between them. Economists talk about the activities that can be counted in monetary terms only. But in real world, there are activities that cannot be counted in monetary terms, like a mother does all the house jobs without getting paid. Human needs are not satisfied by economic activities only. By combining all the activities that happened as economic activities and social interaction, we combine them as a single term called human activities and well being. These human activities take place in the environment continuously. Humans cannot survive without environment and continuously human is taking out resources from the environment and the waste produced in the production process is also left in the environment. So, this model eliminates the boundaries and makes a dotted line between the three elements of sustainable development.
"Principles of Sustainable Development" defines the ethical values or guidelines that clarify the priorities in decision making process towards sustainable development. It provides main principles toward the solution of issues related to all three elements of sustainable development individually or issues that incur in a mix of all these elements.
(i)   Inter-generational equity - Futurity
(ii)  Intra-generational equity - Social justice
(iii) Geographical equity - Trans-frontier responsibility
(iv) Procedural equity - People treated openly and fairly and the right of participation
(v)  Inter-species equity - Importance of biodiversity

According to the definition of sustainable development by brundtland commission: fulfill the needs of current generation without effecting or destroying the resources left for the future generations to meet their needs, the first principle focuses on the equity for current generation. Previous models do not talk about the equity in distribution of resources. Second principle says; maintain equity in the distribution of resources among the current and future generations. Third principle says that the resources must be distributed equitably among different geographical places. Today there is a big discrimination between the developed, developing, and under-developed countries. Procedural equity is the fourth principle and it talks about the right of participation for people in politics and socio-economic activities. Democracy should be assured in every aspect of life for the general public. Fifth principle provides a priority of conserving the biological diversity. Human in the name of so called industrialization and development destroyed and continuously destroying biodiversity day by day. This principle defines a clear guideline for the protection of animals and plants species as well for sustainable development, because human is a part of environment and nature. The destruction of biodiversity can lead the human life towards distinction.

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