Sustainable development, according to one definition, demands that we seek ways of living, working and being that enable all people of the world to lead healthy, fulfilling, and economically secure lives without destroying the environment and without endangering the future welfare of people and the planet.
The precise meaning of sustainable development has been widely debated. For example, two years after the Brundtland Commission's Report popularized the term, over 140 definitions of sustainable development had been catalogued. The United Nations Environment Programme position is detailed, bureaucratically baffling, and owning as much promise as the Oil-for-Food program implemented by UN a decade ago. Caring for natural resources and promoting their sustainable use is an essential response of the world community to ensure its own survival and well being.
Many people reject the term "sustainable development" as an overall term in favor of sustainability, and reserve sustainable development only for specific development activities such as energy development-the former being the process by which we can achieve the latter. As the nascent ecology movement gained public support, it was further significantly buttressed by the publication of the ground-breaking and best-selling book "Silent Spring" in 1962. Rachel Carson's research stunned the American population. No one could have imagined what a fantastic impact this environmental "clarion call" would have, not only on those ecologists already on board with the growing environmental movement, but more crucially upon the heretofore ignorant general public. Written between the years of 1958 and 1962, Rachel Carson researched and composed this book. She wrote passionately about the environment at large as well as the poisonous effects of insecticides and pesticides upon the songbird population in the United States. "What happens in nature is not allowed to happen in the modern, chemical-drenched world," she wrote, "where spraying destroys not only the insects, but also their principal enemy, the birds. When later there is a resurgence of the insect population, as almost always happens, the birds are not there to keep their numbers in check." Carson explained that the balance of nature was being set out of balance by the way in which humans were deleteriously affecting the planet. The book was brilliantly researched and reported; and the book's success gave rise to public support for changes to the way chemicals were managed by governments and by private industries. The world at large had finally taken notice of the way in which individuals, associations, corporations and governments were responsible for the care of the planet on which they lived.
Conservationism gave birth to serious ecological considerations and, with the help of dedicated men and women including Rachel Carson, the ecology movement begat the beginning of the modern-day environmental movement. Sustainable development is one of those issues that is essential the environmental movement. It is an important issue to the health of the planet, the people who live on this planet and those who will inherit it from us when we are all dismissed from its surface. For these reasons, it is our imperative charge to deal wisely with this issue and resolve it for the good of all generations to come.
