The challenges of achieving sustainable development in both developed and developing countries, and their adjustments
Introduction
Development, this refers to the continued improvement of living standards by economic growth. Usually in so called developing countries. It may be thought of as the act of making purposeful changes to improve the quality of human life. Thus scientists, policy makers, economists and advocates arrived at the idea of sustainable development.
Sustainability refers to continued use of resources indefinitely without depleting the energy or material source on which man depends.
However, sustainable development refers to development that meets the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In other words it's the use of renewable and non renewable resources in a manner that satisfies our current needs without jeopardizing future availability of resources. Sustainable development that encompasses varied global environmental concerns was the main agenda at the 1991 Rio Earth Summit that was attended by world leaders representing more than 170 governments. The main outcome of the Rio Summit was Agenda 21 which addresses sustainable development at both local and international levels. It was a blueprint for sustainable development that encompassed poverty eradication and environmental protection.
Sustainable development means different things, different people. This is well illustrated by the view points of three important disciplines traditionally concerned with the process involved. Economists are mainly concerned with growth, efficiency, and maximum use of resources. Sociologists focus on human needs and concepts like equity, empowerment and social cohesion, and cultural identity. Ecologists show their greatest concern for preserving the integrity of natural systems, for living with in the currying capacity of the environment and for dealing effectively with pollution.
The concept arose in the context of a debate between the environmental and development concerns of different groups of countries. The first world wide meeting of heads of states directed on the concern for environment took place at the Earth summit formally known as United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCEB) in Rio-be Janeiro in 1992 (Brazil capital).
The world summit in Johannesburg; it was the largest ever international gathering of its kind held to address perhaps the world most pressing issues for 10 days in August and September 2002.
Developed countries are economically developed, industrialized countries which are often referred to as the north; since most are in Northern Hemisphere such as USA, Canada, and Western European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In which the GDP exceeds and 8,200 per capita.
Developing countries are countries that behind the level of economic development of the North. They are referred to as the South and include nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia except Japan.
However, both groups of countries have embraced the concept of sustainable development although the industrialized countries are usually concerned about environmental sustainability while the developing countries are more concerned about economic development.
Indicators of sustainable development include; i) Proper sanitation, here wastes are being managed properly, access to good latrines, good drainage system. (ii) Political stability; this reduces death rate, distribution of resources and biodiversity loss. (iii) Access to safe drinking water, this promotes good health among the people. (iv) Good transport and communication system, this reduces accidents, promoting tourism sector, reduces congestion in urban areas. (v) Medium population, this reduces over exploitation of natural resources like forests, land congestion, reduces diseases and slum development, (vi) High education levels, it improves on the management and proper utilization of resources after acquiring the known lodge on the importance of those resources.
Although we need sustainable development as a core concept for making purposeful changes to improve the quality of human life for both the present and that of the future generations, there are a number of challenges that handicaps its achievement in both developed and developing countries and these include:
Inadequate financial mechanisms;
This would help to facilitate implementation by covering issues such as research and training by safety, cultural property of indigenous people and facilitate access to biological resources. Most of the developing countries rely on developed institutions like the World Bank. This has led to the delay and collapse of different planning mechanisms both at National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) and District Environmental Action Plans (DEAP). Therefore their services have been limited due to such crises (financial crises).
Ideological differences;
Both developed and developing countries tend to minimize environmental laws and policies that could promote sustainable development at different levels. Developing countries say that these policies are meant to restrain them from meeting exploitation of their resources for them to developed, for example "The user pays principle" that requires that a person who doesn't use environmental resources sustainably must pay the total cost of those resources including the losses incurred by the society sector. On the other hand, "polluter pays principle" demands a person responsible for polluting to bear the costs associated this could shift the burden of pollution from the public to the user himself.
Population increase;
The rising population and consumption of resources, there is evidence that the human population is shooting up too fast. Since the industrial revolution human population globally has grown over 9 times with some regions like china and India shooting higher. This forces more than 1.2 billion people to live on fragile lands for example arid zones, wetlands and forests that can not sustain them. This calls for an urgent move to create realistic alternatives for poor people if we are to relieve the growing pressures on the environment. The increasing population implies increased resource use like water withdraws, fuel consumption and food production among others which is colossal considering the fact that the resource base is not increasing.
Extreme poverty and economic inequality within and between nations;
Poverty refers to lack of basic needs by people and society. People fail to finance their needs such as foods, charcoal, land for settlement, agriculture and also fail to build houses and therefore opt for cheaper means such as forest depletion for timber used as fuel and also for construction of houses. With regards to economic inequality, the affluent nations and classes, for example Japan and USA among others depend on nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels and minerals. They import value from developing countries such as Uganda leaving us with artificial capital like phones.
Within developing countries, there are also significant inequalities in land distribution which cause clearing of forests by destitute landless farmers for agriculture land. Sustainability therefore can be achieved through substitution of charcoal with solar energy, Hydro Electric Power and other forms of energy. Protectionism of the economy from rich nations through the use of tariffs such as banning of some artificial goods, and taxing them. These therefore will leave the future generation with available stock to work with.
Resource depletion;
Many of the world's resources are being consumed at a rate faster than they can regenerate. Some are near extinction yet others are extinct today. Forests provide both economic value and environmental goods and services and contain 2 of every 3 land species and the highest species diversity of any system. Yet the world has already lost half of its forests and about 15.2 hectares disappear in the tropics every year. In Latin America alone more than 37 million hectares were deforested between 1990 and 2000 for agriculture. Yet between 70,000 and 80,000 km2 agricultural land is made unproductive each year by soil erosion. The segment load from soil erosion has risen over 3 times in major river basins and by 10 times in smaller more intensively used river basins. Silting is at alarming rates thereby reducing the quality of water and its biological productivity.
Global climate change;
In the atmosphere, air rises as it is heated by the sun, falls earthward as it cools, and intermixes with evaporated water from the planet's bodies of water to form clouds and precipitation. The uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the sun, along with Earth's rotation, creates rising (convection), falling (advection) and horizontal air movements (winds). The result of these processes occurring in the form of rain, snow, heat or freezing cold, at a particular place and time, is called weather. Variations in the behavior of weather over long periods, such as from one century to another, is called climate change. Climate variations occur as a response to climate forcing which can cause either a warming or a cooling of the atmosphere. Over most of the Earth's history, the forcing have been entirely natural, caused by continental drift, variability in solar radiation, changes in the Earth's orbit, and volcanic emissions. However, since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has had an effect on the global climate system, increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, trapping heat and contributing to an overall global warming. This has been facilitated by the first growing rate industrialization and urbanization. The growth of industries increased air pollution with methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons the last two being the major ozone depleting substances. The impacts of global warming could include reducing the ice caps leading to sea level rises of tens of centimeters threatening millions of people in coastal areas of high agriculture production leading to famine and food insecurity among others.
The huge foreign debt especially in developing countries
Countries in the global south are always living on debts from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Union among others which are paid back with interest. The cumulative debt of lower income countries is in far excess of 1 trillion dollars and cumulative interest payment approximately 100 million dollars per year. Many of them live in deficit and can not fund their economic development pragrammes, with such a heavy debt burden, these countries are bound to over exploit their resources in a bid to repay the debt. Besides they are bound top implement unfavourable policies that are endorsed by the money lenders some with disastrous effects on the economy.
Civil wars;
A lot of wars have been fought since the end of the Second World War and they have mainly occupied the global south in countries like Angola, Sudan, Uganda, and Liberia among others. A lot of money has been spent on facilitating governments and perceived revolutionaries. In the process many live are lost, a lot of vegetation cleared and a lot of money borrowed for buying fire arms and ammunition. Until such a time when there is peace and security of person it is still very hard to pursue sustainable development.
HIV/AIDS pandemic
This pandemic that has gripped the world for the 30 or so years has claimed a lot of lives at an equally fast rate. Many parents have died leaving young children with no one to care for them. This has been worsened by the breakup of the social security systems and safety nets especially because of poverty. Today we see many children taking on adult roles and many going in child labor. This significantly reduces their chances of getting an elementally level of education thereby reinforcing poverty with its adverse effects on sustainable development.
Political instability;
This is mainly experienced in African countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, among others and areas of northern Uganda. The people usually use forests and mountains as hideouts and as thus destroying them in the process. Instability also leads not give people an opportunity to develop themselves agriculturally because they are always on the run. It also leads to death of people, destruction of property. This undermines sustainable development since it's hard for the government to develop such areas. This could be solved through peace talks, with the rebels and the government, denouncing practices such as suicide bombing and acts of non-humanness. With this, it can be easy to reduce political instability and thus people regaining their values and peace in society thus promoting sustainable development.
Technology;
Technological progress offers the opportunity to augment consumption opportunities for a given stock wealth. Nordhaus (1995) and Weitzman and Lofgran (1997) have separately urged that a prevalence of exogenous technological change effectively absolves the needs to under take changes in natural assets. Technological change would swamp all loses of assets as estimated by the procedures (the total factor productivity) this appears to lend some support to the view that no matter what the degree of care between generation and the bequest of asset across time. It will always take care of the current generation as always the poorest. However in theories of endogenous technological change ( Romer 1990 and Salah-l-Matin, 1995) the creation of new technology uses scarce resources that could be employed else where in production. Recognition of these opportunity costs of developing new technologies go some way in dampening some of the more optimistic claim that have been made, Thus affecting sustainable development.
(b)
In view of the above challenges towards the achievement of sustainable development, there some adjustments that needs to be under taken in order to live in a sustainable manner in both the present and future generation as highlighted below:
Community participation;
This involves the use of a local approach of the Bottom top approach. Since the community is at the base level in terms of resources exploitation and use, it encourages the sharing of responsibility for project identification, design, management and execution. This also helps the community to feel a sense of ownership of the project and hence will be enthusiastic to see that it succeeds. The role of public involvement helps to affirm the public the benefits of environmental projects, as a result there will be big turn up during implementation thus sustainability of the project. Public participation is a major issue when designing developmental programs and these accounts for failure of some projects.
Technological advancement;
Technological advance is one of the avenues towards achievement of a sustainable future. On a global scale, there is a tremendous increase in the total On a global scale, there is a tremendous increase in the total number of people followed by worries for grain to feed the growing population, technological advancement has helped to relieve worries through the introduction of genetically modified species (miracle crops) to double production of output with less input. Mechanization of farms also helps to improve on the soil structure by bringing back the leached nutrients on top soil surfaces for plant growth and thus a diverse community. Mechanization also helps to trigger off extensive clearance of grassland to boost food production in addition, the use of fertilizers also help to minimize on the total acreage and thus saving wilderness and forest ecosystems which would have been cleared to increase on the total output. On the other hand, there is need for economic development through ensuring economic efficiency (using fewer inputs and achieving high outputs). However some resources are exhaustible and they are crucial in our daily living for example fossil fuel, iron ores among others. For future generations to enjoy such finite resources there is need for sustainable exploitation with recycling the used resources. This can only be done by technological advancement.
Provision of family planning services for all who wish them;
Most of environmental problems and in fact obstacles to achievement of sustainable development are tied on rapid population increase. The resources such as land, energy, food, among others which sustain human life are fixed and therefore over population means scarcity of these resources thus complication of life for both the present and future generations. Family planning methods like contraceptive use, condoms, genital mutilation, among others would cut off numbers of people leaving only a sizable figure which can fit in the amount of resources available. As result, there will be no worries for resource depletion for future generations. However this has been embraced by both the developed and developing countries.
Promotion of millennium development goals (MDGs)
The millennium development goals are the eight goals (Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, Achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE), Promote Gender Equality and Empower women, Reduce child mortality, Improve maternal health, Combating HIV/AIDS Malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, developing a Global Partnership for development)
To be achieved by 2015 a global partnership that has given on the commitment and target established at the world summit held in September 2000. They are drawn from the action and targets containing millennium declaration that was adopted by the 149 nations and signed by 147 heads of states in September 2000. For instance the "the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger is achieved alternative projects that would empower people to meet their needs as they give them resources that they need to earn their families money. For example, prosperity for all in Uganda known as "Bona bagagawale", in Kenya, there are youth projects funded by Non government organizations (NGOs) to plant trees, dispose of solid waste properly, where in Tanzania there is Kikwete fund that sponsor small enterprises. This has helped to reduce on number of people surviving directly on the natural resources for instance activities like lumbering, brick laying, agriculture, and charcoal burning as such activities leads to rapid exhaustion of resources.
The use of legal and policy framework;
Much of the terrestrial biodiversity occurs within national boundaries and such national policies and legislation play an important role in conservation for the future generations. Comprehensive environmental law is an essential tool to achieving sustainability through conservation. The law sets standards of social behavior and gives a measure of governance policies. Though conservation laws varies country to country representing varying economic and social settings there are some common aspects followed by most countries. Conservation laws should be family rooted in the constitution or any other fundamental definition of a nation's governance. These laws should address the following aspects;
(i) Land use planning and development planning, some countries have limiting the use to which specific land can be put aside. Land use controls are normally applied to restricted construction activities, mining and industrial location. This is normally done to protect unique habitats where there is high level of biodiversity. In Uganda, one can site controlled hunting areas and such areas are protected through land zoning. Therefore any activity can only be carried out upon receipt or permit.
(ii) Currying out environment impact assessment (EIA).
Alternative energy use;
Worldwide, a generic study shows that there is a heavy dependence on forests for fuel wood, charcoal, timber among others. Thus there is need for substitution of these services with other for a sustainable yield, for example bio-fuel instead of fossil fuel, energy saving stoves instead of charcoal stoves. The gestation period for some tree species like ekule, mvule is long under the circumstances, when such tree species are cut within minutes it deprives the generations to come a chance to enjoy services from such trees like fresh air recharge, protection against dangerous winds among others. When alternative energy uses are discovered there is a chance for survival of some tree species which are remarkably diverse in terms of species.
Proper provision of environmental education;
There is need for a change in the education curriculum; knowledge about environmental management should be imparted into people. Environmental education should be provided at all levels of education including community, primary schools, and pre-high education having the following objectives; environmental education should be looked at as pattern behavior in groups, individuals and society, Every person to be provided with opportunity to get knowledge, values, commitment, and skills needed to improve environmental wellbeing. Once more communities appreciate environmental management with some roles and responsibilities towards conservation, the contamination of water, land and air pollution will be no more. In addition, there has been improving in education attainment for both sexes with the percentage for female sex almost equaling to that of the male, by promotion of girl education through provision scholars. Women involvement in resource depletion is high compared to men as a result, they need skills in resource use and environment management. Also for purposes of population control there is need for them to prior knowledge about the family planning methods available.
There is needed to start a process of mediation and consensus development. Environment economic and social goals and interests should mediate among themselves and develop political consensus. Taking the right value judgments for appropriate balance between short term and long term needs and among industrial production consumption and environmental quality can lead to sustainability. Such decisions/ judgments involve difficult tradeoffs between conflicting objectives and sometimes mutually exclusive options both with far reaching consequences. Such decisions are essentially ethical and political and need to be negotiated among many sectors and interest groups.
Proper planning;
Proper planning is another major requirement major investments in industry and infrastructure that take long time to anticipate environmental impacts involve a number of actors and need to address the different operational requirements and the broad range of issues that affect sustainable development. All of which call upon proper planning so as to strike a balance between infrastructure and sustainable development this has been done through currying out Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to assess the impacts of a particular project and the mitigation measures designed to redress such areas.
Creation of awareness and sensitization;
The creation of awareness and sensitization should be done through radio programmes, journals, News papers to inform the community about environmental programmes lured to enhance environmental management. People at the local level lack knowledge and thus take long to understand the functioning of the natural system thus appreciate services from the environment. When the public gets such information in time, they can try to minimize on their negative activities that can cause environmental degradation. Thus reversing the effects to ensure achievement of sustainable development.
In conclusion, there are various challenges affecting achievement of sustainable development in both the developed and developing countries with all the responsibility for both obstacles and avenues for its achievement being tied on the developed countries, because they are heavily industrialized, high consumption of resources, and the hoarding of technology required for the sustainable use of resources. Claiming that they want developing countries to be at the same pace with them in terms of economic development. Under the circumstances, these challenges should be solved in order to promote quality life among generations in terms of resource distribution.
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The challenges of achieving sustainable development in both developed and developing countries, and their adjustments
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