Sustainable Development

Since Gandhi expressed this opinion about 60 years ago the world’s population has doubled to six billion, and there are still few signs that we are acting to reduce consumption.

It is simply not possible for all the world to consume finite resources, emit global-warming and ozone-depleting gases, or pollute and trash the environment at the rate we in the West are doing it. We can be absolutely certain that continuing to do so will lead to the extinction, not just of the thousands of other species that share the planet with us, but also of the human race. They key to avoiding impending planetary disaster is the concept of sustainable development.

A nation can be described as ‘developing’ if the way of life of its people is improving. In other words, there is a steady improvement in their health, education, homes, transport systems, energy supplies, and so on. But to be sustainable, this development must go ahead without irreversible damage to wildlife habitats and resources such as soil, water, fisheries, timber, and other plants and animals used for food, clothing, medicines, etc. If some development project severely damages these resources by causing pollution, habitat destruction, excessive harvesting, or in any other way it is not sustainable.

Successful sustainable development depends on the rate at which renewable resources such as fisheries and timber are exploited. These resources replenish themselves given time, and the only way they can be exploited in a sustainable way is by taking no more that can be regularly harvested without causing a decline in the basic stock of the resource. Maximum yield is difficult to achieve because it depends on accurately calculating the amount of a resource and the time needed to replenish losses. We can only estimate the biomass of fish in the sea and the time needed for fish to grow to maturity, and to sustainably exploit tropical rainforests we need to establish a level of selective harvesting so that no more is extracted than can regenerate.

It is vitally important that development is not designed for short-term gain, like over-grazing an area of vegetation to quickly fatten stock, while ignoring the long-term costs which, in this case, could turn the area into desert. If developing nations copy the rich Western nations’ relentless pursuit of short-term gain while ignoring long-term costs then environmental disaster is guaranteed. The time is ripe for us all to set our sights on a more sustainable way of life.

In remote parts of the South American rainforests there are a few native tribes who have lived and thrived in their homelands for thousands of years. They have evolved a way of life steeped in centuries-old communal traditions, in which their environment supplies all their needs without pollution or habitat destruction. Can introducing such people to our stressed-out, high tech, dog-eat-dog existence, with traffic congestion, urban sprawl, high crime rates, the internet, and mobile phones, be described as worthwhile development?

There is a traditional method of shifting agriculture which does not destroy forests. A small area is cleared and burned and the ash used to fertilze the soil. Each plot grows a wide variety of crops which mature at different times and grow to different heights, forming a multi-layered garden. When yields drop after two or three years the plot is left to regenerate and a new one opened some distance away.