Chapter 1 Our Common Journey

1
Chapter 1Our Common Journey
2
Ch 1. Contents

• Sustainable Development Common Concerns,
  Differing Emphases
• What Is To Be Sustained
• What Is To Be Developed
• The Links Between
• For How Long?
• Sustainable Development The First Decade
• Environment and Development
• Funds and Financing
• The View from Below
• Knowledge and Know-How
• Goals for a Sustainability Transition
• Meeting Human Needs
• Providing Food and Nutrition
• Nurturing Children
• Finding Shelter
• Providing an Education
• Finding Employment
• Targets for Meeting Human Needs
• Preserving Life Support Systems

3
Key Goals and Questions

• "Sustainable development"the reconciliation of
  society's developmental goals with its
  environmental limits over the long term
• SD attempts to reconcile the real conflicts
  between economy and environment and between the
  present and the future
• There is agreement that SD is "to ensure that it
  meets the needs of the present without
  compromising the ability of future generations to
  meet their own needs.
• However, key differences in the specific issues
• what is to be sustained
• what is to be developed
• how should sustained and developed entities be
  linked
• what is the extent of the future envisioned

4
Development-Sustainability Consumption-Environment

• While Population growth rates continue to
  decline, the number of people living in poverty
  has increased.
• While globalization has presented new
  opportunities for sustainable development, the
  income inequality between the richest and poorest
  countries have all increased.
• While some countries have significantly reduced
  pollution and slowed resource depletion, the
  state of the global environment has continued to
  deteriorate.

5
Goals for a Sustainability Transition

• The approach to managing SD is partly captured in
  the metaphor of Compass and Gyroscope.
• Science can provide compass direction, while the
  gyroscope of politics can maintain some
  steadiness of course across often-uncharted seas.
  
• In light of the trends of population growth,
  consumption, .. and environmental stress, a
  sustainability transition (ST) appears necessary.
• The goals of ST over the next two generations
  should be to meet the needs of a much larger but
  stabilizing human population, to sustain the life
  support systems of the planet, and to
  substantially reduce hunger and poverty.
• Preserving life support system will include
• Ensuring the Quality and Supply of Fresh Water
• Controlling Emissions into the Atmosphere
• Protecting the Oceans
• Maintaining Species and Ecosystems

6
Learning, Knowledge and Know-how

• Successfully navigating the transition lies in
  conceptualizing sustainable development as a
  process of social learning and adaptive response
  amid turbulence and surprise.
• There is little guidance on how to identify and
  create the knowledge and know-how for SD.
• Knowledge Webster's Dict... the fact or
  condition of knowing something with familiarity
  gained through experience or association...or the
  acquaintance with or understanding of a science,
  art, or technique."
• Know-how here refers to the Webster's Ninth
  New Collegiate Dictionary definition, "knowledge
  conveyed by expertise of how to do something
  smoothly and efficiently."