Part of The Student Room Group

  • Join over 1.2 million students every month
  • Accelerate your learning by 29%
  • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month

There are 3 areas to judge for sustainability. 1. Economic sustainability. 2.Social sustainability. 3. Environmental sustainability.

Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Sustainabililty This is meeting the needs of present generations without compromising those of the future. Sustainability aims to improve the quality of people's lives, now and in the future so it links to issues around growth and development, GDP and HDI and broader measures of development. Notice this means we should meet the needs of present generations as well as the future. Thus development aims to improve the quality of life of present generations now, and is part of sustainability. Economic growth (by GDP measure) is now very fast in many poor countries so we are meeting the material welfare side of the definition better than we were, but perhaps threatening the future. The rise of China and India and others is rapidly increasing the demand for finite resources. Oil and mineral supplies may be threatened one day, just as we face global warming soon as the science strongly suggests. Also this might affect the social stability of these fast changing nations. Also renewables are threatened. by Population growth, now 6.5 billion people and expected to rise to over 9 billion in 20 years. ...read more.

Middle

The media, consumer pressure, but above all strong and good governments can gradually weed out these practices. Another cause is lack of capital for modern technology. Poor farmers cannot afford modern crop strains, fertilisers or irrigation. They cannot afford to look after their soil and cannot increase yields with modern methods so they over use their land and exhaust it. Economic growth might help and land may be returned to the wild as it has in the US and EU as farm yields have grown so fast with development. Ldcs often desperately need to earn an income so apart from poor regulations and lacking money for enforcement they may be tempted to allow unsustainable exploitation of forest or minerals/oil to meet their present needs. This may be good, Dubai is using its revenues from oil and natural gas to diversify into a business/tourist centre. This may well be good governance and sustainable from their point of view, but using up resources fast is not sustainable for the planet. However in many cases this dash for money is bad for present human development, especially under dualistic elites or dictatorships who may exploit their country for their own use and not use the income development or focus on the poor or equity (Zimbabwe and Burma - oil) ...read more.

Conclusion

Clearly rural neglect is part of the problem. Rising incomes in the poor world will cut birth rates and mean less pressure on the land if it is more productive per acre. Urban migration from this overpopulation and rural neglect is putting immense pressure on water, health and crime. This is not sustainable. Carbon Trading Perhaps the most difficult problem is global warming, which must be tackled globally to bring in the developing world. If permits are given fairly to poorer nations they will gain a surplus as they have not industrialised. This could be a form of aid and would still restrict world carbon emissions f there is a tight world limit and the polluting countries like the US, Europe and China have to buy these permits. This is a big if. Carbon trading is growing, but the big polluters have yet to agree. The poorer countries argue for large quotas of permits, the rich countries disagree, the poor say we should pay for new technology to cut emissions and pay to plant vast forest. No binding agreements have been made yet. The world faces its biggest challenge to sustainability. ...read more.

The above preview is unformatted text

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level UK, European & Global Economics section.

Found what you're looking for?

  • Start learning 29% faster today
  • 150,000+ documents available
  • Just £6.99 a month

or


Not the one? Search for your essay title...
  • Join over 1.2 million students every month
  • Accelerate your learning by 29%
  • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month

See related essaysSee related essays

Related AS and A Level UK, European & Global Economics essays

  1. Why has GDP growth been so slow in Somalia?

    Commodities are subject to price volatility. The cobweb theory, introduced by Nicholas Kaldor, is an economic theory which explains why prices might be subject to periodic fluctuations in certain markets. It is based on a time lag between price and output decisions; this year's price determines next year's output.

  2. Carbon Credit Trading

    should work in synergy in the carbon market. They would complement each other by exercising strategic resource deployment. In other words, if more capital is needed to modify U.S. facilities, Heinz U.K. should give its surplus carbon credits and/or revenue collected by selling them to Heinz U.S. to keep it afloat while its costs are high.

  1. In what ways is the government attempting to increase the willingness to wor

    The general trend of the graph is one of a reduction in unemployment on the whole from 1988 to 2006. The table backs this up as in 1996 unemployment was at 2,344,000 which was 8.3% of the labour force according to the LFS and in 2005 unemployment reached 1,425,000 which is 4.7 % of the labour force.

  2. Free essay

    Globalisation and changing career patterns

    next 3 years than it has done in the past 20 (Gilligan, 2007). When you consider how far we've come in that time frame, then the options are endless. As has been covered earlier in my report, globalisation can be thought of in many different ways.

  1. Will trading fairly reduce world poverty?

    Trade is something that is done between countries which could involve in an exchange of goods and services. It's also the idea of buying and selling. Every single country in the world has to do trade and it also helps millions of people around the world.

  2. International trade - In this case I choose the country Canada. When doing a ...

    Even though Portugal has an advantage in both products. So wouldn't it be better to let Portugal produce both products? No, both countries have an amount of different production factors. But the needs are in both countries unrestricted. And further if England doesn't produce anything, then they got nothing to trade.

  1. Chinese Economic Reform

    To be sure, the move toward economic reform came about as a result of a "changed domestic and international environment, which altered the leadership's perception of the factors that affect China's national security and social stability" (Xu 247). But Shirk feels that, in those pre-Tienenmen days, such a move came

  2. Notes on the economic transformation of China.

    Capital controls on stock mkt gradually removed 1. Foreigners able to invest more freely in chinese companies 2. Financial flows growing 1. Undervalued Yuan (managed floating exchange rate system) 1. Increases china?s X competitiveness (X relatively cheaper) 2. China has largest foreign reserves in the world 3.

  • Over 160,000 pieces
    of student written work
  • Annotated by
    experienced teachers
  • Ideas and feedback to
    improve your own work