Latin American countries show accelerated growth that does not respond to a harmonious development of all its components. A modern sector is born, in which physical expression and consumption patterns do not differ substantively from developed countries and, on the other hand, the population in conditions of poverty increases, which occupies the territory without control, causing environmental problems that do not have been properly cared for. Therefore, the search for how to sustain this economic and social development, with emphasis on participation and equity, that contribute to the achievement of sustainable communities, is urgent. This article presents some important national and international initiatives to drive sustainable and sustainable development in today's societies.
INTRODUCTION
Today, the awareness that it is necessary to preserve and maintain the environment is reflected in practically all areas of work. The dynamic collaboration established between the Organization and governments, the scientific community and the private sector are generating new knowledge and concrete measures to solve global environmental problems, that is, it is a priority issue in almost all organizations in the world.
The economic system based on maximum production, consumption, unlimited exploitation of resources and profit as the only criterion for good economic progress is unsustainable. A limited planet cannot indefinitely supply the resources that this exploitation would demand. For this reason, the idea has been imposed that we must go to a real development, which allows the improvement of living conditions, but compatible with a rational exploitation of the planet that takes care of the environment, it is called sustainable development.
Sustainable development can be defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. UN World Environment Commission, 1987.
Sustainability, or sustainability, is built on the sub-themes of natural capital, the degradation of natural capital, solutions, compromises, and how individuals matter. G. Tyler Myller, 2007.
Sustainability is the ability of various earth systems, including economies and cultural systems, to survive and adapt indefinitely to changing environmental conditions.
The scope of sustainable development can be conceptually divided into three parts: environmental, economic and social. The social aspect is considered due to the relationship between social welfare with the environment and economic prosperity.
Society's needs such as food, clothing, housing, work, among others, must be met, because if poverty is common, the world will be headed for catastrophes of various kinds, including ecological ones. Likewise, development and social welfare are limited by the technological level, the resources of the environment, and the capacity of the environment to absorb the effects of human activity.
Faced with this situation, the possibility of improving technology and social organization is raised so that the environment can recover at the same rate as it is affected by human activity.
The point of view of sustainable development emphasizes that activities should be considered within a natural system that has its laws. Resources should be used without disrupting the basic mechanisms of the functioning of nature.
A change of mind is slow and difficult. It requires consolidating new values. To do so, educational and informative programs are of special importance. It is of great interest to publicize examples of sustainable actions, promote public statements and political commitments, develop programs that aim to promote this type of development.
To achieve environmental sustainability, it is essential that natural resources are used wisely and that the complex ecosystems on which our survival depends are protected. It must be taken into account that sustainability cannot be achieved with current consumption and resource use models. Soils are degrading at an alarming rate. Plant and animal species are disappearing at an unprecedented rate. Climate changes are causing a rise in sea level and increasing the danger of droughts and floods. Fishing and other marine resources are overexploited, among others.
A sustainable or environmentally sustainable society meets the basic requirements of its people in a fair and equitable manner without degrading or depleting the natural capital that these resources supply. G. Tyler Myller, 2007.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE SUSTAINABLE OR SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES WITHOUT HARMING THE ENVIRONMENT?
Today the most critical environmental threat in history is confronted, among these are the deterioration of the soil, water and marine resources, essential for growing food production. Air pollution with direct effects on health, loss of biodiversity and its modest, but no less important contribution to damage to the ozone layer and global climate change. Simultaneously, serious human problems such as poverty and uncontrolled population growth are faced.
Today more than ever it is necessary to protect our environmental capital, to live off the interests that it provides us. If we deplete, throw away or waste this capital, we will undoubtedly go from a sustainable lifestyle to an unsustainable one.
The modern vision of development not only seeks to raise the levels of well-being of today's human societies, but is also concerned with the possibility of inheriting to future generations a planet with acceptable levels of environmental and economic health.
Economic growth is an increase in the ability of a country to provide its people with goods and services. To meet this increase requires population growth, more producers and consumers, more production and consumption per person, or both.
According to G. Tyler Miller, 2007, A sustainable or environmentally sustainable society, covers the basic requirements of its people in a fair and equitable manner without degrading or depleting the natural capital that these resources supply.
During this century, many analysts call for a greater emphasis on environmentally sustainable economic development. The goal is to use political and economic systems to encourage the most environmentally sustainable and beneficial forms of economic growth and to discourage the environmentally harmful or unsustainable forms of economic growth.
The main causes of environmental problems are population growth, waste of resources, poverty, low ecological responsibility and ecological ignorance.
Poverty is a great threat to human health and the environment, the poorest people on the planet are the ones who suffer the most from pollution and environmental degradation. The consumption of resources is linked to both poverty and wealth. The poor consume less because they do not have enough food, water and other resources to meet their basic needs. Many of the more economically prosperous consume more by using and wasting far more resources than they need.
According to this approach, sustainable development must simultaneously achieve:
- Satisfy the needs of the present, fostering an economic activity that supplies the necessary goods to the entire world population. The Commission highlighted "the basic needs of the world's poor, to whom priority attention must be given." Meeting the needs of the future, minimizing the negative effects of economic activity, both on resource consumption and on the generation of waste, in such a way that it is bearable for the next generations.
When our actions entail unavoidable future costs, for example the exploitation of non-renewable minerals, ways must be found to fully compensate for the negative effect that is occurring, for example by developing new technologies to replace the spent resource.
A vision of the relationships between man and nature is firmly established in the human mentality that leads us to think that:
- Humanity's success is based on the control and dominance of nature. Earth has an unlimited amount of resources at the disposal of humans.
The global economic dynamics that have occurred in recent years have contributed directly and indirectly to addressing the problems of environmental degradation on a world scale, with greater repercussions in developing countries such as Venezuela. The search for solutions to environmental problems is not an easy task, since it is about making the economy grow at sustained rates in harmony with the environment, which implies the combination of efforts of all sectors of society.
To achieve consistency, it is necessary to agree and create alliances that lead to the modification of production and consumption patterns and to give the opportunity to build a cleaner, fairer and more equitable society, contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of all the world.
The concept of sustainable development can be represented by a triangle in which the interrelation between economic growth, equity (social, economic and environmental) and environmental sustainability is represented. Figure 1.
Figure 1. Peter Nijkamp's Triangle
Environmental quality is affected by interactions between population size, resource consumption, and technology. Once environmental problems and the root causes of their causes have been identified, the next step should be to understand how they are connected. In such a way, joining this with all the above mentioned, if it is necessary to have sustainable and sustainable societies without harming the environment.
The problem arises due to the different interpretations that are had about these concepts, hence the recommendation of their precision in order to establish the minimum standards of understanding about what is being talked about.
The very term "sustainable" is elastic and is applied in different fields such as production, ecology, economy, environment, society or development. It refers to sustainable resources that offer the possibility of being renewed over time or can be reused, thus ensuring their benefit for subsequent human generations. In this sense, it is understood that the success of sustainability is directly related to meeting the needs of people in the present, without compromising their future needs.
Sustainable development must be maintained over time to be sustainable.
Ideally, sustainable development is fully achieved when the three objectives are in balance, as illustrated by the Nijkamp triangle that graphically represents the simultaneous satisfaction between economic growth, social equity and environmental sustainability to lead to development. sustainable, central area of the triangle.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in its Human Development Report, 1996. Ediciones Mundi-Prensa. Madrid establishes the following links between economic growth and development to make it sustainable: Equity: The greater the equality with which the GNP and economic opportunities are distributed, the more likely they will be translated into an improvement in human well-being. Employment opportunities: Economic growth is realized in people's lives when they are offered productive and well-paid work. Access to producer goods: Economic opportunities for many people can be increased with access to producer goods, particularly land, physical infrastructure, and financial credit; the state can do a lot in all these spheres,intervening to try to level the playing field.
Social spending: Governments and communities must channel a significant portion of public income towards the highest priority social spending, particularly through the provision of basic social services for all. Gender equality: By providing women with better opportunities and better access to education, childcare, credit and employment. Good governance: Those in power place high priority on the needs of the entire population and people participate in decision-making at many levels. An active civil society: Non-governmental organizations and community groups not only complement government services by reaching the target population,they also play an essential role in mobilizing public opinion and community action to help determine human development priorities.
In this line, the concept of sustainability refers to the interrelation of three elements: (1) Environmental sustainability, which refers to the need for the impact of the development process not to irreversibly destroy the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.
(2) Social sustainability, the essential aspects of which are the strengthening of a style of development that does not perpetuate or deepen poverty and, therefore, social exclusion, but has as one of its central objectives the eradication of poverty and justice social, and social participation in decision-making, that is, that communities and citizens take ownership and be a fundamental part of the development process. (3) Economic sustainability, understood as economic growth interrelated with the two previous elements. In short, the achievement of sustainable human development will be the result of a new type of economic growth that promotes social equity and establishes a non-destructive relationship with nature.
In figure No.2, it can be seen how the points of contact between the elements of sustainable development, delimit common aspects of man's advancement, such as: The harmonious relationship between the Economic and the Social can determine a degree of development of the level of lifetime; In the area of contact between the Economic and the Environmental, the elements that allow the development of ecological Productions can be found; In the area between the Social - the Environmental, environmental awareness can develop, in which environmental education plays its role. All these interactions increase or decrease depending on the political wills and the actions and development of the management of environmental education, all these interactions make up, in the long run, elements that determine, in a fairly generalized way,the features and characteristics of the quality of life of people, regions and nations, which increases or decreases depending on the educational level of individuals, hence its importance.
Figure No.2 (Points of contact in the interaction between the components of sustainable development, UNESCO 2003).
From what has been said above, it follows that sustainable human development must allow a substantial improvement in the quality of life of the great majority of a society, or a community, which in turn should lead to the reproduction of the ecosystem in which it is located. inserted. This would be a fundamental criterion for discerning the quality and sustainability of the development being promoted. Among many aspects that could be taken into account for the definition of quality of life, the eradication of poverty is central, at least for the Third World. There is a broad international consensus about the need to reverse the trend of increasing polarization between rich and poor countries and between the richest and poorest strata in each country, which is ethically and materially unsustainable;Likewise, there is consensus that poverty has a negative impact on the natural environment and that its eradication is necessary for the achievement of sustainable human development.
THE PARADIGM OF SUSTAINABLE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Until the decade of the eighties, several development concepts already included in their content the benefit of nature and the rational use of its resources, this was not enough to demonstrate the imperative of taking seriously the extension of its name. Thus it became evident the need to find a new term to catalog development in an emerging and all-encompassing spectrum, or what is the same, the environment.
Therefore, numerous conceptual approaches to the stated purpose emerged, until the final appearance of the new sustainable or sustainable surname that has been awarded to the term, with the aim of pondering its environmental facet and subsequently reflecting it by the World Commission on the Environment and the Development (1987), in the report Nuestro Futuro Común or document antecedent to what turned out to be the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992.
Regardless of one or the other definitions, the most sensible contents that have been provided on sustainable development, point towards the achievement of growth with economic efficiency, guaranteeing progress and social equity through the solution of the basic needs of the population. and the safeguarding of cultures, based on the functioning and ecological efficiency of biophysical systems.
It is possible to live more sustainably by shifting from a high-performing economy to a low-performing one. Most industrially advanced countries have high-performance economies that attempt to boost economic growth by increasing the flow of matter and energy resources through their economic systems. These resources flow through the economies of these societies into sinks (air, water, soil, organisms), where pollutants can accumulate in very harmful levels for today's societies.
A temporary solution to this problem is to convert a high-performance economy to an economy of recycling matter and circular reuse that emits into nature. This means recycling and reusing most of our emissions of matter within the same economy, rather than depositing them in the environment.
In any case, the new paradigm of sustainability presupposes reaching a harmony between all the attributes that correspond to development, namely, its edges referring to the economy, society, nature, culture and technology, where the environmental dimension is formed integral part of the development process.
Otherwise, it is interpreted that sustainable development is inherently: the only possible viable option to safeguard Humanity, the adoption of a new human ethic towards nature, a motive for intergenerational solidarity, a humanist and progressive theory, the sense of responsibility for saving the conditions that sustain life on the planet, a motive for world peace and stability, a sensible alternative to existing models of development and the globalization of environmental solidarity.
The emerging paradigm of sustainability constitutes an impeccable, sensible and apparently ideal theory to save the human species from the environmental holocaust, but it certainly faces the obstacles of not offering a viable methodological and practical guide, consisting of a chimera to implement in the world. current, the impossibility of taking as a goal for the future and ideologically because it represents a new formula of dependency and a recipe for neocolonialism for the Third World.
Faced with such a complex crossroads, questions wander about the alternatives destined to accept, reject or take as a reference the theory of sustainability. The latter seems to be the most sensible, as long as the minimum subjective conditions do not exist to count on the high dose of altruism that the tacit implementation of sustainable development requires.
Among the demands that the new paradigm of sustainable development imposes on current science and technology, it is necessary to reorient new technologies towards the substitution of natural resources and the prevention of environmental pollution, developing relevant and coherent programs that promote education. environmental, contribute to mitigate inequalities between rich and poor and promote the search for quality of life rather than the standard of living of the population.
If in order to reach the levels of development that humanity has today, it has been necessary to go through historical processes nuanced by industrial and scientific-technical revolutions, it is not unreasonable to affirm that to access sustainable development, it will be necessary to go through an environmental revolution; that unlike its precedents, it will obey the environmental evolution of human thought, due to which it would only be achievable in an unpredictable period of time, as long as the conditions that have led to the current anti-development disappear, which will still prevail for a long time. time on the planet.
Unavoidably, jumping from the current pre-history of human development to an environmental era, where sustainable development is established, implies going beyond a complex, difficult and lengthy process of revolution in human consciousness, which banishes all signs of selfishness and takes hold of a high dose of altruism, to successfully face the course that leads to prolonging the stay of Homo sapiens on Earth.
The changes towards sustainability presuppose putting into operation the capacity of society to appeal to other alternatives (industrial, technological, biotechnologies, etc.), capable of complementing the demands and human needs, to introduce the most innovative scientific and technological advances in sustainable development matter.
Aware of the abysmal ignorance that human beings treasure about their environment and their current inability to face sustainable development, but hoping that sooner or later the sensitivity for their environment and their own existence will lead to a change towards the environment, then it is possible to predict that only in a very long period of time impossible to determine, Humanity can aspire to that longed for sustainable development.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
In our country there has been significant progress in terms of economic development but also in social, environmental and cultural issues. Macroeconomic indices indicate this. However, the commitment to a new progress focused on the human person is not an easy task to carry out, especially when to achieve it we appeal to the reflective capacity of people.
This should allow, to carry out a process of awareness of the social responsibility that each and every one of us have, in the construction of a participatory country, in solidarity, without poverty, that is, a country that truly welcomes its citizens and offers real opportunities for economic, personal and social development, for all, without harming or altering the conditions of the environment. But it is also important that there is a political will on the part of the political parties and the government, which allows us to consolidate the democratization of our institutions.
Faced with the crossroads that Humanity faces, of recognizing or ignoring the environmental danger that hangs over the human species itself, there is no doubt in qualifying as unfortunate, any manifestation of development that until now has had a place on Earth, by denying as a common factor within development, the inclusion of complexity and environmental diversity, in its natural, social, economic, cultural and technological components.
Objectively the prevailing development models up to the present, show evident anthropocentric, productivist and reductionist approaches, by denying the inhuman and pondering human ignorance and arrogance, to impose a true tyranny on the environment, which implores to save Homo sapiens, in detriment of the very bases that sustain human life. Any attempt to protect the human being and not its environment that includes it, as it will contribute to the acceleration of the extinction of this species, the only one capable of causing its own disappearance on the face of the Earth.
Today the need for environmental knowledge emerges where awareness of the complexity of the environment becomes a starting point to assume its dimension, it becomes urgent to rethink the coordinates of science, with the intention that life and language itself can adjust to the new problems that environmental degradation presents, linking the scientific and academic world to a daily practice that needs to be transformed.
Sustainable development, while today it is presented as an unattainable utopia, has come to establish itself as an alternative that requires awareness of the human being and the necessary education and training, to put into practice the search for its own and imaginative solutions to the harmony that needs to be achieved with the extreme environmental complexity, and only in this way to propitiate the necessary change in human society, aware of its tribute to that desired and possible change, towards a better world.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. HISTORY AND GENESIS OF THE CONCEPT, 2004.
GONZÁLEZ ARENCIBIA, M. A GRAPH OF THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT. FROM GROWTH TO SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, 2006.
G. TYLER MILLER JR. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. 2007.
BRUNDTLAND REPORT, OUR COMMON FUTURE, PREPARED BY THE UN WORLD COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT, 1987.
REPORT ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (UNDP), MADRID 1996
