What is sustainable development?

Poverty
Millions of people in the world suffer from poor living conditions.

Picture from WHO.

Sustainable development is about living on planet Earth without taking more than can be naturally replaced.

Having good health, good living conditions and economic wealth.

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We cannot use the earth's resources and produce wastes without thinking about how it may cause problems now and in the future.

Important milestones

The World Commission on Economic Development ask the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland to look at world development.

She was the first to bring together the ideas of social equality, economic growth and environmental protection under the name of 'sustainable development.'

The report includes the definition of SD as:

'development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.'

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Sustainable development timeline

A United Nations conference looked at how human activity was affecting the global environment.

Countries needed to think about how they could improve the living standards of their peoples without adding to pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction.

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Called 'Rio +10 years' the conference looked mainly at social issues.

Targets were set to reduce poverty and increase people's access to safe drinking water and sanitation. These problems cause death and disease in many developing nations.

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Climate change and global warming were the main issues discussed at Kyoto.

Agreements were made to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including reversing carbon dioxide emissions, to their 1990 levels. These targets should be reached by the year 2012.

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The Rio Earth Summit discussed problems in social equality, economic development and environmental protection. It led to important agreements on climate change, biodiversity and Agenda 21: an agreement for sustainable development in the 21st century.

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