ASM Shahidul Haque
A development worker
Email: shahidulhaque72@gmail.com
This is part six of a series of blog “A General Outline of Evolution of NGO and Development Work in Bangladesh“. Read previous parts here.“
Sustainable development is defined as, development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Some authors tried to explain it with the depletion of renewable natural resources in a manner that does not diminish their “renewable” usefulness for future generations. Some economic definitions are focused on optimal resource management, by concentrating on “maximizing the net benefits of economic development, subject to maintaining the services and quality of natural resources”. Other economic definitions have focused on the broader notion that “the use of resources today should not reduce real incomes in the future”. It is also often defined as development that improves health care, education, and social well-being. It calls for development process where, ‘men, women, and children must be the centre of attention–with development woven around people, not people around development”.
Sustainable development gives importance on equity. Equity not only for present generation but also equity for human generations yet to come, whose interests are not represented by standard economic analyses or by market forces that discount the future.
Sustainable development has four critical, interacting dimensions: economic, ethical, political, and cultural.
Economic Dimensions:
Sustainable development calls for changing consumption patterns that needlessly threaten the biodiversity of other countries. Economic efficiency helps maximize income. It is measured against the ideal of Pareto optimality, which encourages actions that will improve the welfare of at least one individual without worsening the situation of anyone else. The idealized, perfectly competitive economy is an important (Pareto optimal) benchmark, where (efficient) market prices play a key role in both allocating productive resources to maximize output, and ensuring optimal consumption choices which maximize consumer utility.
Sometime shadow prices may be used to cover up economic distortions. Generally a project is taken if cost-benefit analysis shows that net benefits are positive (NPV>0). It is based on the weaker ‘quasi’ Pareto condition, which assumes that such net benefits could be redistributed from potential gainers to losers—leaving no one worse off than before. Thus economic decisions have great impact on sustainable development.
Ethical Dimension:
There is an ethical dimension of sustainable development. There can be confusion between the societal dimensions with the individual dimension due to ethics. Society is an idea, which varies from individual to individual. Ethics demand harmonious integration between human and social development.
When society as a whole is considered for sustainable development, ethical questions arise more powerfully. The idea about spirit, explicit acknowledges about the spirituality in nature, human beings, and society automatically incorporates in sustainable development process. The responsibility to preserve and protect ecology, species, natural beauty, natural resources is greatly affected by the ethical standard of the decision makers to create an ethically sustainable development process.
Political Dimension:
The political model of sustainable development is somewhat different from other factors. Politics is related with achieving the goal of sustainable development. It deals with how to achieve, from public policies and public policy making. Politics is very important for at least two reasons. First of all, the nature of the society is complex, uncertain and the diversity of social actors make it necessary that decision making be widely dispersed as possible incorporating all the voices at stake. Government decisions need political legitimating.
Secondly, most elements in a sustainable society require a strong involvement of the citizens that must be complicit with sustainable development and act accordingly to their attitude and behavior.
Cultural Dimension:
Culture is generally defined as a blueprint according to which the members of a society or a group go about their daily lives. Culture is a multitude of shared values, shared beliefs, and common expectations around which people organize their lives.
The cultural factors from the ideational dimension have a great effect on the material and organizational dimensions. Society is not culturally homogenous. It is made up of many small groups, called subcultures. Some subculture groups identify themselves as promoting sustainability, thereby potentially alienating other groups. Thus there can be conflict in subcultures. The prioritization of few groups over others in business, environmental protection, legislations can create inequality among subcultures. Sustainability calls for inclusion of interests of different subcultures.
Conclusions:
The discussion above clearly shows that the path of sustainable development is very complex. Economics is one of the dimensions in achieving sustainable development. It is very difficult to set priority in allocation of resources. It is even more difficult to forgo present consumption and production process for achieving sustainable development. Ethical issues can motivate or discourage the leadership to adopt policies leading to sustainable development. Most crucial part in sustainable development is played by political decisions. Political direction often reflects the perception of the citizens. On the other hand citizens can be influenced by able political leadership. Overall, culture shapes and directs the will of the people, ethical view points, political directives and economic processes. So, all the factors combined together plays important role in the path of achieving sustainable development.