SUSTAINABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Sustainability and Environmental Issues

Table of Contents

Introduction4

Discussion4

Task 14

Sustainable Development4

Key Principles of Sustainable Development6

Environmental and Economic Integration6

Conservation of Natural Resources and Maintenance of Biological Diversity6

Precaution, Prevention and Evaluation7

Cooperation, Partnership and Participation7

Education, Training and Awareness8

Liveability Principles8

Provision of More Transportation Choices8

Promotion of Reasonable & Affordable Housing8

Enhancement of Economic Competitiveness9

Strengthening of Existing Communities9

Assessment of Communities and Neighbourhoods9

Task 210

Biotechnology and its Impact on Production, Trade and Diversity10

Task 311

Sustainability in Project Management11

Task 412

Agenda 2112

Agenda 21 Structure13

First Section13

Second Section14

Third Section14

Fourth Section14

Conclusion15

References16

Sustainability and Environmental Issues

Introduction

This paper is intended to discuss the principles of sustainable development; biotechnology and its impacts; evaluation of the concept of sustainable development in project management; and review of the effect of the changes towards sustainability, involving recently devised policies and legislation for encouraging this change. Agenda 21 is emphasized in this report.

Discussion

Task 1

Sustainable Development

The term sustainable development came into use after the publication of the Brundtland Commission's report “Our Common Future” in 1987. According to the reports, two key concepts in sustainable development are

needs, and in particular the fundamental needs of the poor people of world, to which paramount precedence should be imparted; and

limitations, and mainly those inflicted by the status of social organization and technology on the ability of environment to fulfil present and future needs.

Broadly defined, an environmental or ecological approach to sustainability tends to stress ecological constraints, or the carrying capacity of a territory, prior to allowing the expansion of development. In the Strategy for Sustainable Living, endorsed in 1991 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), sustainable development is, in essence, defined as making better the human life quality while living in the supporting ecosystems' carrying capacity.

As a concept, sustainable development is a dynamic, open, and evolving idea that can be accommodated to conform to very varied circumstances and contexts across places, time and scales. Spaces are opened up by it for participation at multiple levels, within and across activity sectors, from local to global, and in institutions of governance, civil society and business to redefine and reinterpret its implication to accommodate their own activities, like the sustainability concept that has been conformed to deal with diverse challenging situations, ranging from urban planning to sustainable livelihoods. (Hopwood B. et al, 2005, p. 38- 52)

A collective responsibility was created by the Johannesburg Declaration to press forward and support the interdependent and mutually making stronger sustainable development pillars: environmental protection, social development and economic development at local, national, regional, and international levels. By this means, a running concern was addressed by the World Summit over the environment and development limits, in which development was broadly considered exclusively as economic development.

The debate of sustainable development is on the basis of the assumption that three types of capital are needed to be managed by societies (economic, social, and natural), which may be non- substitutable and have irreversible consumption. Some authors point to the fact that economic capital cannot necessarily substitute natural ...