Setting the Context for Evaluating Sustainable Development - Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment - page 6

Agenda 21, the Millennium development goals and the Plan of
Implementation of the Summit. The leadership of the United Nations
was also reaffirmed as the most universal and representative organisa-
tion in the world which is best placed to promote sustainable develop-
ment, and a commitment to monitor progress at regular intervals
towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals and
objectives was undertaken under the slogan 'Making it happen!' (http://
www.un.org/). Finally, it also acknowledged the key role played by
education as the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable
development, increasing people's capacities to transform their visions
for society into reality. In recognition of the importance of education for
sustainable and responsible development, the United Nations General
Assembly declared 2005-2014 the UN Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development while UNESCO was requested to lead and to
develop an International Implementation Scheme for the Decade.
The signatories of these various agreements embraced the notion
that environmental issues often had their origins in the behaviour of
the human race. When humans dump toxic chemicals or do not seek to
conserve energy, or create social unrest leading to misuse or damage to
existing resources, their behaviour has an impact on the environment.
When the legal systems and regulations employed by governments
make it difficult or even impossible to act in an environmentally
friendly way, this aspect of human organisation has a detrimental
impact on environmental issues. When the striving for economic
growth results in poor use of the earth's resources, this human action
and policy lead to more degradation of the environment. When there
are big differentials between those who have and those who have not,
unrest can follow and the damage can be substantial. The threat of ter-
rorists gaining access to nuclear bombs is now spoken of quite openly
and the terrorists gain much of their support from those who are eco-
nomically or politically disadvantaged.
A tangled web of issues leads to actions that eventually have an
impact on the environment. The way we live affects the world on a
global scale when we piece the whole of the jigsaw together. In the
words of John Donne, 'no man is an island entire of itself' (Donne,
1623). The environment at one level is fairly robust, taking care of the
events that occur over time in a very practical way which is often not
apparent to a single generation. At another level, it can be presented as
a very sensitive entity in which it is easy, through the interactions of
man, to destabilise the whole superstructure and the interrelationships
which provide the balance and allow the life forms that exist today to
survive and prosper. It is the survival of what we have today, the bio-
diversity, the climatic conditions, the level of water supply and so forth
that provides the basis for the argument for sustainability. No one
seems to be arguing for natural evolution which could see the demise
of the human race in favour of some other life form.