Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
met. Would the final result be worth it? What would humanity gain by such a
transition, and what would it lose? Thirty years later, three of the authors published
an update (Meadows
et al
., 2005). They reviewed the debates and criticisms, analysed
new evidence, amended their position but firmly and clearly demonstrated that their
theory of necessary limits to growth still remained vital and significant.
Concurrent with the work of the Club of Rome, the General Assembly of the
IUCN (World Conservation Union), a body established in the wake of the Second
World War, met in New Delhi. With the newly formed WWF (World Wildlife Fund,
later renamed World Wide Fund for Nature) the IUCN was concerned to develop
new strategic thinking for animal and habitat conservation and human well-being.
The concept 'quality of life' became the centrepiece for IUCN thinking and policy
development intelligently linking cultural diversity with ecological or biodiversity.
In 1980, the IUCN published its
World Conservation Strategy
and so launched into
the global public sphere the seemingly new concept, and potential future practice,
of sustainable development. Humanity's relationship with the biosphere, the Strategy
states, will continue to deteriorate until a new international economic order and a
new environmental ethic is established. Prefiguring the more famous Brundtland
Declaration of seven years later, the IUCN carefully defined its terms:
Development is defined here as: the modification of the biosphere and the
application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy human
needs and improve the quality of human life. For development to be sustainable
it must take account of social and ecological factors, as well as economic ones;
of the living and non-living resource base; and of the long term as well as the
short term advantages and disadvantages of alternative actions.
(IUCN, 1980: 2)
Conservation is defined here as the management of human use of the biosphere
so that it may yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while
maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of the future. Thus
conservation is positive, embracing preservation, maintenance, sustainable utilization,
restoration and enhancement of the natural environment. Living resource conservation
is specifically concerned with plants, animals and micro-organisms, and with those
non-living elements of the environment on which they depend. Living resources have
two important properties, the combination of which distinguishes them from non-
living resources: they are renewable if conserved and they are destructible if not.
In 1980 the Brandt Commission published its
North-South: A Programme for
Survival
, placing the responsibility for human survival firmly in the political arena
at a time when leaders seemed more concerned with Cold War ideological posturing
than addressing pressing issues of global poverty, social inequality, justice, self-
determination, human rights and the depletion of natural resources. The Commission
did not redefine development, but duly noted:
One must avoid the persistent confusion of growth with development, and we
strongly emphasize that the prime objective of development is to lead to self-
fulfillment and creative partnership in the use of a nation's productive forces
and its full human potential.
(Brandt, 1980: 23)
