What is sustainable development
Sustainability is a word that is pronounced many times more than it is understood, and therefore has lost its precise meaning. What we understand bysustainable development not only encompasses the broad concept ofrespectful development with the environment but also focuses on thesocially fair development.
Its social, economic and environmental dimension can be encompassed in what we could describe as enough resources for everyone and that aims to achieve three main objectives:
- A growth that takes into account the well-being and needs of the present generations.
- Growth that respects the environment.
- A fair growth that does not sacrifice the rights of the generations to come.
What is the definition of sustainable or sustainable development
Model expressions sustainable development is the same as him sustainable development or lasting development. Its definition was developed for the first time in the document named as the Brundtland Report (Also known as Our Common Future) document published in 1987 as a result of the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development of the Organization of the United Nations (UN).
The concept described in 1987 was “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”.
The concept of sustainably developed has the objective of homogeneity and coherence between the economic and material growth of the population and the exploitation of natural resources avoiding compromising life on the planet, both of human beings and of nature and biodiversity on Earth.
Coherence is sought between the economic and material growth of the population, and the exploitation of natural resources
The strategy for sustainable use tends to promote the harmonious relationships of human beings between and natureto. We can see examples from these environmental projects and ecological ideas that really surprise.
By trying to satisfy everyone with consistent responsibility and a balance between the economic growth, the resources provided by nature and the modern society of well-being, it is required to meet certain objectives … And we are going to see them in detail!
The previous image is only the beginning of an Agenda for 2030 that includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) structured in many key points … Do you want to know?
Principles of sustainability
Although the sustainable concept it is very broad and is sometimes distorted. From a coherent perspective, it is based on a few sustainable ideas:
- A democratic political system that ensures its citizens effective participation in decision-making. Nails social politics! That they involve each country.
- An economic system capable of creating surpluses and technical knowledge on an autonomous and constant basis.
- A production system that meets the imperative of preserving the environment and the responsibility to keep diversity and biodiversity intact.
- A technological system capable of constantly researching new solutions.
- An international system that promotes durable models of trade and finance.
- A flexible administrative system capable of being corrected autonomously.
In this article, we are going to expand the information on the definition of sustainable development based on different diagrams, infographics and images for a better understanding …
Sustainability types
We can identify that sustainable or sustainable development is based on developing strategies on three factors: society, economy and environment.
1.- Sustainability in society
It is the moment when we focus on the social aspects of sustainable growth, we look at issues that affect people and civil society, directly and that either assist or harm the process of advancing the quality of life. With particular attention to the social responsability and the sustainable urbanism.
See an interesting article on how ecological and green urbanism helps us or an interesting article from the newspaper ElPaís on «Young people cannot be considered as a vulnerable group, but as one of the main assets of change to face the problems of the world ».
2.- Economic sustainability
In general, when we focus on the direction of aeconomy and its future from a balanced perspective, we look at the system that determines how limited resources are distributed and their ability to use them, at the same time we examine what options are used at all levels and who needs it from the field of economic resources.
3.- Environmental sustainability
We examine and determine the natural resources, both renewable and non-renewable, which ultimately make up our surroundings - habitats - and help us to sustain and improve our lives and that of the natural environment where it is inhabited. (See also what an ecosystem is to understand the relationship with the natural environment, diversity and what they should be, as well as the necessary balance)
The three sustainability factors are developed according to sectors:
But there are some more points that we should know …
What is the importance of sustainability?
Let us not forget that companies and products also fall into the need to establish inflection points in the sustainability from product production, its transport to the way of selling it, both to benefit our image and to support the benefits that they bring to the environment or apply new methods of sustainable innovation in the company.
Here we must understand the process, and for this, we wanted to provide an infographic to clarify the concepts.
The balance in the commodity supply chain provides us with various benefits and advantages, and a conducive and consistent industrial environment in the face of possible competition, in addition to being able to maintain natural resources and artificial without exploiting them excessively.
For years, many countries have taken the issue seriously by creating ministries - secretariats with legislation that regulates more forcefully. For example:
- From Mexico with SEMARNAT (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources) where there is information on the sustainable development in Mexico and also from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with projects and initiatives for the Mexican territory that can be seen from HERE.
- From Spain, in the 2030 Agenda there are different resources, documents and audiovisual materials of interest.
- In Colombia from the Ministry of the Environment from HERE where you can see models and action plans.
And so many other countries; Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, etc, which we would not stop naming. The concern is global and we must all move forward consistently.
What is the concept of degrowth?
We believe that to understand less the meaning of degrowth, the following video responds perfectly …
How to achieve the Sustainable Development goals (SDG)
We must establish a guideline and for this the WBCSD published an interesting report called "Vision 2050". A guiding document that established some guidelines to find a starting point where companies will interact with governments and with organizations that will elucidate together how a better future can be achieved.
It seeks to satisfy several questions: What would a more sustainable world look like? How could we achieve this? What role can companies play in quickly reaching that goal? How to act? Who is in charge or will they be in charge? because it's interesting? or How to achieve it?….
Faced with these conditions, they propose a roadmap that weaves together different points until 2022 and 2050. We believe that it is of interest to show the scheme:
As we can identify, it is not only about adding values to people, improving ethics or influencing cultural aspects, implementingaction programs or a sustainable development for children from education to carve us a better future with better capabilities vis-à-vis the Earth, reduce environmental pollution or reduce poverty, for example.
Other factors and sectors such as the human development, aspects of thesocial economy and its instruments, agricultural production and sustainable agriculture, forests, urban mobility … etc. So we should ask ourselves … What will we have to take into account and globally if we want a better future?
What are the characteristics of sustainable cities?
- Urban development and mobility systems. The public spaces and green areas are respected; travel does not take long (tolerable congestion), and cars and people coexist harmoniously. Public transportation is efficient, and private transportation slows its growth.
- Comprehensive management of solid waste, water and sanitation. Solid waste is collected, separated, properly stored and recycled to generate value for a significant percentage of it. Wastewater is treated and recycled to natural water sources, which mitigates environmental degradation. Water sources (coasts, lakes, rivers) are respected and have adequate sanitation levels for humans. The urban rivers are actively integrated into the life of the city.
- Preservation of environmental assets. The coasts, lakes and mountains are protected and integrated into the urban development of the city, so they can be used for civic life and city development.
- Energy efficiency mechanisms. These metropolises implement new technologies or procedures to reduce electricity consumption. In addition, they point you to the use of renewable energy.
- Residence plan before impacts of climate change. The vulnerable areas in which people settle to live are reduced rather than increased, since there is an alternative housing plan and it can be implemented.
- Organized fiscal accounts and adequate connectivity. There are clear and transparent accounts, Internet penetration is increasing, the connection speed is adequate and people are migrating towards the digitization of public services.
- Positive indexes of citizen security. The inhabitants feel that they can coexist peacefully because the incidence of crime and organized crime is decreasing and tends to stabilize at low levels.
- Citizen participation. The community makes use of communication resources, such as mobile applications, to discuss how to solve problems to improve the city. Civil society and the rest of the local actors are organized in order to have a role in the daily action of the life of the city
Note: We can understand more from the twelve ecological guidelines for sustainable cities before smart urban development indicators.
Most sustainable and least sustainable cities in the world
Although thehistory of sustainable development in urban spaces, on natural resources and cities it is changing, and history confirms it. A new report from Acadis looks at the sustainability of cities around the world from the perspective of balance and needs according to economic development, social and environmental. Exactly, fifty cities achieving a very complete analysis where it can be extracted as a summary in the following infographic the ranking of most sustainable cities and least:
Example of sustainable development before a project
A project example In sustainable architecture, for the designer - focusing on architecture - it is complex.
Much of the sustainable design is related to energy saving, through the use of techniques such aslife cycle analysisapplied to products and production processes, with the aim of maintaining the balance between the initial capital invested and the value of long-term fixed assets.
We started with a little gem!… A project on how to recycle plastic with your own machine. Now you can easily build a homemade recycling device for plastics and thanks to a designer engineer Dave Hakkens … HERE to see more and although the images seem fake, they can all be done in a simple way.
At the global level, the Startup Weekends Sustainable Revolution “sustainable revolution” competition is also held, where ideas from all countries of the world participate, always from an environmental perspective of sustainability and with the slogan “sustainable revolution”. Consultation of the web from global-sustainable-revolution.com. Plans are presented and voted on worldwide, and the truth is, they are quite interesting!
Projecting in a sustainable way means creating spaces that are healthy, economically viable and sensitive to social needs. On its own, energy responsible design is of little value. (Of interest the article healthy architecture with an excellent guide)
A sustainable architectural project and interesting is the Recooperation (The winners of this contest were Spanish, María García Méndez and Gonzalo Navarrete Mancebo, members of the Improvistos team). It consists of afuture strategy for the Orba neighborhood, on the metropolitan periphery ofValencia Spain.
Taking into account the high unemployment rate and the lack of typological and energy adaptation of the dwellings, a series of interventions is proposed at various scales based on the activity of its inhabitants.
Some important aspects are the restoration of the continuity of ecosystems, the use of the neighbors' know-how, the creation of new shared spaces or the introduction of a community system for the exchange of spaces, goods and services.
For a better visualization of the project there is a reference video HERE.
It should be noted that in the portal masshousingcompetition.org we can find different sustainable projects of great value.
Taking into account that the network is creating responses of great value in sustainable urbanism. From the article googlemaps and urban architecture we show different ways of exploring spaces and understanding the "before and after" of architectural actions that prioritize the user.
The social development documentary
We want to leave a documentary called "Stop, Rolling the Change" which is simply worth seeing. Human errors in life and the negative impact of "Capitalism" in a society that appears to be less and less human but that at the same time will need new management strategies if we want to move in the right direction.
This story begins on the conscious foundations of the education that humans receive from a young age and the misconceptions of the social development, such as lack of solidarity, the issue of volunteering, understanding a problem and turning a blind eye, deforestation, pollution and climate change, poverty, inequality, the capacity to be responsible, the bad or no administration of all natural resources of the planet that will be a great problem for the generations to come … etc.
Free training in social responsibility
We want to add a little more value to the article, so we have looked for some resources of interest to our readers as well as a series of PDF documents in the form of manuals.
1.- Courses
Within the great Internet network we can find different online courses sustainability related to the theme.
Some free and others for payment, aimed at training and understanding the usefulness of different tools to learn environmentally and friendly, economically profitable or socially responsible ideas that are based on experiences and on projects of special relevance.
We provide a selection of the most interesting and economically viable to learn:
- Introduction to Sustainability Course in MOOC format. Open course in free format (With certificate is 46 Euros) by the University of Illinois. In English, subtitled in Spanish and Portuguese from Coursera HERE.
- Free course of objectives of the evolution of sustainability. It's a free Udemy course that establishes a bit of history and a toolkit for generating environmentally-friendly, cost-effective and profitable ideas. socially responsible. We can see it HERE.
As data, there is an initiative of the United Nations that aims to offer learning solutions relevant to sustainable development issues to individuals and organizations. They add courses every month and although there are many in English, it is an excellent place to learn:
- From InfoMEA Learning: Training on climate, environmental governance, biodiversity, ecology, ect.
- From United Nations SDG Learn. It is already one more training on the subject of this article but courses in English and by regions; Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, etc.
2.- Books
Although later addressing a series of guides in PDF, we want to leave a book that was edited by Juan Luis Doménech Quesada.
- The book on the footprintEcological. We will find practical and concrete tools where the local and global scale is approached, proving that organizations and companies could really benefit through eco-efficiency or investing in new capital and more coherent markets. Download free in PDF from Access from HERE.
- The second, published in 2022. The Escazú Agreement on environmental democracy and its relationship with the 2030 Agenda. sustainable development and environmental democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean download in PDF from HERE for free.
For a better understanding of the concept, we wanted to provide a series of PDF documents in the form of manuals.
3.- Sustainable development guides in PDF:
Information sources:
- Guide for the preparation of sustainability reports, of the Global Reporting Initiative
- Guide for the sustainable development of urbanization projects
- Sustainable development knowledge and examples guide
- Education for sustainable development
- A guidebook for green economy (Guide with numerous accesses to reports - In English)
- From Google Sustainability there are different tools that may be of interest here (In English)
- Sustainable Development: Interpretation and Analysis
Links of interest:
- Living architecture (From poor to rich)
- Images about the environment (From poor to rich)
- The most sustainable project before the spectacle architecture (How it is capable of winning the spectacle architecture)
- Biosustainable architecture manuals (22 Guides to learn)
- Bioclimatic and sustainable design in urban environments
- 30 Guides for Consistent Urban Design
- Recover public space (Urbanize with intelligence)
- What is a TOD city and its sustainable urban development
If you liked the article, rate and share!
