A new concept, the concept of Sustainable Development, was born from concerns about population growth beyond the carrying capacity of the planet and the environmental impact of rapidly growing populations. Sustainable development is a guiding principle for meeting human development goals while simultaneously ensuring the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services upon which the economy and society depend. it aims to balance economic growth, environmental health, and social well-being, ensuring that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive framework for achieving sustainable development globally by 2030. These 17 goals cover areas such as poverty eradication, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities, and climate action.
Key Components of Sustainable Development are:
- Economic Sustainability: This involves promoting a stable and viable economy that can support present and future generations. It focuses on efficient resource use, investment in sustainable industries, and fostering innovation and technological advancement.
- Social Sustainability: Social sustainability emphasizes equity, justice, and access to essential services like education, healthcare, and clean water. It promotes social inclusion, reducing poverty, and ensuring that all people have opportunities to improve their well-being.
- Environmental Sustainability: This aspect aims to protect and preserve natural resources and ecosystems. It involves reducing pollution, managing waste, conserving biodiversity, and promoting the use of renewable energy sources to ensure the planet can sustain human life and other species.
Environmental Impact is a result of three factors: Extraction, use, and disposal of natural resources.
Consequently, sustainable development emphasizes reduction of the environmental impact because such reduction:
- slows depletion of resources,
- reduces pollution by slowing the flow of energy and matter in the environment,
- and saves money.
Because of concerns of growing environmental degradation in the 1960s, the United States government has charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with overseeing that all federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. This federal mandate is known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and it was signed into law in 1970. A detailed description of NEPA is found in the EPA website.
A key part of NEPA is the Environmental Impact Statement. EPA reviews and comments on EISs prepared by other federal agencies, maintains a national filing system for all EISs, and assures that its own actions comply with NEPA. The EIS has become a basic tool to protect the environment on federal lands.
The EIS requires that anyone proposing action on public lands documents:
- the need for the project;
- reasonable alternatives to it;
- overview of the natural environment affected;
- environmental consequences of the project.
In the upcoming lessons, we will explore natural resources, examine the impact of our actions on them, and learn how to manage them sustainably.