Sustainable Development
The World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainability as the ability to meet the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations. Maintaining constant consumption satisfies this requirement. Future generations must have at least the same or even greater income per capita as present generations.
Therefore, Environmental Sustainable Economic Development, or just Sustainable Development, involves the equilibrium of the natural subsystem, the social subsystem and the economy subsystem. Sustainable Development is a goal of public policy in which the Natural Capital should be maintain constant, this is called "strong" Sustainability; in opposite to "weak" Sustainability, in which all the capital should be maintain constant, and the manufactured and build capitals are exchangeable for natural capital. Therefore capital natural can be reduced in time if others types of capital compensate for it.
The week Sustainable Development usually use the following model, in which the social subsystem, the environment and the economic subsystem are comparable and Sustainability is reached when all these subsystems meet their own goals. So, the social goals equity, justice, etc. The environmental goals are not pollute water and land, and reach some level of conservation of biodiversity (national parks). While, economic goals are optimal allocation of prices, efficiency, etc. As the model shows, only when these three subsystems meet their human-related one-generation goals, then Sustainable Development is reached. This approach can be seen in Figure 1.
However, this approach have some problems. Which are attained by the strong Sustainable Development approach, in which Nature (or natural capital in a narrower sense) can not be exchangeable for other types of production factors (human-made capital or financial capital) because with any of those types of capital is impossible, at the actual technology level of our civilization, to "bring back" or "re-build" the Nature (natural capital) in its whole complexity.
The more new approach of Sustainable Development, or also known as strong Sustainable Development, involves two important points. First, the economic system is a subsystem of the social subsystem, which is also part of the whole environment in which humans carry on their life. This approx can be schematically seen in Figure 2. Second, strong Sustainable Development involves the assumption that Nature -as the complex system that produces ecosystem services that subsidize the human society and economy- can not be produce by human technology, and therefore, at this point in time is not possible exchange any other means of production, like financial capital, built capital, etc. for natural capital.
The more new approach of Sustainable Development, or also known as strong Sustainable Development, involves two important points. First, the economic system is a subsystem of the social subsystem, which is also part of the whole environment in which humans carry on their life. This approx can be schematically seen in Figure 2. Second, strong Sustainable Development involves the assumption that Nature -as the complex system that produces ecosystem services that subsidize the human society and economy- can not be produce by human technology, and therefore, at this point in time is not possible exchange any other means of production, like financial capital, built capital, etc. for natural capital.
THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT.