Principle of Sustainable Development and Environmental Imperatives
Introduction
Sustainable development is a noble and necessary objective. It is a futurist development model; and over the past 20 years governments, businesses, and civil society have committed to sustainable development goals. Maurice Strong, former Secretary General of the Rio Summit, remarked in 1998 that sustainable development “has been embraced by people throughout the world.” Despite recognition of and commitment to the principles of sustainable development, action has not moved beyond the margins and certainly has not led to the core changes needed to support a transition to sustainable development.
Sustainable development (SD) refers to a mode of human development in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come. The term ‘sustainable development’ was used by the Brundtland Commission which coined what has become the most often-quoted definition of sustainable development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social challenges faced by humanity. As early as the 1970s, “sustainability” was employed to describe an economy “in equilibrium with basic ecological support systems.” Ecologists have pointed to The Limits to Growth, and presented the alternative of a “steady state economy” in order to address environmental concerns.
The concept of sustainable development has in the past most often been broken out into three constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability. More recently, it has been suggested that a more consistent analytical breakdown is to distinguish four domains of economic, ecological, political and cultural sustainability. This is consistent with the UCLG move to make ‘culture’ the fourth domain of sustainability.
General Principles of Sustainable development and their legal status
Principles of Sustainable Development
The principles of SD refer to abstract rules or guidelines that one can apply in order to achieve. Various sets of principles of sustainable development have been proposed in the past decades. Some of the widely established sets of principles are listed as follows-
Sustainable Development (Indicators)
Bellagio Principles
The Bellagio Principles were created by the International Institute of Sustainable development. Canada in collaboration with experts from around the world in 1996.
These principles are meant to be guidelines to start and improve assessment activities of non-government organizations, corporations, community groups, governments and International institutions. Overarching principles were sought that would provide a link between theory and practice. These principles deal with four aspects of assessing progress toward sustainable development.
Aspect 1
Deals with the starting point of any assessment – establishing a vision of sustainable development and clear goals that provide a practical definition of that vision in terms that are meaningful for the decision-maker.
Aspect 2
Covers principles2 to 5 deals with the content of any assessment and the need to merge sense of the overall system with a practical focus on current priority issues.
Aspect 3
Deals with principles 6 through 8 on key issues of the process of assessment,
Aspect 4
Involves principles 9 and 10 focusing on the necessity of establishing a continuing capacity for assessment.
Principles Defining Sustainable Development
1. Sustainable development requires the promotion of values that encourage consumption standards that are within the bounds of the ecologically possible and to which all can reasonably aspire.
2. Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential, and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met.
3. Though the issue is not merely one of population size but the distribution of resources, sustainable development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.
4. Sustainable development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth; the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and living beings.
5. Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond which lies ecological disaster but ultimate limits there are, and sustainability requires that long before these are reached the world must ensure equitable access to the constrained resources and re-orient technological efforts to relieve the pressure.
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6. Most renewable resources are part of a complex and interlinked ecosystem and maximal sustained yield must be defined after taking into account system-wide effects of exploitation.
7. Sustainable development requires that the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources should foreclose as few options as possible.
8. Sustainable development requires the conservation of plant and animal species.
9. Sustainable development requires that the adverse impacts on the quality of air, water and other natural elements are minimized so as to sustain the ecosystem’s overall integrity
Laws related to Sustainable Development
The following principles are drawn from the environmental field:
a) Principle 21(Stockholm Declaration) and Principle 2 (Rio Declaration): sovereignty over natural resources and the responsibility not to cause environmental harm
b) the principle of good neighborliness and international co-operation
c) the principle of common but differentiated responsibility
d) the principle of preventive action
e) the precautionary principle and
f) the polluter-pays principle.
In international law, states are not allowed to conduct or permit activities within their territories, or in common spaces, without regard for the rights of other states or for the protection of the environment. This point is referred to as ‘the principle(s) of good neighborliness’.?According to Sands, the principle of good neighborliness’ has been integrated into sustainable development.
Stockholm-principle 21 and Rio Principle 2 are very significant provisions, both pertaining to the prohibition of environmental harm. Principle 21 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration states: ‘States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.’
Principle 2 of the Rio Declaration has more or less the same wording, with one minor change: ‘States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.
Principle 24 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration states: ‘International matters concerning the protection and improvement of the environment should be handled in a co-operative spirit by all countries, big and small, on an equal footing. Co-operation through multilateral or bilateral arrangements or other appropriate means is essential to effectively control, prevent, reduce and eliminate adverse environmental effects resulting from activities conducted in all spheres; in such a way that due account is taken of the sovereignty and interests of all States. ‘The commitment to co-operation between states is in Sands’ opinion “reflected in the large body of treaties and other international acts that now have environmental and other objectives related to sustainable development.” This obligation to co-operate can be found in almost all international environmental treaties (global, bilateral and regional). The principle of cooperation is said to extend not only to prior accidents, but also to planned activities. According to Stoll, the principle generally requires states to give information and be prepared for consultations with other states.
According to Sands, this law contains “the obligation to prevent damage to the environment, or to otherwise reduce, limit or mitigate such damage.” It is closely related to Stockholm-Principle 21 and Rio-Principle 2, but Sands finds that it comes up as an end in itself because it arises by operation of the obligation to minimize environmental damage:“The preventive principle requires action to be taken at an early stage and, if possible, before damage has actually occurred.” He finds that it is indirectly endorsed in Rio Principle 11, which contains the phrase: ‘States shall enact effective environmental legislation.
Loss of biodiversity – forests and wetlands: Both the Preamble assertions and the substantive articles of the CBD are relevant for combating deforestation. At the same time, they seem to realize that this legal combat will not be easy: Despite the high profile given to deforestation, little has been done to control this problem internationally. The instruments adapted to date are weak.
The CBD is based on two opposing principles: the principle of sovereign rights with respect to genetic resources versus the acknowledgement that these resources should be used in a way that their sustainable development remains possible. This is pointed out in the Preamble. The Convention tries to bridge those two principles, but also provides mechanisms in order to mutually enforce each other. The Convention is the first to incorporate Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration into the operational part of its text.
In the WTO, judicial activism on sustainable development is clarifying the role that MEAs play in the WTO.
Judicial activism is addressing controversial issues related to inter alia natural resources, bio safety, toxic substances, & national (unilateral) environmental laws. The AB gives governments an increased level of certainty on how to design new sustainable development laws.
This can advance environmental law and sustainable development in unlikely places and mitigate some of the lack of progress in the multilateral trade negotiations.
International courts and tribunals can play a very important role, signaling important legal developments taken up by national courts and helping to establish balancing criteria.
Bangladesh Condition
Bangladesh has prepared national environment policy paper1992 and made an assessment of the risk on CO2 and climate change in 1994 through joining US Climate Change Country Study Program with participation of 11 Asian countries in Least-cost Green-House-Gas Abatement Strategy Study in 1995-98. Bangladesh also signs the Kyoto protocol in 2001 and submits Initial National Communication (INC) to UNFCCC in 2002 and National Adaptation Plan of Action to UNFCCC in 2005. A Climate Change Cell has been established by the directorate of environment. The spirit is well, but these initiatives are only a paper work that hasn’t any impact in environment.
Government should prepare a national strategy for using organic fertilizer and pesticides in agricultural cultivation and initiatives should be take to stop hill cutting, keeping local biodiversity and forest. Government should have a policy to prevent Co2 emission and salinity of soil and shrimp culture.
Economic development should help reduce poverty and improve the environment. But the unplanned development activities contribute to severe environmental degradation in developing countries. A significant problem in environmental regulation in developing countries arises from difficulties in controlling small scale enterprises, because of their limited financial and human resources, and low-level of technology. The vulnerable are often the users of marginal resources and also dependent on the common resources of the community in which they live. Hence it is these groups that are most impacted when deforestation, soil erosion and other negative incidence occur, often as a result of natural disasters. There is a silent feature of infrastructure development activities such as construction of roads, railways, set-up of modern industrial units, massive industrial plantation, plantation of exotic trees, tea plantation, construction of office buildings, settlement of people in the hilly areas, unplanned and haphazard urban and industrial development process, modern agricultural production system and trade and commerce and business etc. that created tremendous ecological imbalance due to indiscriminate utilization and destruction of natural resources.
Conclusion
In its broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature. In the specific context of the development and environment crises of the 1980s, which current national and international political and economic institutions have not and perhaps cannot overcome, the pursuit of sustainable development requires- a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision making, an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis and an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction. These requirements are more in the nature of goals that should underlie national and international action on development. What matters is the sincerity with which these goals are pursued and the effectiveness with which departures from them are corrected.