Major Challenges of Sustainable Development Today: The Need for a Comprehensive Global Environmental Policy

Abstract

Sustainable development emerged as a concept in the early sixties when the ruthless industrialization in the developed countries started showing visible signs of natural degradation and problems of pollution and ill health. Sustainable development became a wholesome word after the Brundtland Commission Report of 1987 (World Commission on Environment and Development, & Brundtland, G. H., 1987). It has three fundamental principles of inter-generational equity and justice, intra-generational equity and justice and that of the respect for the carrying capacity of the land. Since the definition given by the report fails to define the processes underlying the complexities and contradictions within which international decisions are taken, the industrialized and the less-industrialized countries have defined the term to suit their own requirements. However, there is a basic value inherent in this concept which everyone agrees to and that is the respect for human needs only in relation to the environmental capability to support the largest number of people to the longest possible time frame. However, only within the last decade have these activities focused more directly on pollution prevention and is suffering major challenges thereby there is a need for a comprehensive global environmental policy. Despite the substantial efforts that are now aimed at improving source reduction as well as tailoring processes to separate, recycle and reuse by-products, still, there is a need to seriously act on the need for survival. DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2019.00008.6