Sustainability

• Sustainable development tries to make sense of the interactions of three complex systems: the world economy, the global so-ciety, and the Earth’s physical environment.

• Sustainable development calls for socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth.

Introduction

• What causes economic growth?• Why does poverty persist?• What happens when billions of people are

suddenly interconnected through markets, technology, finance, and social networks?

• Is there a way to combine economic devel-opment with environmental sustainability?

Some Questions

• The world population continues to rise rapidly, by around 75-80 million people per year.

• There will be 8 billion by the 2020s, and per-haps 9 billion by the early 2040s.

Population

• The world economy is vast, growing rapidly (by 3-4 percent per year in scale).

• It is highly unequal in the distribution of in-come within countries and between coun-tries.

• The poorest of the poor face the challenges of insufficient nutrition, lack of health care, unsafe shelters, and the lack of safe drinking water and sanitation.

Economy

• Humanity is changing the Earth’s climate; the availability of fresh water; the ocean chem-istry; and the habitats of other species.

• The Earth itself is undergoing changes in the functioning of key processes – such as the cycles of water, nitrogen, and carbon – upon which life depends.

The environment

Core functions of government:

Social services such as healthcare and edu-cation; infrastructure such as roads, ports, and power; protection from crime and vio-lence; promotion of basic science and new technologies, implementation of regulations to protect the environment.

Governance

• Multinational companies are often the most powerful actors. They should:

Obey the law, respect the natural environ-ment, and help the communities in which they operate.

• However they often carry out:

Bribery of officials to bend regulations or tax policies in their favor; tax evasion; money laundering;environmental damage.

Governance

• What is the current world population?• What is sustainable development?

Questions