Sustainable Development and Climate Action for SIDS from Pre Rio into Post Pandemic Glasgow… nano nano – Earth to COP 27. It seems a long way from Agenda 21 and the first UN Summit on the Environment and Development of 1992, or is it?
Are the issues on the table any different now than then? Here is an article in from my pioneering series Environment Friendly on sustainable development issues facing Small Islands – two years before the first Summit… echoed in the call to action by Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley.
Sometimes we need a glimpse into history to jerk into awareness.
Stating the case for ‘sustainable development’*
‘We have not inherited the world
from our forefathers
We have borrowed it
From our children.’
Ancient Kashmiri Poem
THIS ANCIENT Kashmiri Proverb contains the essence of the environment protection call of today — the need to manage the environment wisely today so as not to incur an irrecoverable debt to the next generation.
It is what the economist would call sustainable development; that is, using the world’s natural resources — its air, land, water, seas, minerals, plant and animal life — to the best possible advantage.
This is the problem which the Ministerial Meeting on the Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean seeks to address, and which is currently taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. It forms the basis of the proposal for an Action Plan for the Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Good Ecology
This plan notes that the impact of a foreign debt problem on many countries of the region has resulted in reduced expenditure on activities related to environmental protection. The debt problem has also furthered exploitation of natural resources contrary to the interests of sustainable development.
But it is not the only culprit, as Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) William Mansfield notes.
He points to the culprits — Governments, banks, commodity traders, the consumer societies, and industrial exporters all threatening long term development by their damaging demands on the environment and its resources.
Mansfield observes that the ‘greening’ of the planning ministries and investment bankers of the world is not ‘They do not all yet understand that good ecology is good economics. Hence the case for sustainable development.
“Examples abound of economic decisions and investments made without thought for the environment. Ill-planned dams, forests demolished for unsuitable cash crops, incompetent irrigation and chemical damage to soils and water are the familiar results of the search for short-tern profits.”
There is also the fact that many of the Ministers responsible for the environment who are genuinely concerned about their mandate, do not have the clout to implement policies. They are constantly in competition for policy attention with the Ministries of Industry, Housing, or Agriculture.
Development at the cost of the environment is beginning to be seen as an obsolete term as many fail to realise that future development can become stagnated if the pace of environmental degradation continues.
Chair Mansfield explained that developers need to take account of the environmental facts: to note the chain reaction — that “forestry affects soils, rainfall, wildlife, rivers and genetic resources; irrigation can produce salination as well as crops; new crops need special soil care; agricultural chemicals have hazards as well as benefits; industries can pollute as well as produce and dams can bring problems as well as power. ‘
But there is also the reality to contend with — that no individual country can, on its own, engender change. Some believed that nothing short of virtual restructuring of the global economy will create any impact.
Until sustainable development becomes the overriding concern of all governments, deterioration of the environment, and hence the resources which support economic systems will negate the drive to improve the human condition.
What creditor countries need to realise is that the natural resources of the most bio-diversified region of the world has been the basis of their development for centuries as the draft regional environmental plan points out. This makes them in effect, indebted to these countries. It is in this light, that the Ministerial meeting now taking place in Port-of-Spain ought to formulate its proposals for revision of the foreign debt.
It is the only way that generations of the region, and indeed future generations of the world would be assured of a reasonable standard of living.
*First Published: Rampersad, Kris. Stating the case for ‘sustainable development’ Environment Friendly
Trinidad Guardian, Page 26, Wednesday, October 17, 1990. (KrisRampersadArchives)
Dr Kris Rampersad is a UNESCO and National Geographic trained international sustainable development educator and consultant developing creative ways for culture and gender sensitive understanding of the intersectional relationship between and among sustainable development goals. She pilotted the term ‘Boss’ – Big Ocean Sustainable
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Further Reading: See links: Report on Agenda 21, UN Summit 1992
UN Summit on the Environment
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent consultant, educator, facilitator integrating sustainable development goals into holistic approaches to mainstream gender and culture sensitive approaches to development that speak to the realities of the Global South, SIDS, Latina America and the Caribbean and the developing world.
She is a UNESCO-trained educator/facilitator, National Geographic certified educator, global Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador, Google & WorldPulse Digital Skills Ambassador.
Dr Kris Rampersad is evolving blended media education and cultural tools and, techniques to cull next generation leaders in sustainable development from preschool to policymaking. All offerings are custommade by request of client – any locale, age, subject.
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