Sustainable Development - North v/s South
– Shri Ashim Gandhi

"In our anxiety to protect future generations, we must not overlook the pressing claims of the less privileged today. Not working towards guaranteeing basic capabilities to future generations would be scandalous, but in the same way, not working towards bringing those elementary capabilities within the reach of the deprived in the present generation would be outrageous."
Amartya Sen - Noble laureate


Sustainable development is the catchword often used to address the huge environmental, social and economical problems we are faced with the world today. Environment and development are two sides of the same coin, and they come together in term `sustainable development’.

Sustainable development is about caring for the environment for its own sake and not just for its usefulness to the humans, it is about the redistribution of riches on a global scale, and it is about quality of life for all. Thus sustainable development is about balancing the conflicting demands, of the natural environment, social equity and human well-being and economic development.

The need to address the demands of sustainable development using an integrated approach was highlighted in the report by the world commission on environment and development in 1987 (better known as Brudtland report after the leader of the commission). Popular understanding was strengthened at 1992 Earth summit in Rio, when the action program called `Agenda 21’ was adopted, recognizing the important role that local government and communities have to play in developing and implementing action on sustainable development.

Agenda 21 an `agenda for the 21st Century’ is a global action plan formulated by world leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, recognizing that mankind can no longer support its devastating development path if the welfare of future generations and of the natural environment is to be safeguarded. More immediately, it is also a recognition that the welfare of the majority depends on the redressing of existing inequalities in which three quarters of the world’s population have access to just one quarter of the world’s resources.

The `global footprint’ is an attempt to quantify how much land and resources a country or even a single municipality requires to satisfy the consumption needs of its population. About 60-70% of this `footprint’ typically relates to energy sources, but it also includes land for farming and food production, forest, fisheries and area set aside for bio-diversity. It has been calculated that 1.8 hectares of productive land is available for the use of each person in the world, according to the current total population and the total land available. Of course as the world population rises this figure will reduce.

Despite the difficulties in making precise calculations the global footprint is a very useful indicator of human’s dependence on nature and of one country’s dependence on another. Because most Northern countries have a footprint much larger than they can support from their own land, they must therefore be depending on a considerable amount of land, labour and resources from countries in the South.

This logically points to the different approaches that are necessary in North and South to achieve the overall aim of sustainability: the North must reduce its consumption levels and hence reduce its `footprint’, rethinking its use of resources in production processes and dematerializing the link between consumption and growth, at the same time the South must be able to reclaim more of its own land and resources for its own use and hence, if necessary, even increase its own footprint order to provide basic needs for its own population.

“The North must live more simply so that the South can simply live”.