Sustainability and Sustainable Development
Sustainability development is a form of development that emphasizes responsible use to ensure that the same resources can benefit the coming generations. In essence, sustainable development exploits resources with future generations in mind. Development in this perspective incorporates both the social and economic aspects of development. Ecological sustainability and economy are related in the sense that the economy depends upon ecological provisions for survival.
Corporations play a crucial role in sustainability because they are composed of individuals and processes that exploit ecological elements. As corporations develop, they use these elements, and the corporations must use the elements sustainably. The essence of sustainable development is to ensure that societies frugally use resources and mindful of other societies and future generations.
Sustainable Development and Sustainability
Although governments are aware of the importance of sustainable development, there still exist gaps between the structuring of policies and implementing the policies. However, the bottlenecks that characterize sustainable development are so complex, stubborn, and unpredictable. Population growth has particularly been characterized as a major challenge to sustainable development. The population should be kept within safe limits to protect the environment from over-exploitation. The common global responsibility to ensure sustainable development has led to conferences such as the Earth Summit that seek to combine the efforts of nations towards a common goal. A combined effort towards should be a milestone of every discussion on sustainable development.
The Future is not what it used to be: World Population Trends
Predicting population trends has been a major challenge for demographers and other scientists. One approach that has been used by demographers in predicting future populations is through the determination of fertility rates. However, the approach proved to be unreliable due to the fluctuating fertility rates in countries. Although demographers usually assume that demographic dynamics of fertility, mortality, and migration will change gradually, aspects such as diseases and plagues often cause these aspects to change suddenly. For instance, HIV has caused significant demographic changes in third-world countries. These aspects have made demographic predictions difficult.
The Population Bomb Revisited
Overpopulation has always been an issue in the present world, although, during the Marxist period, it took a more political approach. Marx thought that the ruling class was just using overpopulation to reduce the population of the poor while increasing the population of the rich. However, the present civilization woke up to a rude shock when it realized that overpopulation was leading to drastic climatic changes that meant doom for the civilization.
The concept of population explosion had already been outlined. Still, it received little acceptance because some experts felt that a high population was good in increasing the production capacity of nations. However, the reality of the population explosion led nations to take reproductive measures like family planning. The article recommends that the only solution to the population explosion was to establish control over the birth rate to balance the mechanisms influenced by the death rate.