20 years back at the 1992 Earth Summit/United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development; the United Nations showed a new path
for development to the callously growing world- “sustainable development”- a
development that doesn’t compromise on the need of future generations to meet
the needs of today’s generation; a development in which society and environment
are at par with economy, a development that will ensure that the human race
continues to thrive without killing the earth and the fellow species. It was
appreciated and accepted by many developed and developing nations who signed to
commit to sustainable development. But astonishingly, it took 20 years to set
goals for the same. After discerning a little progress towards it, the UN at the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) decided to set
goals called the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2012. These are the most
important and talked about outcome of Rio+20; which marked 20-years of 1992
Earth Summit. And what has happened in these 20 years? We have made electricity
at the cost of river and people’s lives, raised buildings at the cost of trees
and developed cities at the cost of the ecosystem. To be precise, we have
reached nowhere close to the ‘sustainable development.’
But there are good things happened as well by the dint of
which we have managed to thrive till now. One of them is the signing of
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were adapted in 2000 as United
Nations Millennium Declaration for global development. The new SDGs are being
considered to be the follow up of these. These goals focused on eliminating
poverty, hunger and diseases; reducing child mortality; promoting maternal
health; achieving universal primary education and ensuring sustainable growth
with the help of global partnership by 2015. SDGs overlap MDGs in many ways and
are supposed to cover the inadequacies of MDGs.
Since, 2015 is not very far and yet more than half of the
signing countries are still to achieve more than half of the MDGs; the success
of SDGs is also being questioned. Even though people are debating over the
potential of MDGs, their worth in providing a vision for development can’t be
neglected. The MDGs might not have been
able to achieve a hundred per cent result but they have shown positive outcomes
in many countries. Countries like China, and India has reduced their poverty by
many folds. UN MDG
Report says “For the first time since poverty trends began to be monitored,
the number of people living in extreme poverty and poverty rates fell in every
developing region—including in sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are highest. The
proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47 per cent in
1990 to 24 per cent in 2008—a reduction from over 2 billion to less than 1.4
billion.” Also, many sub Saharan countries have shown improvement in primary
education. The report also says that “the world has met the target of halving
the proportion of people without access to improved sources of water.”
Inspired with the success, the UN has set six SDGs that aim
to eliminate poverty and achieve harmony with the earth. It includes thriving
population by providing ‘sustainable’ food security, secure ‘sustainable’
water, clean energy and healthy ecosystems through apposite governance.
These might seem to mirror the MDGs but the word
‘sustainable’ here is enough to make a difference. Consider the 1960s Green
revolution of India, which is an archetypical example of the shortcomings of
myopic and ‘unsustainable’ vision. Before 1960s India was dependent on America
for feeding its large population. But with the onset of green revolution in
1960s with high yield crop varieties, improved irrigation, use of insecticides
and pesticides; India was not only able to meet its demand but also thought of
exporting some of its produced wheat. But the then achieved food security has
started to threaten the population of today. Over extraction of groundwater is
leading to ground water table depletion in many places, misuse of fertilizers
and pesticides is rendering land saline and inadequate for cropping and due to
their over-use the pests are gaining resistance. Though India achieved food
security but is still paying a heavy cost and this is
what sustainable development aims to avoid. The goal of ‘sustainable food
security’ is expected to seek food not only for current population but also for
the future generations without compromising with the nature and its species. It
should involve a broader vision, an ability to see the past, the present, and
the future.
There are many challenges in the paths of attaining
sustainable food security as there is a huge disparity between urban and poor.
Equity in allocation of food resources is a huge issue in a world where 25,000
people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes
every day and about 854 million people worldwide are estimated to be
undernourished mostly in developing world. (UN)
Whereas of all the food produced all across the world, 50 per cent of it is
wasted. According to UNEP,
“the rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the
entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes) every
year.” It also says that in the developing nations the food loss is mainly at
the producing end due to improper harvesting techniques. While in the developed
nations, the losses are high at the consumer end. “In the United States 30% of
all food, worth US$48.3 billion (€32.5 billion), is thrown away each year.”
Thus the sustainable food security goal should not only focus on increasing
productivity but also ensure zero food wastage.
While the Open Working Group; a 30 member intergovernmental
task force; is still working on the goals, their methodology and
implementation; the expectations from these SDGs are only increasing. We can
only hope that these ‘action –oriented’ goals might just achieve what the MDGs
could not. Though late, they might just lead us to our goal of sustainable
development, which apparently isn’t an easy task; but is enough to raise some
hopes.
No comments:
Post a Comment