South Asia * Sustainable Development (SD) implies economic growth together with the protection of environmental quality, each reinforcing the other. Sustainable Development, thus, is maintaining a balance between the human need to improve lifestyles and feeling of well-being on one hand, and preserving natural resources and ecosystems, on which we and future generations depend.
The main features that all the definitions have are as follows: * A desirable human condition : a society that people want to sustain because it meets their needs * A enduring ecosystem condition: an ecosystem that maintains its capacity to support human life and others * A balance between present and future generations; and within the present generation.
Principles Defining Sustainable Development * Sustainable development requires the promotion of values that encourage consumption standards that are within the bounds of the ecologically possible and to which all can reasonably aspire. * Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential, and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met. * Sustainable development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth; the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and living beings. * Most renewable resources are part of a complex and interlinked ecosystem and maximal sustained yield must be defined after taking into account system-wide effects of exploitation. * Sustainable development requires that the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources should foreclose as few options as possible. * Sustainable development requires the conservation of plant and animal species. * Sustainable development requires that the adverse impacts on the quality of air, water and other natural elements are minimized so as to sustain the ecosystem’s overall integrity. * Two major events in the