Sustainable Development

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[edit] Sustainable Development

While economic growth is usually considered as "development" the fact that the economy is strongly linked to society and natural resources means that any change in the economic system will affect the social and the ecological system. Sustainable development considers the positive and negative effects in these three systems. That is, economic growth doesn't necessarily mean development as a positive effect as this can have negative effects in the other systems. For example, increased consumerism due to increased prosperity can lead to negative environmental effects such as pollution as consumer objects reach the end of their lifetime and are, for instance, disposed of in landfill.

Furthermore, the interrelationship between these three systems (economical, social and environmental) includes feedback so they may be addressed from a complex system perspective. Further still, considering the dynamical and self-adaptive behavior of all three systems we should expect synergistic effects to be important. Finally, emergence caused by the relationships of these systems could give rise to new opportunities and risks in today's highly interconnected, 'globalised' world.

To summarise, it is helpful to conceptualise the three interacting systems of environmental (or ecological), social and economic systems in terms of complex systems as this may help provide new insights into the nature of the problems, such as Global Warming we are currently facing. Thus we may start to work towards solutions which are so desperately needed.