Discuss Whether Economic Sustainability Can Be Combined with Environmental Sustainability

Discuss whether economic sustainability can be combined with environmental sustainability.

Sustainable development promotes economic growth, environmental sustainability and social development in both the developed and the developing world.  As the current dominating paradigm of development, the principles of sustainable development have been adopted worldwide and have had a significant impact on international agreements and national policies and strategies. Sustainable development emphasises the necessity to achieve further economic growth in an environmentally-friendly manner as past patterns of economic development have had serious. implications on the global environment.

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as the “Earth Summit”, met in Rio de Janeiro. This brought together around 178 governments from all over the world and the main outcome of this summit was the adoption of Agenda 21, a plan that would be able to bring sustainable development to the people of the Earth. Furthermore, a follow-up conference, known as “Rio+20”, was held in June 2012, also in Rio de Janeiro. This time more than 190 nations took part in the formal session, whilst more than 50,000 representatives from civil society and business groups took part in a separate “People’s summit”. Yet it is criticised for not being as decisive or ambitious as the last. This shows to us that people have been talking about what to do with the current situation environmentally and economically but to no avail because there have always been set backs like multiple interrelated economic and financial crises, increased stress on natural resources and ecosystems and climate change.

That all sets up for what Brazil tried to do to become more environmentally and economically sustainable. In 2011, dismissing the appeals from broad sectors of Brazilian society, and trampling upon Brazil’s national laws and international agreements on human rights and protection of environment, the Dilma Rousseff government initiated the Belo Monte Dam Complex, set to be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam on one of the main tributaries of the Amazon, the Xingu River. It is one of the more than 40 large dams planned for the Brazilian Amazon in the next ten years, the Belo Monte project proposes to divert 80% of the flow of the Xingu River and devastate an extensive area of Brazilian rainforest, displacing over 20,000 people and threatening the survival of indigenous people and other traditional communities. What is even worse for the public is that we don’t even know how much it cost the Brazilian peoples tax money to pay for the Belo Monte dam, it has been estimated to be around 16 Billion US$ but the figure changes from different sources. Because of the fact that it impacts over several thousand square kilometres of the Amazon and some will say that it will bring more destruction than development for the region.