The Sustainable Environment: The Survival Of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a dynamic process designed to meet today’s needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs; however, environmentalist have agreed that special measures have to be put in place to achieve this sustainable development .however the question still stand that we need to ask ourselves; if the survival of the people alive today is important or is the conservation of the environment on which the future human life will depend?.

According to Mebratu B (1998,p 2) about 8000 years ago the human population was about 10 million, and the only people that inhabited the earth were hunter gatherers , these people depended on the game and they never settled. But their numbers began to be abundant

There, a group of 27 experts articulated the links between environment and development stating that: “although in individual instances there were conflicts between environmental and economic priorities, they were intrinsically two sides of the same coin” (Vogler,2007 .p.432). Another result of the Stockholm Conference was the creation of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) which has the mission “to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future

Hence the huge need for campaigns that educate people on this social goal.

Analyzing the topic of sustainable development becomes hard when people are faced with environmental problems, for example the social problem of famine and food crisis coupled with increase in population ,result in questions such as what is the carrying capacity of the earth while scientists such as turner (1998,p13) suggest that ,to avoid the extinction of nonrenewable resources is by not allowing the harvesting rate to exceed the rate of natural growth ,this seems not to give a practical answer to the problems the people face