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The term "sustainable development"
first came into use at the World Union for Nature (UICN) conference
in 1980. The term was defined as "development that satisfies
the needs of the present generation without compromising the
capacity of future generations to satisfy their own needs."
The concept was designed to emphasize the environment's capacity
to support a determined use; sustainable activities are those
that do not exceed the load capacity of the natural system.
The 1987 Brundtland Report (coordinated by former Norwegian
Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland) popularized this idea
and its social, ecological and economic impacts.
Sustainable development involves three factors:
Natural resources, and the ability to use them
without undermining the equilibrium and integrity of ecosystems
The human factor, involving welfare, quality
of life and cultural identity
Economic-technological production, including
aspects relating to the growth and efficiency of economic
activities.
International financial institutions have introduced
a focus on sustainable development in their projects and national
development strategies, as well as the search for new techniques
of analysis for environmental economics. In 1992, the same
year as the UNCED Rio Earth Summit, the World Bank's World
Development Report focused on the links between development
and the environment. The bank also created a Global Environment
Facility to provide grant financing for activities that produce
global benefits but are not justified on a more narrow national
accounting basis. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
followed suit with a Sustainable Development Department.
Virtually all projects financed by international
financial institutions, the United Nations or bilateral sources,
such as USAID, CIDA, the European Union's EDF or Japan's JBIC,
take into account the issue of sustainable development. International
trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization are
increasingly emphasizing the concept, although it is a challenge
to incorporate it into current practices and regulations.
The private sector also has established organizations
to coordinate and promote environmental protection, analysis
and sustainable development. A few examples of these groups
are the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
and INNOVA, which is based at the Monterrey Institute of Technology
in Mexico. In addition, perhaps in no other area have non-governmental
organizations been so active and so numerous as in concern
for and protection of the environment. These groups have formed
the NGO Standing Committee for the UN Committee on Sustainable
Development.
The most important single consciousness-raising
event related to sustainable development within the Inter
-American summit process was the 1996
Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development in Santa
Cruz, Bolivia. There, Heads of State adopted a Declaration
and Plan of Action that among other points, supported the
"broad participation by civil society in the decision-making
process, including policies and programs and their design,
implementation and evaluation" on a hemispheric-wide
level.
Moreover, the 1996 Santa Cruz Summit led directly
to the development and approval in 1999 of the OAS Inter-American
Strategy for Public Participation in Environment and Sustainable
Development Decision Making in the Americas (ISP link to:
www.ispnet.org), which attempts to oversee and channel civil
society participation on the regional and national level.
An implementation plan is in the making at present.
The Santa Cruz Summit was truly a major
milestone for the participation of civil society organizations
in the summit process. For the first time representatives
of various nongovernmental organizations were given the opportunity
to present their views to the Heads of State through speeches
and written documents. Some countries even included civil
society representatives in their delegations. Nevertheless,
now, four years later, very little of the recommended action
agenda that came out of Santa Cruz has been advanced upon
by the nations of the region. Since the high water mark at
Santa Cruz, environmental and sustainable development issues
have seemed to lose ground among official governmental circles
in the context of Inter-American System. Whether the new century
will see their meaningful revival remains an open question.
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