Achieving sustainable development is one of the great objectives in today’s society, although many people consider it a true utopia. To achieve this goal, we should maintain the current production level, but with the main difference that the way to obtain the final products is much more efficient and respectful of the environment. However, the main problem is of a political nature and of crossed interests. The Kyoto Protocol, signed at the end of the 20th century, forced States to comply with a series of environmental conditions that, more than two decades later, remain unfulfilled on most occasions.. To put the finishing touch, the United States, led by Donald Trump, has already announced that it is withdrawing from this Protocol. In addition, for the year 2020, the Paris Pact is expected to start, which aims to set a maximum temperature difference with respect to the ideal to fight climate change. Working at Greenpeace helps combat these problems.
What is sustainable development?
- Sustainable development responds to the idea of benefiting and satisfying today’s society, but without discrediting that of the future. One of the great current debates revolves around the planet that we will leave to our children or grandchildren when we are gone. Many forget the need to fight for the well-being of the future, and try to produce with renewable energy, that is, resources that we are sure will never run out. In this case, we are talking about the sun or the wind, among others. They are resources, which unlike oil, are unlimited and also harm the environment much less. For this reason, they are trying to migrate as soon as possible to electric cars instead of internal combustion ones, since it is a much more sustainable vehicle.. Oil seems to be coming to an end, and if we don’t make a change we are going to find that the following generations will have great difficulties to have a car and get around. Conflicts of interest are the main problem in achieving the long-awaited sustainable development. To achieve this, it would be necessary for the economic, political and cultural spheres to be able to reach agreements since otherwise it is impossible to achieve this objective due to the mere fact that in the end each one goes their own way and agreements are not reached that allow the good to be achieved. common.
- Democracy must prevail and, in the end, the solutions that best suit the majority must be decided. This allows a totally unified growth of the population and that equality prevails in its fair measure. In fact, the so-called Welfare State, which prevails much more in Northern Europe than in Western countries such as Spain or Italy, among others, would not amount to anything more than putting this definition of sustainable development into practice. This concept is not only applied economically or ecologically, as we have seen previously, but also socially and culturally. Guarantee access to knowledge with libraries and public schools, as well as totally free health centers forall citizens are nothing more than examples of sustainable development. We are achieving that through taxes, citizens have quality public services that we all pay for. This is nothing more than achieving the common good for all. Obviously, in order to achieve sustainable development, it is also absolutely necessary for all parties to be able to show collaboration. As happens in companies, throughout a production process, if one of the parts fails, the final result is no longer achieved or is not the same.
- Therefore, the governing community always has to keep financial, social and legal resources available to all those who want sustainable development to achieve the common good for the maximum number of people. Today, the top priority seems to be all those people around the world who are on the poverty line and, seeing the level of the global crisis at an economic level since 2008, there are an increasing number. However, today only NGOs are constantly working to solve this problem, and they do so based on what is known as crowdfunding. In return, citizens only have their good will, or at most, the possibility of deducting their donation from the income statement if a minimum level of income is acquired throughout the fiscal year. In addition, sustainable development also has different types of limitations.. On the one hand, the one that technology has imposed on us and that requires a high level of production to maintain the socioeconomic level of some companies. In this sense, companies cannot stop or think about new forms of production that are more sustainable. They consider that the research process will give them a higher cost than not maintaining what is currently available. Furthermore, most of today’s social organization is dominated by capitalism. Most of the money is in the hands of a few, who also do not seem willing to share it for fear of creating competition. The corporate social responsibility actions carried out by companies seem to be the only favor they do to achieve sustainable development in the short term.
Benefits of sustainable development
Still, sustainable development has numerous benefits for everyone. The work of those who fight for it, therefore, has a sense of being. The most prominent are the following:
- Equality in the world. The most ethical thing is that we are all born with the same opportunities. However, this is not so at all. Depending on the type of family we have, and the type of country in which we reside, our opportunities may be limited. Therefore, sustainable development would end this problem.
- Take care of the planet. The other big problem that we find with the current economic system is that it is not sustainable. We are killing the planet and we need to return to sustainable development so that nature can survive.
- Be happier. Helping others and making people happy gives a feeling of absolute happiness. The poor, moreover, are satisfied with very little and, therefore, we have the opportunity to make them smile and feel proud of it.
- Reduce costs. Sustainable development uses renewable energy and, in this sense, we can reduce production costs, in addition to saving any type of cost or tax due to pollution that we may be producing.
How to achieve sustainable development
- Currently, we can bet on sustainable development through different measures that allow us to achieve our objectives. Obviously, we have to classify them at a macroeconomic and microeconomic level, since depending on our impact and our possibilities, our scope and the possibilities that we help to a great extent to achieve the objective are very different. To begin with, what can citizens do? With the environment, without a doubt they can recycle and separate the garbage by its type. Separating glass from plastic and metals is just a first step to start saving and polluting the planet less. In addition, we also have to start considering using fewer plastic bags to go shopping and thus help decorate the gardens. For this reason, governments forced shopping malls to charge for the use of these bags. It is much more sustainable at the level of development that we buy a cart and always use it to take the products from the store to our house. More comfortable, and we also pollute much less. Energy saving is another of our pending points. We will not only save money, because currently the price of electricity is really high, but we will also help the planet. On the one hand, you can buy appliances of the low consumption type but that are also much more energy efficient. In this way, we spend less, pay less and get the same level of light. It is an absolute win win.
- At the micro level, public transport can also be used much more frequently. Let’s not forget that the use of the car is quarantined due to carbon dioxide emissions and we must take this into account when choosing which car to buy. In fact, from 2019 or 2020, access with some types of vehicles will be completely prohibited. It is time to change our way of life and use the trains, the subway or the bus for our trips. We can also go on foot or by bicycle, which is also much healthier for our body. In fact, cities like Barcelona or Madrid have already adopted the bicing lane to encourage the use of transport that does not pollute. The values we have must also be related to the objectives. If we talked before about saving energy to consume less electricity, we must do the same with water and gas. For this reason, we must leave the taps closed and avoid wasting water that we do not need. At the same time, we must apply the same with light. If we can take advantage of natural light it will always be much better for our economy, and we will also do the planet a favor. Something similar happens with gas but with an added handicap. On the one hand, it is very dangerous and we can die from suffocation, but it can also end up exploding the house and represents a huge energy expense for our home.
- When going to the mall, we must also apply sustainable development. Let’s not buy those products that we are not going to consume for various reasons. First, because there are many people who are dying of hunger around the world, and to throw away the food we can give it to an NGO that someone will surely take advantage of. And, on the other hand, we create a really large amount of garbage that we will later have to end up throwing away. They are extra waste that harms the environment, especially those that are packaged in large containers. Related to what we talked about earlier, it is also important that our clothes are in accordance with the season of the year in which we are located.. Can you imagine wearing short sleeves during autumn and winter? The reality is that we would be very cold and our most instinctive reaction would be to turn on the heating and, furthermore, to do so at a high level, producing enormous energy expenditure. If we put ourselves in the opposite case, we would not stop sweating and, surely, we would use a fan or air conditioning. In both cases there is a huge energy expense that is perfectly avoidable to contribute to sustainable development at any time of the year. Society must be made aware of the importance of caring for the planet if we want to live and let the following generations live in good conditions.