Abstract
The sustainable development movement originated from the notion that globally industrial development occurring at an accelerated pace created a polluted environment, became a threat to human health and life, caused widening income gaps between the wealthy and the poor, and posed a dangerous depletion of natural resources that sustain life on earth. The Brundtland Commission provided the crucial impetus to the idea of development that is sustainable. United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals were constructed to motivate progress towards sustainability. From an engineer’s viewpoint, one could follow the history of environmental protection in the USA to realize that much work was already done in alleviating the environmental ills to reach a point that is conducive to the adoption of the ideas of sustainable development without radical changes. Industry already has been innovating under the ideas of waste minimization and pollution prevention, and engineering was central to that development.
“It is better to be kind than right.”
— Ratan Tata, industrialist and benefactor
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Notes
- 1.
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development adopted its 15th principle as follows: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” The Precautionary Principle allows measures that would seem to prevent damage to human health and the environment when the causality between a stressor and the impacts is plausible even in the absence of confirmed scientific evidence.
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Eight Millennium Development Goals are (1) eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, (2) achieve universal primary education, (3) promote gender equality, (4) reduce child mortality, (5) improve maternal health, (6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, (7) ensure environmental sustainability, and (8) develop a global partnership for development).
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Review of the Targets for the Sustainable Development Goals: The Science Perspective, http://www.icsu.org/publications/reports-and-reviews/review-of-targets-for-the-sustainable-development-goals-the-science-perspective-2015/SDG-Report.pdf. Accessed 1 Jul 2015.
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NPDES: National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. http://enviroscienceinc.com/services/environmental-compliance-services/. Accessed 27 Sept 2015.
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The uncertainty of sustainable development was expressed by Hales and Prescott-Allen in this fashion: “Making progress toward sustainability is like going to a destination we have never before visited, equipped with a sense of geography and the principles of navigation, but without a map or compass.”
– Hales D and Prescott-Allen R (2002) Flying blind: assessing progress toward sustainability. In: Esty DC, Ivanova MH (eds) Global environmental governance: options and opportunities. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. New Haven, pp 31–52).
- 7.
Report on the Environment (2014), http://cfpub.epa.gov/roe/indicator.cfm?i
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Sikdar, S.K., Sengupta, D., Mukherjee, R. (2017). Scientific Sustainability. In: Measuring Progress Towards Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42719-5_1
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