By the year 2200 there will be a lot more people living on this planet then there are
now. Estimates range anywhere from 15 to 36 billion people. Where will these people
live? How will they live? The answer is sustainable development. Sustainable
development, "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. " It also, "requires meeting the basic needs of all
peoples and extending to them the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better
life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other
catastrophes." Sustainable development is being ignored in Chile, the Philippines, and
Siberia, practiced in Madagascar and in Alaska, and examined in the Lake Baikal region of
Russia. These Countries must learn from each other's failures and success to discover
what sustainable development involves in their own country.
Sustainable development has three divisions, economic, environmental, and social. If
sustainability is to occur it must, meet these three divisions. In Chile, none of these
divisions is being met. Economically speaking, almost 40% of the population is poor and
as a result many make a living directly from the land clearing forests. In the IVth
region of Chile, forest regions are being depleted at an amazing rate. This depletion of
the forest in this region results in two main things, one, people must spend increasing
amounts of energy traveling to the site of present cutting and two, the removal of the
trees over time has lead to soil erosion and rapid desertification of the area. This
soil erosion also removes many nutrients from the soil making the land poor for
agriculture. The third division, social, is not met here either. The lack of
organizations to relieve the negative effects of poverty on the environment have only
contributed to the problem.
In the Philippines the environmental degradation is similar in nature but more
catastrophic in result. There in the province of Leyte 6000 people were killed when
flash flood ripped through Ormoc City in 1991. The floods were a result of logging of a
forest in that region and conversion of that area into commercial farming practices such
as sugarcane. This in itself did not cause the floods, the conversion of the forest into
farming left the heavy rain from a typhoon with nowhere to go. Normally the forest would
have stopped any flash floods as it would have held the water let it out slowly, but with
the forests gone there was nothing to delay the water from exiting the system. The
economical effect of this that land and buildings were destroyed causing millions of
peso's worth of damage. The social impact is easy to discern, those who lost loved ones,
friends, and family can never get them back.
In Madagascar the same type of thing was happening. Locals were cutting down the forest
and planting rice and cassava. It was estimated that this process of deforestation was
costing the country between, "100 and 300 million a year in decreased crop yields, the
loss of productive forests and damage to infrastructure." Something needed to be done,
the government implemented a plan to, "protect and improve the environment while working
for sustainable development."
The approach integrates all aspects of sustainable development. Socially, a public
education programme explains why locals shouldn't cut down the tree's and why it is
economically more important that they don't. Environmentally, the forests will not be
lost now. And economically some cutting is still down however it is sustainable cutting.
New jobs were also created in this program. In order to persuade villagers that this
was the best route to take, half of all fees paid by tourists to enter the parks within
which the forests are, go directly to development projects for the community. They go to
the community because of the "positive correlation between prosperity and environmental
quality. This means that the more prosperous you are the more you can afford to clean
up the environment. A poor country like Madagascar could not possibly invest as much
capital as Canada could into the reduction of Air pollution or the clean up of
contaminants in soil.
In the Russian north all aspects of sustainability were ignored. There in part of
Siberia that stretches from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Novosibirsk in the
south, [see appendix one, fig one] the environmental and social divisions of sustainable
development were ignored for the economical. This region produces 78% of Russia's oil
and 84% of it's natural gas. It also happens to be rich in fish and reindeer, the
principle resources of the Yamal Nenets whom are the indigenous peoples of the area.
Under Stalin socialist plan of the 1930's, the Nenet's were forced to change their
traditional way of life - one that was completely sustainable - to one based on
collective farms. The children were put in state schools and lost much of their
traditional knowledge. The creation of the massive oil fields and gas reservoirs were
started. The pollution that these industries created in air, land, and sea, destroyed
any hope of ever going back to anything like their traditional way of life. The massive
plants took up to as much as a third of the summer grazing grounds for the reindeer, and
the Ob river has been severely polluted from industrial centers in the south. The
social aspect, that of destroying way of life of the Nenet's, the pollution caused by the
plants is the disregard for the environmental aspect, and the economical aspect's
importance was, by far, outweighed in terms of the other two aspects in terms of
planning.
In contrast the U.S. has developed a different policy in it's North. Like Siberia,
Alaska has a lot of resources centered environmentally sensitive lands. Similarly,
Alaska also has it's own indigenous peoples, the I?upiat Eskimo, who have, like the
Nenet's traditionally had sustainable way of life. The ancestral calving grounds of
Porcupine Caribou Herd, one of the largest in the world at 160000 animals, is located on
the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife reserve. The I?upiat herd these
animals and require this land to sustain their way of life. This also is the site for
one of the largest possible oil fields in North America and as such there is much debate
on the lands uses.
The I?upiat want the money that the industry would bring in but fear the environmental
implications as well. In 1971, the U.S. Congress passed a native land claims settlement
act that meant that native groups had a much greater say in the possible land uses.
Following the passage of the act, the I?upiat formed the largest City in North America
(in terms of Geography, see Appendix One, fig. two), the North Slope Borough, and began
to tax any oil revenue made within the city. This revenue - in the millions of dollars -
let the I?upiat live a modern lifestyle and still engage in their traditional
subsistence practices. The I?upiat also retained a greater control over environmental
rules and regulations, which they used to make sure little pollution occurred. In this
example, all three aspects of sustainable development were used. Economically, everyone
made money, socially no group was adversely effected, and environmentally there is little
or no pollution, certainly nothing like that in Siberia.
Siberia may also be the place for trying a new method of sustainable development. This
new method created by George D. Davis hopes to be a, "rational compromise between the
economic needs of a people and the ecological needs of their land." It employs a method
of zoning an area or region as to it's possible land use's. The area that this new
method is being tested on is Lake Baikal, the biggest, oldest, deepest repository of
freshwater on the planet, one fifth of the worlds total freshwater is found in Lake
Baikal. This lake is also home to more than 1800 species found nowhere else on the
planet. To save such an unique place on earth it was necessary to account for all
three area's of sustainability. This was accomplished by zoning the entire Lake Baikal
watershed into 25 different types of zones ranging from farmland to industrial parks. A
total of 52 million acres were set aside as parks, reserves, greenbelts, and landscapes.
As well as zoning the entire basin, an agreement was struck to reduce and hopefully end
the pollution that enters Lake Baikal's watershed. In this way, not only was the
environment saved, but so were peoples jobs and thus the social and economic well-being.
The Lake Baikal zoning method is an example of how new methods of sustainable development
are always being created. Countries like Chile, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe all can
learn a lot from examples such as Madagascar, the United States, and the zoning method in
Russia. In fact all countries can learn a lot from the success and failures of each
other. In every successful case of sustainable development the three aspects were met,
economical, environmental, and social. In every failure at least one or more was
missing. The lessons learned now can only help us as we enter the next millennia, and
over 15 billion people.
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