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Sustainable development at crossroads
The world society must change its lifestyle from that of consumptive, selfish and hedonistic to modest, less consumptive and focusing more on caring and sharing.
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Cracked: A resident drives across the receded Gajah Mungkur dam in Wuryanto district in Wonogiri, Central Java, on Saturday. The dry season has brought drought to many regencies in Central Java. (The Jakarta Post/Ganug Nugroho Adi)
T
he greatest challenge confronting civilization in the 21st century is sustaining economic development and maintaining the carrying capacity and quality of natural ecosystems. Sustainable development is at a crossroads. On the one hand, we must utilize our natural resources and environmental services to fulfill the ever increasing demand for food, clothing, medicine, construction materials, energy, minerals, housing, industry, agriculture, tourism and infrastructure. Moreover, resources, including fisheries, forest, oil and gas, coal and minerals have also been developed to generate economic growth and employment opportunities.
On the other hand, reckless industrialization and development, pollution, depletion of natural resources, biodiversity loss and other environmental degradation in many parts of the world have reached a level that threatens the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems to support further development.
Even more alarming are the repercussions of global climate change. If we fail to significantly reduce the emissions rate of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to lower than the assimilative capacity of the Earth’s atmospheric system, the negative impacts of global warming, such as sea-level rise, ocean acidification, heat waves, uncertain climate patterns and disease outbreaks would be unmanageable. Global climate change would not only jeopardize development but could also seriously threaten civilization itself.
The Earth houses some 7.4 billion people, roughly 9 times the 800 million estimated to have lived in 1750, the start of the Industrial Revolution — with an annual increase of around 75 million people.
