Sustainable Development: The Way for Future But Where Are We?

The term “Sustainable Development” also known as “Global Goals” has been repeated a lot lately. There are entire ministries, bodies, and administrations in the public and private sectors responsible for the sustainable development file. But what is sustainable development and why is it our only way to the future?

The concept of sustainable development is an approach to development that doesn’t conflict the environment, one that knows how to balance. In others words, it’s the type of development that meets the needs of humans currently without compromising the ability of future generations to achieve their goals with very limited resources like oil and gas.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable development goals that was basically a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 everyone enjoys peace and prosperity.

There were other important goals such as raising economic growth rates, reducing social inequality and promoting the values ​​of equality between men and women.

Therefore, in 2016, Egypt also followed the UN’s steps, and announced its sustainable development strategy, Egypt Vision 2030. This vision basically outlines the government’s actions over the next 15 years, as a long-term development strategy that covers the three development areas; economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Here we gathered all the global goals that all countries of the world agreed on:

Economic Goals:

For developed countries, the goal of “sustainable development” is to reduce consumption levels of energy and natural resources, which can be doubled in developed countries compared to developing countries. For example, the consumption of energy sources of oil, gas and coal in the United States reaches a level 33 times higher than in India.

Economic growth is the primary objective for developing countries. Their goals are to increase levels of productivity and technological innovation, encourage entrepreneurship and create job opportunities, and take all effective steps to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men by 2030.

Social Goals:

Social goals are represented in “human development”, and this for sure doesn’t mean getting higher school grades (although you should) , but it is intended to improve the quality of health care and education.

Equality is also such a huge point when it comes to social goals, which the UN classified into two types; fairness for future generations, whose interests must be taken into account, and the second type is fairness for those who live today and do not find equal opportunities as others in the use of natural resources and social services.

Environmental Goals:

The optimal goal of sustainable development is to reconcile economic development with the preservation of the environment, taking into account its limited capacity to absorb waste. So, basically using non-renewable resources wisely to preserve it for future generations.

Technological Goals:

One of the most important goals of sustainable development is to achieve a rapid transformation in the technological base of industrial societies, to new technologies that are cleaner, more efficient and more capable of reducing environmental pollution.

The lesson is to try to avoid the recurrence of development mistakes, and to avoid the environmental pollution.

Among the most important applications of technology are biodegradable plastics, drones to spray crops, electronic chips, as well as modern banking services applications that saved effort and time

In the end, it’s great that the need for change and radical rethinking of how organizations and industries work is being addressed, but now is the time to start taking action.