“Sustainable development”… we hear this expression every day, everywhere. But what is it? The first thing that comes to my mind when I try to answer this question, is this famous definition that I learnt when I was studying environmental law. The definition that was first given in 1987 with the release of the Brundtland Report by the UN… “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. That is beautiful, isn’t it?
But what does it mean?
It means that our development must be in line with three pillars at the same time- economy/ecology/social- it must be economically efficient, socially fair and ecologically sustainable. The main issues related to sustainable development have now been identified with 17 SDG’s, adopted by the UN in September 2015. They include the end of poverty and of hunger, the improvement of health and education, water and sanitation, climate action, the protection of biodiversity…
But what does it mean?
Well… I do not know.
We all think that we know what sustainability is because we can recite the definition, give examples with SDGs. We know how to sound clever in society but in fact, we do not know anything about it.
So I am asking again…
- What does sustainable development mean?
- What does it CONCRETELY mean?
- What does it imply?
- How do we transform these expression and its beautiful definition in real action?
- How do we make our daily-life more sustainable?
- How can we all become more aware of sustainability and be able to make our world more sustainable?
To me, this is where Sustainability World (SW) comes in! SW would be an answer to all these questions.
I see SW (and the SW community) as the website that we need to visit in order to become aware of everything related to sustainability. In my mind, it could become the “reference site” for everybody willing to learn on sustainability and ecology. It will be a gathering of different kinds of information, targeting different sorts of people. In that sense, it will be suitable for anyone who wants to learn more about sustainability. It will, of course, present the mains themes and topics related to social and economic development as well as the protection of environment. The approach will be completely comprehensive. In that sense, it will give information on a topic, starting from a theoretical explanation, leading to an intermediate level of explanation, before going to a very practical and concrete comprehension of the subject. It will also provide the people with several different tools to learn (texts, videos, music, stories…). The approach would not be only academic because SW would also give the chance to everyone to start discussions on specific topics and to share experiences.
We need our society to change and, for the change to be real and for raising environmental awareness among people, we need initiatives like SW. It would help empowering the population and enable everyone to set up sustainable projects and activities.