The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say!

Week Two - “Human Wellbeing and Sustainability”
Comment / Comentario / Commentaire

Dr. Anil Kumar, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, India

Moderating team: Anil Kuma points out that sustainability has a vast temporal and spatial variability. In order to ensure human well being on the planet, sustainability lessons need to be learnt from the temporal point of view (worrying for the future), and also from spatial point of view (worrying for the fellow under-developed humans).

Anil Kuma afirma que la sostenibilidad tiene variables temporales y espaciales. Con el afán de asegurar el bienestar humano en el planeta, las lecciones de sostenibilidad necesitan ser aprendidas tanto desde una óptica temporal (preocupación por el futuro) como desde una óptica espacial (preocupación por los humanos menos desarrollados).

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On a global scale, sustainability has a vast temporal and spatial variability. Since temporal variability is time dependent, it is a matter of concern for all of us at national and global levels; while the spatial variability is its space-wise extension from the poorest of the poor in some African countries (under developed), to the highly affluent society of the developed world. We all are concerned only because we have only one earth to live on and only one environment to sustain our lives.

In probability terminology, the priorities of both the under-developed and the developed world can be regarded as the independent events (not mutually exclusive) and the simultaneous occurrence of both the events becomes a product of their probabilities (magnitude). Therefore, if one part is too strong (developed world) and the other is too weak (under-developed or to some extent developing world), the product (net effect) will always be less than what the developed world anticipates. This logic simply explains that for implementing any action (e.g. sustainable development on global scale), we have to take care of both the extremes simultaneously; and we may have to put more effort towards the under-developed component, which is so extensive and vital from sustainability point of view in the long run and in the present day as well.

If one component (the developed world) of our global society keeps on moving unabated due to their discriminate technological advancements, they may have to repent later for environmental sustainability, while the other component (the under-developed world) may be vanished partially or fully by that time.

So, in order to ensure human well being on planet Earth, the lessons of sustainability must be learnt not only from the temporal point of view (worrying for the future), but also from spatial point of view (worrying for the fellow under-developed humans).