Sustainable Resource Use & Sustainable Development: a Contradiction?!

The concept of ‘sustainability’ has become the current answer to absolving the world of its environmental and economic crises in the 21 century. Since its conceptualisation, there has been a barrage of investigations and literature on the vagueness and ambiguity of its definition and applicability. There are two main opposing schools of thought the pessimists, usually ecologists and other scientists, who are convinced the earth cannot forever support the world’s demand of renewable and non renewable resources. On the other side are the optimists, the economists, who are equally convinced that the earth, with market incentives, appropriate public policies, material substitution, recycling, and new technology can satisfy the needs and improve the quality of human welfare, of this and following generations, indefinitely. Both views and supporting arguments are explored in the context of sustainable resource use and sustainable development. The complexity of sustainable development is also discussed in the light of international conventions and agreements. Examples of the application of sustainable strategies to local, national and regional issues, as well as the role of international agencies in local/national strategies, are also reviewed to give a glimpse of understanding how initial objectives may succeed, or in spite of all good intention, fail. Both sides of the argument have a point and are seen as two sides of the same coin. With limited empirical evidence of ecosystem evolution and resource maintenance, sustainable resource use is basically dependent on the outcome of the cost-increasing effects of depletion and the cost-reducing effects of new technology. Sustainability is therefore seen as a dynamic concept based on attitude and flexibility not the final solution to utopia on earth.