Feature Article

In order to have a sustainable community, you must first know what sustainable development is. ‘Sustainable development is economic development that is conducted without the depletion of our natural resources.’ The first place that people should be taught about this is in schools. Children are the future of tomorrow, if they learn these things now they will continue to use it in the future, as they get older. Not only that, but children have power, the power to make their parents do things and be willing to help for a sustainable environment. Children also pick up on ideas really quickly, and then carry them forward for the rest of their lives. For example, when a child is potty trained, they are also taught how to use to the toilet and make sure to flush every single time, and this is something they continue to do as adults, because it is a part of daily living. Therefore, sustainability should be incorporated into daily living. Children should be taught at an early age to turn off the lights of a room when nobody is there, or how to use recyclable materials. The most important factor here is that parents may not always be able to teach their children this, because they are not aware themselves or they do not think it’s important. That is why is must be a part of the educational system.

Not only that, but bringing awareness to the adults is important. A lot of people lack knowledge of how certain activities can be very damaging. It is also important that people understand that sustainability is not only better for the environment but it is also much more efficient, and can therefore benefit everyone. Once the people are aware completely of the impacts they need to unite and speak up in order for the cities and countries take more initiative in creating programs.  With that companies should set up sustainable goals that they want to meet for suppose 2-3 years, and set forth means of doing so through activities, new policies, and schedules. For example, in 2008 the United Nations had developed the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG) in which one of the goals was to ensure environmental sustainability, through which they implemented new policies that would help ensure the change.

Importantly, sustainable development indicators would influence program developments because an indicator basically shows you where you are, which way you are heading and how far you are from the spot that you want to be in. An indicator would be extremely helpful in bringing awareness to the issue of the environment and sustainability before it gets too far, and highlight the importance of taking action now. It would also allow people to recognize what can be done to help fix the problem, and most importantly how urgent the problem is. For example, a gas gauge in the car is an indicator. It tells you how much gas remains in your vehicle and immediately you know you have to fuel it up. With having that indicator, it provides a safety net, to prevent you from much more hassle (if the gas were to run out and you were in the middle of the road) and it also provokes a sense of urgency when you see the gas is about to run out (Hart, 2010). You immediately know something needs to be done. Thus if there were good indicators on sustainability, people would be more abrupt to have policies in place as soon as they could, because they would then visually understand the urgency and importance of environmental sustainability. Thus, much more people would recognize that just as the fuel runs out of the car, we are depleting our natural resources by the second and therefore would influence more program development.

References

Hart, M., (2010) Characteristics of Effective Indicators. Sustainable Measures. Retrieved Feb 17, 2017 from http://www.sustainablemeasures.com/node/92
United Nations (n.d.) Millenium Development Goals. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml