The limitations inherent in sustainable development and how to overcome them

Title : The limitations inherent in sustainable development and how to overcome them

Abstract:

Sustainable development is the ideology and practical strategy of the present and future socio-economic development in harmony with nature. A wide range of policies and practical activities have been launched at a global, national and regional level in order to achieve sustainable development since WCED suggested its concept and implication in 1987. In 2015, United Nations adopted a set of sustainable development goals to be achieved over the next 15 years as a follow-up action plan of millennium development goals. However, it is true that sustainable development is not achieved as successfully as planned. Its evidences are the facts that we are still faced with serous climate change and natural disasters, all of which are the challenges to humans. This would mean that sustainable development has limitations in its concept and implication. Nonetheless, it is quite rare to conduct a research on the limitations inherent in sustainable development. In such a context, this presentation aims at exploring the limitations inherent in sustainable development and how to overcome them. This presentation will first examine the emergence process of sustainable development, and followed by its concept and implication, the critical debates on its concept and implication in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the concept and implications of sustainable development goal launched in 2015. Based on the findings from the above review, this presentation will draw the limitations inherent in the concept and implications of sustainable development and examine what and how to overcome the limitations. The conclusion of this presentation will focus on what the existing concept and implications of sustainable development should be supplemented. The significance of this presentation lies in proposing a new direction of the coexistence between humans and nature for achieving sustainable development.

Biography:

Dr. Dai-Yeun Jeong is presently the Director of Asia Climate Change Education Center and an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sociology at Jeju National University (South Korea). He received BA and MA Degree in Sociology from Korea University, and PhD in Environmental Sociology from University of Queensland (Australia). He was a Professor of environmental sociology at Jeju National University (South Korea) from 1981 to 2012. His past major professional activities include a Teaching Professor at University of Sheffield in UK, the President of Asia-Pacific Sociological Association, a Delegate of South Korean Government to UNFCCC and OECD Environmental Meeting, etc. He has published 13 books including Environmental Sociology.