ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT VERSUS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Liliana Scutaru

Abstract


The paper put in antithesis, theoretically, two models of development and evolution of mankind, namely, economic development based on consumption of the exhaustible resources and pollution and on the other hand the development based on the concepts of sustainable development, involving a new mentality on human life and environment. Economic development includes economic growth, quantified in particular through the GDP, aspect that leads to a reduced analysis taking into account a limited number of variables such as household income, employment labour, consumption of goods and services, etc.. Perpetuation of this model has led, over time, to the company's inability to solve the problems facing mankind today and serious discrepancies regarding current levels of human development. This type of model does not take into account variables such as unemployment, poverty, education, health, environmental pollution, population migration, urban overcrowding, social inclusion etc. At the opposite side of this type of development, which proves to be beyond the crowd problems currently facing humanity, is a new alternative model, that of sustainable development, which provides an integrated view of all these variables and hence the chance of the human society to a new level of evolution. The sustainable development model of mankind put, among others, the zero growth issue or even sustained decrease for some countries. This model requires also reducing resource consumption and increase sustainability of assets created. It also offers practical solutions to many current problems of mankind, among which we can mention providing food for a growing world population and producing clean alternative energy.

Keywords


economic growth; economic development; sustainable development; zero growth; sustained decrease; vicious circle of underdevelopment

References


Dăduianu Vasilescu, I. (1997) Mediul şi economia, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, Bucureşti, p. 10.

Hardwick, P., Langmead, J., Khan, B. (2002) Introducere în economia politică modernă, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, p. 546.

Ignat, I., Pohoaţă, I., Luţac, G., Pascariu, G. (2002) Economie politică, Ediţia a II-a, Editura Economică, Bucureşti, p. 503.

King, A., Schneider, B. (1993) Prima revoluţie globală, Editura Tehnică, Bucureşti, pp. 37-38.

Kuznets, S. (1972) Creşterea şi structura economică, Edition Calman – Levy, p. 32.

Meadows, D., Meadows, D. (1972) The Limits of Growth, A Report to the Club of Rome, Universe Books, New York.

Nurkse, R. (1968) Les problèmes de la formation du capital dans les pays sous-développés, Edition Cujas, Paris, p. 23.

Perroux, F. (1981) Pour une philosophie du nouveau développement, Les Presses d’UNESCO, Paris, p. 13.

Perroux, F. (1969) L’Economie du XX-ème siècle, PUF, Paris, p. 191.

Popescu, I., Bondrea, A., Constantinescu, M. (2005) Dezvoltarea durabilă. O perspectivă românească, Editura Economică, Bucureşti, p. 22.

Pohoaţă, I. (2003) Filosofia economică şi politica dezvoltării durabile, Editura Economică, Bucureşti, p. 82.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1996) Legea entropiei ÅŸi procesul economic, Vol. V, Editura Expert, BucureÅŸti.

Samuelson, P., Nordhaus, W. (2000) Economie politică, Editura Teora, Bucureşti, p. 632.

Schumpeter, J. A. (1974) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Edition Payot, Paris, p. 61.

Zoellick, R. (2008) World Bank President, The "New Deal for a Global Food Policy", www.worldbank.org

, Small encyclopaedic dictionary, Second Edition, Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, p. 296.

, Brundtland Report Our Common Future, Editura Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York.

-14 June 1992, The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Documents. Multilingual/ Default. asp? Document ID=788ArticleID=1163, www.unep.org

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/24/growing-food-in-the-desert-crisis

www.un.org./esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm

http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty

http://empowermentinternational.org/


Full Text: PDF

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.