Legal Approach to the Concept of 'Sustainability' in Sustainable Development

지속적 개발의 '지속성' 개념에 관한 법학적 접근

In its Declaration of Principles, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development recommends that, "to achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, states should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption...." This notion of sustainability lies at the core of many "commons" problems, where the central issue is to enable "individuals to sustain long-term, productive use of natural resource systems". In other worlds, a common definition of "sustainability" captures the idea of aligning human consumption with the capacity of ecological systems to supply, over a long period of time, such natural resources as air, soil, or water on which production depends. The concept of sustainability raises all sorts of political, social, and economic questions about the distribution of environmental protection. For sustainable community development to be addressed, these questions must be raised. In order to convince different citizenry of the necessity of sustainability, these questions must also be answered. This is where questions of equity, justice, and fairness arise. Sustainability and equity require that we deal with nature as an undivided whole, with no part being unsustainable. Sustainability and social policy also requires that we deal with the human population as an undivided whole. We simply cannot move people around the planet to either perpetuate past practices of earth exploitation or to implement sustainable planning. Everyone must work with the people inhabiting sensitive ecological areas, especially areas of regeneration. In the sustainable global community, we are as strong as our weakest link, or our most toxic community. This is the undeniable driving force for the infusion of equity into the sustainable development debate.