Sustainable development and environmental problem

Abstract

Different forms of inequality, resulting from anthropogenic environmental changes, constitute a large part of the environmental problems. Environmental benefits and harms are not distributed equally across and within national boundaries. Such benefits and harms are unevenly distributed within and between generations. The environmental harms are caused by our current practices and will afflict our future generations, while benefits are enjoyed by the present generations alone. The concepts of “sustainability” and “sustainable development” have been developed to address such problems of inter-generational equality. The concept of sustainability began its career in the context of sustainable agriculture and sustainable ecological system. Any account of sustainability must answer questions about what should be sustained, for whom it is to be sustained and why. In the mainstream economic literature, the answer to the first questions is a certain level of human welfare which is understood as preference satisfaction. This definition leads to the further questions as to what is required for such maintenance of this level of human welfare over time. The main aim of this article is to discuss these entire problems and provide some possible solutions to overcome this challenge positively.