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The History

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Sustainable development is a buzzword found in much environmental and some economics literature these days. Certainly the idea of sustainable development has become increasingly popular in the contemporary world. New books on sustainable development have been appearing with increasing rapidity since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June of 1992.

The questions are, what is all the fuss about? What is sustainable development anyway? And more importantly, why does sustainable development matter?

The word sustainable comes to us from the foresters of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. At that time much of Europe was being deforested, and the foresters became increasingly concerned since wood was one of the driving forces in European economy. Wood heated homes and factories, became furniture and other articles of manufacture.

Forests were best harvested from an economic standpoint using clear-cutting techniques. This meant that loggers moved into a tract of a forest and removed all of the trees in the tract. The foresters and especially the German foresters, in response to this crisis developed scientific or sustainable forestry. The idea at that time was simple. If enough trees were planted to replace the wood provided by the trees that were harvested every year, and the growth rate of the entire forest was scientifically monitored to ensure this happened, then the forest would be sustainable. It would always grow enough wood fiber to replace the wood fiber lost to harvesting.

Thus, in this original idea, sustainable means that as a resource is used, it is replaced by growing additional amounts of the resource. In the modern context of the word, sustainable, this is a difficult context because there are many resources, such as oil or iron ore, that cannot be grown. Still, these resources, like trees in Europe’s forests are finite. If all the oil is extracted, there will not be any oil. Still, if humanity is to survive with a civilization for another 1000 years, we are still going to need to heat our homes and fulfill many of the same purposes that oil now fulfills.

The word development, at least as it is used in the phrase sustainable development, has a different history. During the cold war the United States needed to respond to the communist challenge in the Third World that said that communism would bring with it a new standard of living. Walt Rostow, a prominent US government official and economist, developed a competing ideology that he called economic development. Rostow’s answer to the Communist challenge was that it was the civilized world’s task to economically develop the Third World. Thus, according to his model, the poor would be much better off in the long run by embracing democracy and capitalism. If the Third World country would remain anti-communist, they would receive foreign aid, at some point in future, take off and become equal to the economies of Western Europe, the US and Japan.

Thus, development, in the context of sustainable development, means the Third World’s economies will become equal to the developed world’s economies. This, in turn, will alleviate poverty and suffering in poor countries and make the world more equitable for all human beings.

 

2. Read the text again and say if the following statements are true or false.

1) The idea of sustainable development is not popular in the contemporary world.

2) Oil was the driving force in European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries.

3)The English foresters developed a new technology to harvest forests.

4)Natural resources are finite.

5)A French government official developed a competing ideology that he called economic development.

6)According to the new ideology the rich would be better off.

 

3. Scan through the text again searching for the English equivalents for the following collocations:

современный мир; устойчивое развитие; движущая сила; неистощительное лесопользование; темп роста; дополнительное количество; одинаковые цели (задачи); холодная война; уровень жизни; правительственный чиновник; цивилизованный мир; изделия производства; с экономической точки зрения; в ответ на; древесина; иностранная помощь.

 

 

Text 2

1. Read the text and complete the outline of its contents given below; some items are suggested to you.

 


1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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