Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
Through appropriate public policies the government should move from their present, often destructive, processes of growth and development onto sustainable development goals with redistributive measures. Development becomes real when it is sustainable ensuring growth with equity indicators. The critics of development uphold the following overarching objrctives in this direction:
reviving growth;
changing the quality of growth;
meeting essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water, and sanitation;
ensuring a sustainable level of population;
conserving and enhancing the resource base:
reorienting technology and managing risk; and
merging environment and economics in decision making.
Development must have to address ‘the problem of the large number of people who live in absolute poverty – that is, who are unable to satisfy even the most basic of their needs. Poverty reduces people’s capacity to use resources in a sustainable manner; it intensifies pressure on the environment.’ Growth in developing countries including Bangladesh must have a meaningful link with the alleviation of poverty, and improvement of environmental conditions. ‘Yet developing countries are part of an interdependent world economy; their prospects also depend on the levels and patterns of growth in industrialized nations.’
The hard realities in developing countries are that poverty and development of underdevelopment continue to strike at the broot of equity. Recently human poverty index (HPI) is gaining ground as a measure of poverty from human perspective based on three variables: vulnerability of death at an early age, illiteracy and a less than descent standard of living comprised of a lack of access to health services, safe water and adequate food. This measure departs from the conventional measures which are based on income only (Human Development Report 1997) Analysis of the various aspects of poverty based on ‘conventional poverty count’ is thus flawed. ‘Conceptualizing poverty in income terms only bypasses human aspirations and basic social needs’ of the poor. Poverty alleviation with human face takes into account human aspects of poverty emphasizing social justice, primary health care and nutrition ‘Poverty is a relative phenomenon; it may reflect differing income status and varying possession of martial benefits of development. According to this concept even a person attaining a modicum of economic solvency is poor in relation to the person who possesses more and is relatively rich. Poverty line has turned out to be that level of income below which an individual or household cannot afford on a regular basis the necessities of life. An expert opined:
Sustainable development involves more than growth. It requires a change in the content of growth, to make it less Material- and energy-intensive and more equitable in its impact. These changes are required in all countries as part of a package of measures to maintain the stock of ecological capital, to improve the distribution of income, and to reduce the degree of vulnerability to economic crises. The process of economic development must be more soundly based upon the realities of the stock of capital that sustains it. This is rarely done in either developed or developing countries. For example, income from forestry operations is conventionally measured in terms of the value of timber and other products extracted, minus the costs of extraction. The costs of regenerating the forest are not taken into account, unless money is actually spent on such work. Thus figuring profits from logging rarely takes full account of the losses in future revenue incurred through degradation of the forest. Similar incomplete accounting occurs in the exploitation of other natural resources, especially in the case of resources that are not capitalized in enterprise or national accounts: air, water, and soil. In all countries, rich or poor, economic development must take full account in its measurements of growth of the improvement or deterioration in the stock of natural resources.
Income distribution is one aspect of the quality of growth, as described in the preceding section, and rapid growth combined with deteriorating income distribution may be worse than slower growth combined with redistribution in favour of the poor. For instance, in many developing countries the introduction of large-scale commercial agriculture may produce revenue rapidly, but may also dispossess a large number of small farmers and make income distribution more inequitable. In the long run, such a path may not be sustainable; it impoverishes many people and can increase pressures on the natural resource base through overcommercialized agriculture and through the marginalization of subsistence farmers. Relying more on smallholder cultivation may be slower at first, but more easily sustained over the long term. People have acquired, often for the first time in history, both an idea of their relative poverty and a desire to emerge from it and improve the quality of their lives. As people advance materially, and eat and live better, what, were once luxuries tend to be regarded as necessities. The net result is that the demand for food, raw materials, and power increases to an even greater degree than the population. As demand increases, a greater and greater strain is put on the finite area of the world’s land to produce the products needed.
Significant progress has been made over the past 20 years in combating global poverty and addressing other internationally agreed development goals, such as improving gender equality, lowering child mortality, raising educational attainment and improving sanitation and access to clean drink ing water. However, progress has been uneven within and across countries and regions and the benefits of social and economic progress have not been shared equally. At the same time, there is growing evidence that population growth, combined with economic development, rising standards of living and a higher level of consumption has resulted in changing patterns of land use, increased energy use and the depletion of natural resources, with signs of climate change and environmental degradation more visible than ever before. Moving forward, the central challenge in designing the post-2015 development agenda is to ensure that efforts to improve the quality of life of the present generation are far-reaching, broad and inclusive but at the same time, fashioned in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Accomplishing this goal hinges on the ability of the international community to ensure access to resources for growing numbers of people, eradicate poverty, reduce social and economic inequality and end unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, while safeguarding the environment.
In designing and implementing the new development agenda, it is important to understand and account for the demographic changes that are likely to unfold over the next 15 years and how such changes are expected to contribute to or hinder the achievement of the sustainable development goals.
(Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder, Pro-VC, BUP and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Retired Professor, Chittagong University)
