Achieving Real Sustainable Development

Only a select few have been able to see the Earth as the Apollo 8 Astronauts did during their lunar orbit mission on December 24, 1968. From such a far distance, the concept of Earth being their only home was clear to them. Today the long-term sustainability of Earth to provide a home for all of us is in question because of a rapidly declining global environment.

Former Vice-President Al Gore, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been one of the people to put sustainability on the world political agenda, but is the global response at the level required to enable the reversal of the ongoing destruction to the Planet? The answer appears to be no, and one weakness is that there is still no integrated plan to restore the Earth amongst all Nations, or a global financial infrastructure delivering the required profit incentives for Earth restoration.

One of the key foundations for human sustainability is the need to return transparency and risk management to the core of the global financial markets, so that there is a base for essential environmental investment in companies that have products or services that reduce pollution levels or restore environments.

The current sustainability efforts of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are excellent to bring all Nations together to establish a Restoration Project, but the overall global interest is still limited and the world audience needs to 'buy more tickets' to come to the 'concert'. Each Country has a vested interest in developing their environmental restoration plans and to work within an overall UNEP framework to accomplish this. Considering the timeframe that we have left to achieve sustainability, many Nations need to move much faster at establishing sustainability than they are currently doing.

In some countries more than others, the acceleration in the destruction of home environments needs radical surgery and a significant change of political philosophy about what the economic 'value' is of today's money versus the value of a sustainable clean environment for today and the future.