Source: Adapted from: Measuring Sustainable Development, Insights into MONET � the Swiss monitoring system, Neuch�tel, August 2002. http://www.statistik.admin.ch/stat_ch/ber21/dev_dur_e_files/joburg_e.pdf

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a very complex concept involving several interrelated issues:

• Social equity puts the priority on satisfying the diversified needs of the population, such as food, health and education. Self-reliance is also often perceived as a desirable goal of social development, which goes against economic concepts such as comparative advantages and globalization. The issue of international solidarity is particularly paradoxical. It implies aid mechanisms to help nations/regions to cope with temporary crisis such as a drought but has become in recent decades a systematic and enduring redistribution mechanism leaning on "international aid" and a bureaucracy "managing" this aid.
• Economic efficiency is a well known issue that has obviously received a lot of emphasis as it promotes significant improvements in the welfare of populations. Key concepts are related to achieve or sustain economic growth, maximize profits, and expand markets. Globalization has given a new dimension to economic development by enabling an extended range to comparative advantages.
• Environmental responsibility tries to respect the carrying capacity of environmental systems, to conserve and recycle resources and to reduce the generation of wastes.

Consequently, sustainable development can be perceived as a meaningless term that is increasingly used to justify ill conceived government policies.