Vincent Commenne,
July, 2006
[read
the beginning]
The notion of sustainable development is
increasingly recognized as the framework providing
access to a better quality of life for the
greatest number and in the long-term. This
type of development seeks to meet our current
needs without comprising the needs of future
generations. With this goal in mind, it wants
to balance economic, social and environmental
issues by ensuring that each of these areas
develops fully without doing so to the detriment
of the others. Sustainable development has
thus become sufficiently indispensable as
a concept that it is now incorporated into
governmental polices in many industrialized
countries, at least as far as environmental
issues are concerned.
Agenda 21, the reference document on sustainable
development, goes further than the Brundtland
Report. It provides a brief and decisive response
to the question of responsibilities with its
statement: “the major cause of the continued
deterioration of the global environment is
the unsustainable pattern of consumption and
production, particularly in industrialized
countries, which is a matter of grave concern,
aggravating poverty and imbalances.”
There lies the essential question; we produce
and consume in an unsustainable manner.
What is our responsibility towards future
generations from whom, as the saying goes,
we are borrowing the earth?
As underlined in Agenda 21, we have to modify
these unsustainable patterns and gradually
replace them with modes of production and
consumption that take more effective account
of social and environmental dimensions. How
shall we do so? And who can do it? These are
the questions we cannot ignore.
Extract from Economic
Actors’ Participation in Social and
Environmental Responsibility – A Guide
to Promoting Ethics and Sustainable Development,
published July 2006 by Éditions Charles
Léopold Mayer, coordinated by Vincent
Commenne, co-funded by the Charles Léopold
Foundation for the Progress of Humankind and
the European Commission (DG Employment, Social
Affairs and Equal Opportunities).
