Citation:

CAMPBELL, D. E. GLOBAL TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop "Advances in Energy Studies" , Campinas, BRAZIL, June 16 - 19, 2004. UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil, 11-28, (2006).

Impact/Purpose:

Global transition to sustainable development is examined from the perspective of Energy Systems Theory

Description:

Global transition to sustainable development is possible but many obstacles lie in the way and it will require acts of political will on the part of both the developed and developing nations to become a reality. In this paper, sustainable development is defined as continuous progress toward higher states of human well-being given the constraints supplied by available resources at any particular time. This concept is examined from the perspective of Energy Systems Theory and the cycle of change that results from the slow accumulation and rapid consumption of energy and material resources. Human well-being depends on necessary inputs from the environment (clean air and water, living space), economy (fuels, materials, economic products) and society (information). Empower from these three sources minus detrimental effects (pollution, crime, etc.) expressed per person is proposed as the measure of human well-being. A theoretical argument is promulgated to show that sustainable development is possible. This argument was based on the trade-off between the intensity of energy use in economic production and environmental quality that makes it possible for human well-being to improve by decreasing fossil fuel consumption in developed nations and by increasing it in developing nations. Environmental accounting using emergy is proposed as a method for documenting environmental assets and liabilities to determine if any development alternative is sustainable, i.e., assets must be sufficient to balance liabilities for an entity to be solvent. Several environmental assets and liabilities are evaluated for the countries of South and North America and then the two continents are compared. Three factors which could facilitate a global transition to sustainable development are: (1) the willingness of developed nations to decrease petroleum consumption, (2) the willingness to determine trade equity using emergy measures, and (3) the willingness to examine the distribution of wealth from the perspective of the emergy return to the whole system as a result of the emergy invested to support power and privilege.

Record Details: