I. Increasing sustainable development awareness

...to improve national development visions and plans of action

The objectives of this module are:

To address how governments' awareness and visions of sustainable development get translated into firm commitments and holistic development plans

To provide awareness and/or refresh the understanding of what ‘sustainable development ‘ and its related concepts are all about

Sustainable Development

Development comes about by accessing natural resources, and combining those resources with human creativity and effort to bring about improvements in the way of life of people (the last phrase addresses the question of “To what end should development be?”). However, development is clearly having its toll on our natural environment. So much so, that the interaction between humankind and the earth’s resources is said to be threatening the natural systems on which our social and economic development are based.

A new development paradigm is obviously needed in order for us to combat such threat, and that new paradigm is what is known as sustainable development

Commitments and Visions

Reaching a sustainable future means having a commitment and a plan. Commitments are statements that appear in constitutions, long range planning documents, and political platforms. The Project examined the constitutions and plans of its member countries for mandates to integrate environmental considerations into economic policy making processes. While many countries had national commitments to strive for sustainable development, there was a wide gap between statement and action.

Visions are a useful element of any planning process and Agenda 21 strongly recommends that all components of society define what the people would like see around them in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years. These visions should include specific, measurable things that everyone can strive for. Like "The river will have clear, clean water and we will be able to catch fish in it again." or "Our city will be a green city" or "Our beaches will be clean, and the ocean is blue". How many countries have developed a national vision? How did they do it? Has it made a difference?

In this module we examine the experiences of the countries of the Asia Pacific Region in their attempts to codify and envision a sustainable future.

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Contents	Description
Sustainable Development	This section describes some basics about sustainable development for use as a refresher.
Forming National Visions	This section describes the process of forming a National Vision.
Integrating Vision into Planning	This section shows sustainable development in formal statements and describes links between economic development and sustainable development - how sustainable development issues fit into planning.
Good Practices	This section sets out a number of good practices from the ESCAP region.

Click here to learn more about technical requirements for this module, or click next to read about sustainable development.