Sustainable Development

Understanding Data

Understanding data is extremely important. It can affect how a person makes certain decisions. Data tell you when and how. Like the African girl in the video, she wanted to be in school so that she would be able to count change and would not be cheated when she goes to the market to purchase an item. As Hans Rosling pointed out it would be helpful if the world had access to a full database on the stats of the world’s development, but if a person does not understand the data, it would be meaningless.

Sustainable Development

I have read many definitions of sustainable development which all deal with the same aspects which are social, economic, and environment.

www.census.gov/ipc/www/wp96glos.html defines it as achieving economic and social development in ways that do no exhaust a country’s natural resources,
tpc-ptc.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/tpc-ptc.nsf/en/hb00422e.html defines it as achieving economic and social goals in ways that can be supported for the long term by conserving resources, protecting the environment, and ensuring human health and welfare and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development defines it as social-ecological process characterized by the fulfillment of human needs while maintaining or increasing the quality of natural environment indefinitely.

In Han’s Rosling video<Hans Rosling>, he mentioned a very important analysis comparing the sustainable development of Asia and the US. He stated, while Asia’s economical progress was slow, their health stats increased and while the US economy progressed, their health stats were low. Also, it took the US 30 year to catch up to the health rate of Asia. I found this to be very interesting. It seems that both countries did not have a sustainable development because one aspect affected the other. Therefore, to me, sustainable development means improving and/or maintaining the economy, environment, and social well being without hindering each aspect.

Measuring Sustainable Development

It is clear that you need accurate data and stats to measure sustainable development. Overall it is a difficult task but as Hans Rosling optimistically states in his video “The seemingly impossible is possible”.
To move to sustainable development, decision-makers need information. They need information about where they are at the moment. . . information on developing trends and pressure points . . . information about the impacts or effects of interventions or policies put into place. They need feedback on which adjustments to make to speed up or slow down the effects of their interventions. They need information about milestones achieved or about failures that frustrate progress.

Indicators of Sustainable Development (ISD) Progress from Theory to Practice Copyright 1997 United Nations.

MDGs and Sustainable Development

Han’s Rosling made an good point in regards to Africa, people need to look back to where Africa was in the last century and consider where they are now. Proper measuring tools can indicate what has happened in the past and what needs to be done to ensure improvements for the future.