Sustainable Development: Evolution and Challenges Ahead

Abstract

The concept of Sustainable Development is inherent to the civilizations world over. The explicit use of the term in the literature of the development economics is only a recent phenomenon. The concept of sustainable development started emerging by relating environmental concerns to the economic development during the initial years of its evolution. Gradually, more and more spheres of human life started finding mention while discussing the concept. Today, the concept has taken a form where it encompasses economic, social, environmental, political and cultural aspects of life into its ambit. In fact, there is hardly any aspect of the life that cannot find a place while discussing the concept.  It has taken about four decades for the world Governments and the United Nations to come out with a standard set of Sustainable Development Goals which the nations across the globe are required to achieve in order to put the world economy on the path of sustainable development. There still remain many challenges in prescribing and following a standard recipe for achieving Sustainable Development Goals world over. A large number of parameters related to sustainable development are not possible to be standardized in the wake of prevalence of great diversity in the socio-economic, political and environmental conditions existing in different regions of the world. There are strong challenges for national and subnational Governments in developing a measurement framework for monitoring the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.