Oldal 91 [91]
Ecological debt and sustainable
development
Gábor Szabó and Szabolcs Diósi
The ecological debt, climate change, and sustainable development are key
challenges that our planet is facing today. Ihe global community has been
making considerable efforts to address them, including through the Stockholm
Declaration, the Brundtland Report, and successive global summits and
agreements, over the past decades. Nevertheless, humanity is still not on
the right track to achieve its sustainable development-related objectives. The
European Union has an outstanding record in implementing the Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda programme. However, this
performance is still falling short of the set objectives and remains unevenly
distributed among the Member States.
Keywords: 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals), circular economy,
ecological debt, European Green Deal, sustainable development
INTRODUCTION
The term sustainable development gained international recognition for the first
time in 1987 when the World Commission on Environment and Development
published its historical Brundtland Report Our Common Future. According
to the classical definition given by this Commission, the notion refers to a
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations
1987, 43).
Ina more general sense, sustainable development entails a social-economic
model that prioritises environmental protection and considers the long-term
consequences of the planet’s economic activity. It stresses the importance of
creating a better quality of life for everyone on earth, not just in the present
days but also for future generations to come. It focuses on shaping the economy
in a way that makes sure that people living on our planet “don’t consume more
resources than the planet has to offer, and the benefits of economic growth
are allocated fairly among all members of the world population” (European
Commission 2019b, 3).