sustainable development

深圳大学 赖小琪

Nowadays the word "sustainable development" is widely heard among the public. As we all know, sustainable development refers to the development in which we meet the need of contemporary people while not depriving our latter generations of their ability to meet their own needs in the future. It is more than easy to understand its superficial meaning, but difficult to implement this ideal fully. And let's have a look at our current situation, and you will realize we still have a long way to go.

Undoubtedly, we do need to build up a good condition in which our desire for resources can be met so as to further our economy and living standard. It has taken a long time for human beings to get where we are now. With the rapid development of our technology, we can make full use of more resources and energy from our mother nature to accelerate our living standard. A large amount of wealth as we have accumulated, we are far from satisfied and still on the way of seeking and pursuing. That is actually a good phenomenon, because without our ancestors' great ambition and motivation, we could hardly enjoy such a prosperous civilization as do we presently!

Nonetheless, while sparing no efforts to constantly take countless stuff from our mother nature to develop ourselves, many of us did ignore a cruel but authentic fact, that is, most of the resources on our planet are limited, among which some are extremely limited such as oil, coal and gas. If used up, it would take millions of years for them to reform. Therefore, we need to treasure the limited resources we have currently and work out a good schedule to distribute our resources. Maybe someone will think there are also some resources that are recyclable and will never be run out of, like water, forest, etc. However, in the meantime, we have overlooked the critical fact that while the amount of those recyclable resource maintain the same, our population is booming all the time ,which indicates each individual's share of the resources is becoming smaller and smaller. Worse still, due to our ignorance of treasuring water, many lakes and rivers have been tremendously contaminated and the water inside is not fit to drink. Another grave problem is the deforestation. We are nonstop cutting down numerous trees without planting more afterwards, thereby leading to greater exposure of our soil to the sun and rain, which accelerates the desertification. That might explain why our capital, Beijing, has been stricken by sandstorms frequently during the past years.

In a word, for the limited resources, we draw upon them lavishly without any limit. For the recyclable resources, we have no conception to preserve them. Consequently, we are facing more and more severe problems that cause us to rethink our behaviors and consider implementing the strategy of sustainable development. Since the proposal of sustainable development, we do make enormous progress. Our awareness of environmental protection has been greatly intensified and our deeds are more environment-oriented. For instance, our legislation about protecting the environment is being perfected. We try to devise new vehicles with less waste exhaust emitted so as to mitigate the effect of global warming and recover our fresh air.

Great progress as we have made, we still have a long way to go before we achieve our final target. Sustainable development is a huge task to be accomplished with efforts of several generations. But however tough the task is, through our persistent efforts, I believe we can reach our goal ultimately!
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