Page 65 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Aytaç Yüksel - Duygu Barut

on land”, “peace, justice and strong institutions” and “partnership for the
goals” under the five main theme such as planet, people, peace, prosperity
and partnership (Yıldırım ve Nuri 2018:17; Boyar 2020:1936; Güneş 2021:338).
Poverty has been recognized as the biggest obstacle to sustainable
development with the Agenda 2030 Declaration (Yıldırım and Nuri 2018:16).
Furthermore, it is remarkable that the Declaration allows establishing a balance
between the economic, ecological and social dimensions of sustainable
development, highlights the need to establish a strong monitoring and
supervisory mechanism in order to achieve global goals, and identifies 230
indicators to measure the achievement of goals consisting of 169 targets for
this purpose (Gedik 2020:202; Yıldırım and Nuri 2018:16).

1.3. The Current Meaning of the Principle of Sustainable Development
As we have already described its historical development and its introduction
in main documents; sustainable development can be, simply and the most
commonly, defined as “the development capable of meeting today’s needs
and expectations without compromising the needs and expectations of future
generations” as it was touched upon in the scope of environmental law.
According to common definitions in the doctrine of sustainable development,
a concept including both environmental and economic components; it means
to meet constantly the needs of today’s and future generations (Gregerson
and Lundgren 1990), to enhance the people’s capacity to use natural resources
effectively and efficiently and to improve continuously the prosperity level
of humanity (Cubbage, Laughlin ve Bullock 1993:500 et al.). However, some
authors in the doctrine and the Sustainable Development Business Council
identify economic growth with sustainable development (Schimidheindy
1992:11). Some authors argue that the principle of sustainable development
is shaped by the perception that the earth limits economic growth, science
and technology are not always useful for improving the welfare of humanity, it
is necessary to approach environmental risks with hesitation, the principle of
distributive justice should be defended, excessive population growth should
be prevented, and the environment should be preferred in the environment-
economy dilemma (Anderson and Leal 1991:161).
On the other hand, although the principle of sustainable development is
considered as a human-centered development and environmental model,
there are also opinions arguing that the spiritual side of the ecosystem should
also be taken into account within the scope of this principle (Güneş and Coşkun
2004:84). In particular, as a result of the pressure of environmentalist groups
on this issue, it is seen that this approach is included in laws and international
treaties (Güneş and Coşkun 2004:85).

50 Journal of Environment, Urbanization and Climate