TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Karine S. Danielian

Armenian Minister of Nature and Environmental Protection
Yerevan, 375002, ul.Moskovian 35
ARMENIA

TEL: (8852)530741
FAX: (8885) 15-169

The main obstacles to sustainable development are:

• Models of production and consumption in the developed countries which are affected by fashion and permanently increasing consumer needs. When extended towards the entire planet these models become an unbearable and pernicious burden. This system of values is the most serious hindrance for a new pattern of development.
  
• Transfer of environmentally-safe technologies to developing countries is complicated. The so-called technical assistance - provision of aid as expert consulting - is often an unjustified waste of resources. For instance, most of the NIS countries possess an enormous intellectual potential whose practical capacities are limited by financial shortages. However, Western agencies usually provide information or consulting services rather than the financial or technological assistance needed by NIS recipients.
  
• Developing countries feel negative about the request to regulate demographic patterns which is placed upon them. Contemporary Western consumerism has no less catastrophic consequences for the planet than explosive population growth.
  
• Regional conflicts are most dangerous for the nature. The only way to surmount them is to ensure real assertion of human rights. Today these postulates are only fancy window-dressing while real politics is still based on the right of power.
  
• Finally, we need to overcome our religious differences. All the religions used to have adverse periods which produced elements of aggressiveness to other confessions. We need to comprehend that the Lord is one, though our perceptions of the Lord may be different. We need to develop a worldview of the living planet Earth suffering from our aggressive irrational activities.

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