Community self-development and sustainable development: divergence and contact elements

1. Abstract
3. Body
4. Conclusions
5. Bibliography

Abstract

In this research paper is it made an analysis by means of different approaches, conceptions and valuations about the aspects in which the community development assumed by the Central University Marta Abreu de Las Villas" Community Studies Center might coincide or not with the sustainable development. It is important to make emphasis in the correspondence regarding the dimensions of the sustainable development and to the self-development and the other way around, the correspondences of the episteme of self-development to the sustainable development, as well as divergent aspects and finally the importance of self-development in order to achieve sustainability.

Introduction

In the world conditions at present, in a globalized world where resources are more and more polarized and serious environmental problems affect the planet, it is presented the challenge to find the ways that would make possible to achieve the self-development. A highest aspiration would be this could be achieved through sustainability without affecting the life conditions of future generations which is a key premise for social development in the present world. It is just the contrary of the neoliberal and globalized associated to socioeconomic models based on capital laws and an approach that reduces development to economic growth.

In this research work it is intended to make a theoretical analysis of the problem of self-development and sustainable development by means of conceptions and points of view that highlight the elements in which they might coincide or not. So it is defined as the main objective: to establish the elements of divergence and contact between self-development and sustainable development.

Body

According to J. Calatrava (95:309) development should be understood in its economic, environmental and socio cultural dimensions as the synthesis of qualitative objectives. The fundament of such position consists of the idea this variables are not balanced, nature and culture can be in danger due to the economic pressure, the goods and legacies human kind counts on to develop the quality of life. Therefore it is possible to talk at present about development only if it is positively coordinated to the patrimonial attribute of human kind: culture and nature.

If we start from the consideration that to achieve the development of any concrete system, it must be based on its internal contradictions as source of development, then we will assume the paradigm of the community self-development stated by the Community Studies Center assuming in this case that community development is considered as the process of community building up expressed in a health increasing where participation and cooperation are more and more conscious (Alonso, J and others, 2004:31).

The conception of health assumed by the authors is related to the ability of the community to identify and solve the contradictions. So whenever it is talked about health, it is made reference to the process of permanent acquisitions and losses that express contradictions and human beings face and elaborate with critical capability and active position. Development is a qualitative process and as a result it is retransformed into a quality the man"s life and man can only improve his life conditions if culture, nature and society are improved as well. This conception of development is the one that truly corresponds to the conception of sustainable development, just as lots of authors prefer to name it: human, sustainable development.

Firstly, it is possible to say that at the beginning of the conception of sustainable development (early 80"s) sustainability was understood under the influence of environmentalism. However, it is noticed at present a tendency go beyond the purely environmental sense that the term sustainability has at the beginning. It was centered on hold the balance between the human impact with an economic finality and the nature"s ability to preserve a favorable ecologic situation.

This first meaning that united environmentalism with sustainability was soon known as "strong sustainability" or strong sense of sustainability. As time passed this conception was modified and it emerged the term "weak sustainability" or a weak sense of sustainability that refers to the preservation of the stocks of the man"s global qualitative capital that is to say nature, culture and so forth. The restricted approach assumes sustainability as an ecologic concept or the ability of a certain ecosystem to preserve constant in time the vitality of its component processes of life. So a natural system would have the quality of sustainability if human intervention does not alter its load capacity to affect its stability, vitality and durability, then this will have to do with the "strong" sense. The most popular definition of sustainable development the World Environment and Development Commission"s one, (Brundtland Commission) which in 1987 defined Sustainable Development as: "the development that assures the needs of the present without any risk for future generations" ability to solve their own needs". Taken from (Ciencias de la tierra y del medio ambiente, Libro electrónico).