SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable Community Development

This refers to a stage of development, during which the community is able to meet its present and future needs with its own resources. The primary needs of a community are poverty eradication and community organization. The satisfaction of community needs and aspiration is a primary objective of sustainable community development.

For sustainable community development to be achieved, a number of things need to be considered. These include:

• standardizing the consumption of resources for long-term sustainability;

• creating an environment for equitable access to resources for a better quality of life;

• minimizing the demographic dividend (A demographic dividend is the freeing up of resources for a country's economic development and the future prosperity of its populace as it switches from an agrarian to an industrial economy) in a community to explore resources in optimum and reasonable way.

Sustainable development emphasizes the maintenance of existing and future resources rather than continued growth.

Equity is a major concern for sustainable development. Equity here means equality. It refers to the impartial sharing and conservation of resources in the community irrespective of region, religion, caste, and creed.

For sustainable development to be achieved, the following issues are important:

• Reduced consumption of natural resources and reasonable consumption of consumer goods

• Qualitative change (refers to an increase in subjective personal wellbeing) for maintaining dynamic equilibrium with the environment

• Prevention of environmental risks

• Close monitoring of population growth

• Putting emphasis on human capital development

• Economic development alone cannot ensure sustainable development

• Scientific, systematic and judicious management of resources

• Maintaining desirable climatic condition towards sustainable development.

Thus, sustainable community development is a process that builds a balance between environmental concerns and developmental objectives in the most desirable and progressive manner. Enhancing the quality of life of the local people is just as important as environmental protection. Regional and national level programs for sustainable development have their own limitations and obstacles because they serve a wide population with multifaceted issues and problems.

However, programs at the community level are easier to manage. The active steps towards sustainable community development are:

• increased community self-reliance,

• localizing economic production

• commerce.

Attaining sustainable community development requires the active participation of social workers, constituent actors, groups and associations in the community.