Page 42 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Motivating For ces 21

to seek a more sustainable path, although there is a continuing ideo-
logical debate over the need for growth [11]. The economic boom that
began in the mid-1990s helped to distract us for at least a decade from
the creeping threats of environmental degradation. We can no longer
afford to procrastinate.
Is a sustainable society still possible? Just as previous technologi-
cal revolutions helped to disprove the doomsayers of the past, there
is still hope that Design for Environment will be a key technology
enabling our civilization to achieve sustainable development and
preserve the best aspects of our present way of life for future genera-
tions. From the DFE perspective, the utopia of the future is not a
world of spartan lifestyles and isolated, tribal communities. It is
an eco-efficient global village, where anthropogenic waste materials
from each industrial process are ingeniously consumed as inputs to
other processes, and we maintain a sophisticated, carefully designed
balance with the natural resources that surround us.

The Global Sustainability Agenda
To better understand the motivations for DFE, we need to exam-
ine the global changes in environmental consciousness that swept
through the international community in recent decades. The Earth
Summit of 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro (officially known as the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) was
a landmark event that represented the culmination of many years
of dis cussion and debate in various nations. The dimensions of the
debate transcended national and industrial boundaries, touching
upon issues such as export of pollution to developing countries,
inter national equity of environmental regulations, and sustainability
of population and industrial growth in the face of limited planetary
resources [12]. A number of agreements about international coopera-
tion were produced at the Rio Summit, along with voluminous docu-
mentation. For purposes of this book, there are a few fundamental
principles worth noting among the 27 principles of the Rio Declara-
tion (the numbering is this author’s).

1. Development today must not undermine the development
and environment needs of present and future generations.
2. Nations shall use the precautionary approach to protect the
environment. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible
damage, scientific uncertainty shall not be used to postpone
cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
3. In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental
protection shall constitute an integral part of the development
process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.
4. The polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution.