CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

To build a future for our children and our planet to the benefit of everyone, we are making the sustainable development goals and sustainability a guiding principle in all our work. Implementing the UN 2030 agenda is a shared commitment and needs everyone’s contribution and cooperation including member states and civil society at large.[1]

Since the dawn of industrial revolution, human population witnessed a rapid increase. In like manner was an increase in the production of goods and services.[2] Human engagement has captured a disorganized means of waste disposal into the environment. Such actions have subjected the world into great danger hence preserving the global life support has become more difficult due to the increase and unending human-caused on the environment.[3]

Due to this effect, two opposing factions of environmental movement emerged, that is the conservationist and the preservationist. While the conservationist focused on the proper use of nature, that is regulating human use of nature, the preservationist protect nature from use. That is, eliminate human impact entirely.[4] That is, the conservationist sought to regulate human use while preservationist sought to regulate human impact altogether.[5] These different environmental schools of thoughts are significant to present day sustainable development as the notion envelopes both ideas. This is so because, in order to meet the needs of the present generation without jeopardizing that of the future generation, there must be sufficient impact on reducing and if need be eliminating man’s action on the environment and other domains of sustainable development.

Mankind in addition to the above challenge faces worsening problems such as food shortage, energy crisis and environmental pollution, intensifying ecological crisis, slow economic growth and increase social unrest. These challenges have forced humanity to re-examine its position in the ecosystem and search for new lasting means of survival and development. In this context, the concept of sustainable development (SD) was born and it is the most fundamental strategy to guide the world socio-economic transformation.[6]

Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the abilities of the future generations to meet their own needs.[7] Sustainable development has been a key subject in the UN conference on human environment in Stockholm in 1972 in which it was suggested that it is possible to achieve economic growth and industrialization without environmental damage.[8] Overtime, mainstream sustainable development conservation strategy,[9] the Brundtland report, [10]the UN conference on environment and development in Rio, helped canvas the working steps and compassed the pathway to sustainable development.[11]

It is however impossible for states with all their economic and sociopolitical might to work in isolation to achieve sustainable development. Hence, states must work in collaboration with each other to overtake the challenges embedded with sustainable development. Through regional integration within their regional blocks, states can easily achieve sustainable development because their objectives within the block are in line with the objectives and goals of sustainable development.

After 1945, there was a strong will to ensure that the war between Germany and France could never occur again. This led to several efforts that gave birth to the European economic community (EEC) in 1957,[12] with a plan to make France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg co-operate by forcing them to share their coal and steel resources in the post war rebuilding of western Europe. Britain,[13] Ireland, and Denmark joined the EEC in 1970’s, Spain Greece and Portugal joined in mid-1980’s. With the collapse of Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany in1990, there was a greater bond amongst states in Europe. In 1992, the Maastricht treaty transformed the EEC into the European Union (EU).[14]