An Action Agenda
Technological advances offer multiple paths to environmentally sound sustainable development. As nations pursue sustainability goals they confront difficult trade-offs, often related to balancing demands for economic development environmental protection, and social acceptability. The selection of pathways will depend on the actions of governments, international agencies, consumers, private industry, and educational institutions. While there are many obstacles to the transition to sustainable development technology provides a means to overcome them.
The Council urges the actions below:
Governments, international agencies, universities, and private industry should:
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Take action to strengthen the indigenous technological capacity of developing nations to enable them to develop, adopt and deploy environmentally advantageous technologies. Developed and developing countries should cooperate to increase and adapt the technological capacity of developing nations.
Governments should:
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Encourage industry to develop environmentally advantageous technologies through provisions of incentives, such as market-opening measures and intellectual-property protection,
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Support universities and other research institutions to develop environmentally advantageous technolgies,
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Pursue arrangements for monitoring and assessing environmental conditions and their economic implications,
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Promote new generations of environmental technologies through international collaboration,
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Recognize opportunities and limitations of technology in making international agreements on environmental issues.
Industry should:
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Seek to balance the efficiency of its operations with its responsibilities for socially compatible environmental actions.
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Pursue the opportunities presented by the global market for environmentally advantageous technologies, thereby diffusing them throughout the world.
International funding agencies should:
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Pursue policies that encourage recipient governments and institutions to take advantage of environmental sustainable technologies developed by both the public sector and the private sector.
Educational institutions should:
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Integrate sustainable development concepts into all levels of education.
Engineering institutions should:
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Advance the concepts of sustainable development as an important and integral part of their activities.
