International Organization for Sustainable Development is a Winner of the 2016 Global Sustainable Development Award and Accredited as a Global 500 Sustainable Development Agencies of the year 2016 in appreciation of its contribution towards social-economic development of the world and its contribution towards attainment of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Recognised for its commitment to promote and uphold International best practices and standards such as respect for rights of workers, quality products and services,payment of taxes,Regulatory compliance,environmental protection,Supporting productive corporate social responsibility,eliminating corruption,employment and remuneration of employees,etc.Awarded and Accredited by Public Opinions International (Uganda-East Africa)
IOSD is the original Sustainable Development organization, created as an international NGO in 2004 and transformed into an intergovernmental institute (EUCLID affiliated) in 2008, under United Nations Treaty Series 46009/49007. IOSD is an authoritative source of papers, articles, updates and online degree programs related to the full scope of sustainable development. It is also a membership organization (open to individuals and organizations) and offers a certification program for businesses and institutions wishing to validate their public commitment to sustainability.
The International Organization for Sustainable Development began in 2004 as an international non-profit organization headed by Syed Zahid Ali. IOSD quickly secured the mandate to administer the “Euclid University Extension program” by agreement with three universities. In this context, one of IOSD’s important tasks was to develop and implement other programs related to sustainable development.
In 2008, IOSD was absorbed into EUCLID when the EUCLID intergovernmental statutes entered into force under international law, and are now registered and published in the United Nations Treaty Series with certification references 49006 and 49007.
In application of the intergovernmental agreement, IOSD became an Institute within EUCLID: IOSD is mentioned in Section I as follows:
“The signatories of the intergovernmental agreement entitled ‘Participation in the Euclid Educational Framework… Having considered the fact that the Euclid Consortium was formed in 2005/2006 by means of international agreements… and administered by the
International Organization for Sustainable Development… Having considered… [the] Memorandum of Understanding between the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the International Organization for Sustainable Development”
Section X establishes the new status of IOSD within the EUCLID legal framework:
“The following bodies or agencies are constituted and placed under the direct authority of the Secretary-General: International Organization for Sustainable Development”
Accordinly, IOSD and EUCLID share staff and offices while preserving their distinctive identify and mandates.
OUR VISION
The quality of each human life is at the center of our vision.
While it is true that every human life is uniquely meaningful regardless of its economic and cultural context, there can be no doubt that education, culture, economic opportunities and access to medical care can make it longer and more fulfilling.
The IOSD vision is based on the conviction that wealthier nations have the opportunity and the duty to assist developing nations achieve rapid yet sustainable economic progress.
Because of the importance of education for economic development, the IOSD network believes that technology has made it possible to deliver best-of-breed education anywhere in the world, provided that electricity is locally available.
IOSD PROGRAMS
- Our economic / structural support programs includes:
- Sustainable Development Certification of Public Programs and Projects
- Millenium Challenge technical assistance
- E-Government / technology support
- Electoral Observer Missions
- Inter-Cultural and Inter-Religious Dialogue and Diplomacy
- Government Public Relations / Country Branding
IOSD’s educational programs are managed by EUCLID since 2008. They include:
- Specialized training for government staff
- Specialized training for IGO staff
- Curriculum and Courseware development
- Technological support to public universities
- Special needs programs*
- Scholarship programs for citizens
A PROPOSED DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:
1. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
- the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
- the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.
2. Thus the goals of economic and social development must be defined in terms of sustainability in all countries – developed or developing, market-oriented or centrally planned. Interpretations will vary, but must share certain general features and must flow from a consensus on the basic concept of sustainable development and on a broad strategic framework for achieving it.
3. Development involves a progressive transformation of economy and society. A development path that is sustainable in a physical sense could theoretically be pursued even in a rigid social and political setting. But physical sustainability cannot be secured unless development policies pay attention to such considerations as changes in access to resources and in the distribution of costs and benefits. Even the narrow notion of physical sustainability implies a concern for social equity between generations, a concern that must logically be extended to equity within each generation.
I. The Concept Of Sustainable Development
4 The satisfaction of human needs and aspirations in the major objective of development. The essential needs of vast numbers of people in developing countries for food, clothing, shelter, jobs – are not being met, and beyond their basic needs these people have legitimate aspirations for an improved quality of life. A world in which poverty and inequity are endemic will always be prone to ecological and other crises. Sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life.
5. Living standards that go beyond the basic minimum are sustainable only if consumption standards everywhere have regard for long-term sustainability. Yet many of us live beyond the world’s ecological means, for instance in our patterns of energy use. Perceived needs are socially and culturally determined, and sustainable development requires the promotion of values that encourage consumption standards that are within the bounds of the ecological possible and to which all can reasonably aspire.
6. Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential, and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met. Elsewhere, it can be consistent with economic growth, provided the content of growth reflects the broad principles of sustainability and non-exploitation of others. But growth by itself is not enough. High levels of productive activity and widespread poverty can coexist, and can endanger the environment. Hence sustainable development requires that societies meet human needs both by increasing productive potential and by ensuring equitable opportunities for all.
7. An expansion in numbers can increase the pressure on resources and slow the rise in living standards in areas where deprivation is widespread. Though the issue is not merely one of population size but of the distribution of resources, sustainable development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.
8. A society may in many ways compromise its ability to meet the essential needs of its people in the future – by overexploiting resources, for example. The direction of technological developments may solve some immediate problems but lead to even greater ones. Large sections of the population may be marginalized by ill-considered development.
9. Settled agriculture, the diversion of watercourses, the extraction of minerals, the emission of heat and noxious gases into the atmosphere, commercial forests, and genetic manipulation are all examples or human intervention in natural systems during the course of development. Until recently, such interventions were small in scale and their impact limited. Today’s interventions are more drastic in scale and impact, and more threatening to life-support systems both locally and globally. This need not happen. At a minimum, sustainable development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth: the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and the living beings.
10. Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond which lies ecological disaster. Different limits hold for the use of energy, materials, water, and land. Many of these will manifest themselves in the form of rising costs and diminishing returns, rather than in the form of any sudden loss of a resource base. The accumulation of knowledge and the development of technology can enhance the carrying capacity of the resource base. But ultimate limits there are, and sustainability requires that long before these are reached, the world must ensure equitable access to the constrained resource and reorient technological efforts
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Sustainable agriculture can be defined in many ways, but ultimately it seeks to sustain farmers, resources and communities by promoting farming practices and methods that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities.
Sustainable agriculture fits into and complements modern agriculture. It rewards the true values of producers and their products. It draws and learns from organic farming. It works on farms and ranches large and small, harnessing new technologies and renewing the best practices of the past.
In short Sustainable Agriculture is:
- Economically Viable: If it is not profitable, it is not sustainable.
- Socially Supportive: The quality of life of farmers, farm families and farm communities is important.
- Ecologically Sound. We must preserve the resource base that sustains us all.
Beyond the US Congressional definition, sustainable agriculture has been defined in several ways, for example, as a system that can indefinitely sustain itself without degrading the land, the environment or the people. It reflects our concern with the long-term viability of agriculture.
Dr. John E. Ikerd, Extension Professor at the University of Missouri, offers his view of sustainability:
“A sustainable agriculture must be economically viable, socially responsible and ecologically sound. The economic, social and ecological are interrelated, and all are essential to sustainability. An agriculture that uses up or degrades its natural resource base, or pollutes the natural environment, eventually will lose its ability to produce. It’s not sustainable. An agriculture that isn’t profitable, at least over time, will not allow its farmers to stay in business. It’s not sustainable. An agriculture that fails to meet the needs of society, as producers and citizens as well as consumers, will not be sustained by society. It’s not sustainable. A sustainable agriculture must be all three – ecologically sound, economically viable and socially responsible. And the three must be in harmony.”
SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES
Motivation to stabilize population can be undermined by excessive worry that smaller numbers of young people will be supporting larger numbers of the elderly. But prevailing patterns of behavior and resource allocation can be changed in ways that reduce pensioner/worker ratios and make population stabilization more politically viable.
Until a few years ago, environmentalists led the call for “population control” in the cause of sustainability. Their ideas about limiting fertility so enraged global women’s advocates that population didn’t even make the agenda at the 1992 Rio conference on the environment. When the United States developed a new, consensus-based position for the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, many environmentalists contested the new focus on helping women around the world have as many or as few children as they wanted. When I explained the “Cairo Consensus” at a town meeting in San Antonio, Texas, one man responded, “For the next 20 years no women should be allowed to have children, and only one in 20 should be allowed to have one child for the following 20 years!”
Now even staunch sustainability supporters are beginning to worry that unprecedented low fertility rates in some countries threaten sustainability by population declines. Why the turnaround, especially when the world is adding to its numbers rapidly? The answer seems to be a fear that declines in some countries will take hold globally, and then we’ll all go to hell in a hand-basket. Or, as Michael Teitelbaum and Jay Winter, authors of The Fear of Population Decline, put it, “If and when population decline takes place, there are both rational and irrational reasons to pay attention. All too often over the past century, the irrational has provided a convenient means of explaining away social, political, and economic problems by invoking distorted metaphors from biology.”
Let’s calm down and take a reasoned look. First, the population declines expected in countries such as Germany, Japan, and Italy are taking place while world population keeps growing. The United Nations currently projects that world population will rise from its current level of 6.4 billion to somewhere between 7.4 and 12.8 billion by 2050, attaining between 5.5 and 43.6 billion by the end of the century. Demographers find both the high and low bounds to these longer-term projections illustrative but unrealistic; their purpose is to delimit the range of possibilities suggested by current trends. However, many non-demographers are treating the low projection as gospel. This scenario assumes that fertility in all countries will fall to around 1.6 children per woman (the average level expected for Germany, Italy, and Japan) and never again attain the two-child “replacement” level.
Demographers still don’t know to what extent very low fertility is temporary (the result of shifting to later child-bearing) or permanent (a change in ideal family size). As John Bongaarts of the New York-based Population Council says, “It’s fair to say that the demographic community has been surprised by these trends.”
(This isn’t the first time fertility swings have surprised demographers. Most Americans are aware that a Baby Boom erupted after World War II and lasted until the Pill gave women control over their fertility, but few now remember the downturn in births before the boom. In an illustration of how new developments cause good projections to go bad, Philip Hauser projected in the 1940s that U.S. population would peak in 1990 at 190 million! In 2004, we’re more than 100 million past that “peak.” That’s why demographers don’t view projections as predictions, but simply as illustrations of how things could go absent new developments, whether willed or unanticipated.)
Demographers have not yet untangled the relative impact of the reasons for very low fertility, either, but have reached consensus that the overall cause is the changing costs of rearing children under “modernization.” Modern economies are built on a more educated labor force, increasing both the direct costs to parents of investing in children and the indirect costs of a parent not working.
Factors
Experiences in a variety of countries offer a natural laboratory for studying the effects of cultural differences in this new context. Northern European women (also U.S. non-Hispanic women) have fertility rates that are only slightly below replacement level. Not coincidentally, in these countries relatively large numbers of children are born outside marriage. In countries where the culture accepts children as more important than marriage (even if it prefers marriage), simultaneously accepting moderate levels of immigration can sustain or grow population. In contrast, in the countries facing population decline, strong cultural traditions limit both fertility and immigration. In these countries, society does not accept cohabitation in lieu of marriage for childbearing, and children tend to live with their parents until marriage.
Public policies can make a difference. There is some evidence that flexible working conditions for parents and/or generous national child benefits help people who want an additional child to have it. Take France, with its relatively high fertility rate (for Europe) and high rate of female participation in the labor force: part-time work schedules are widespread, childcare is subsidized, and the government gives generous child allowances.
Parents’ economic security clearly makes a fertility difference in wealthy countries, including the United States, where the longstanding relationship between women’s education and work, on the one hand, and the number of children they have, on the other, seems to have reversed. Since the 1990s, higher fertility has been associated with having two earners in a household, high levels of child benefits, and/or working mothers. At the same time, income levels have become less important except for non-marital childbearing, i.e., having children with no economic or care-giving safety net.
Meanwhile, countries with very low fertility suffer from what demographers call maternal role incompatibility. In these countries, both work and family systems are less egalitarian: stores aren’t open when working mothers need to shop, husbands don’t share child care and housework, and employers don’t offer flexible working conditions. How gender inequality plays out varies from country to country: in Japan, women are delaying marriage; in Spain, women are choosing between work and family once they’ve had their first child; and in Italy, women are limiting themselves to one child whether or not they work.
Thus, where institutions and family members adapt to the increasing costs of children, couples come closer to having the two children most people in industrialized countries still say they want. Still, John Bongaarts estimates that in countries where modern conditions prevail, policy has a narrow range to work in: between 1.6 and 2.0 children per woman.
Fears
Many concerns about people in low-fertility countries choosing to have one child instead of two, or two instead of three, arise from the disparity with other countries, especially countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East-more of “them,” fewer of “us.” Currently, 99 percent of the world’s population growth is in developing countries.
Concerns over national power or cultural heritage are common in countries where fertility is currently so low that projecting population 200 years out using today’s rates produces zero population. It is hard to imagine that no one would be living in Italy or Japan two centuries from now, as others would surely move in-but for those for whom cultural heritage is defining, they wouldn’t be “Italian” or “Japanese.” Low-fertility countries with high-fertility neighbors, such as Australia and New Zealand, fear threats to their physical security and political power. A few years ago, The Australian wrote that the country’s low fertility would result in “…pressure from crowded neighboring countries and a declining say in world affairs.”
A more widely held fear is that the large numbers of youth in developing countries-double the population share in developed ones-augur a continued and perhaps increasing supply of immigrants to developed countries, as well as a larger underemployed labor force at home. By and large, less-developed countries do not have enough economic activity to employ their current populations, let alone the large generations yet to reach working age. Given the normal reluctance to leave one’s family and culture, these growing numbers of job-seekers should continue to stimulate employer migration to low wage labor markets, especially in countries that have invested heavily in education.
Beyond economic and cultural concerns, national security specialists are focusing on population disparities with countries that have high rates of population growth and have underinvested in their labor force. Countries with populations of 10 million or more and more than 40 percent of the population under age 15 include such troubled spots as Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Sudan. It is hard to avoid the fear that large and growing numbers of unemployed youth threaten world stability.
Flaws
But what if low fertility goes global? Keynes’ famous remark, “In the long run we are all dead,” is apropos, as long-term projections of current trends are designed to give policymakers an opportunity to influence a future they won’t see. Indeed, influencing policymakers is the shared agenda of many popular assessments of very low fertility, though stated overtly only by direct opponents of family planning.
These opponents argue that if world fertility rates may eventually match those in countries with very low fertility, as the UN’s “low” scenario assumes, wealthy countries should immediately stop helping women in poor countries gain control of their fertility. Leaving aside the moral issue of letting others endure life-threatening conditions that global Northerners won’t accept, if these advocates get their way you can forget about global population stabilization, let alone decline, in the lifetime of anyone now born. With one in three of the world’s citizens currently under age 15, the coming “parent explosion” will send world population to over 10 billion in the next 40 years, if current fertility declines are slowed or halted.
Whether for individual countries or the globe, all the doom-and-gloom portrayals of population decline are flawed in fundamental ways. They tend to be constructed from selected facts taken out of context, and they are static; they overlook the way change in one variable causes others to change. No one has yet done a systematic, dynamic analysis of how populations might function if they got smaller, one that accounts for the ways economic, social, technological, and environmental changes can affect one another. Population decline is simply too new.
But, while we are waiting for such an analysis, why would having fewer people be bad? The arguments that resonate across all low-fertility countries, according to a survey of the popular press conducted by Laura Stark and Hans-Peter Kohler, are economic.
The most common argument, the effect on benefit systems from a rise in “dependency,” reflects a uniform result of all projection scenarios: they show significant growth in virtually all countries, both absolute and relative, in the 50+ population due to increasing life expectancy. More people living into old age is a particular challenge as public benefit systems tend to be pay-as-you-go, i.e. retirees’ benefits are funded by payments into the system by current workers, whose own benefits will be funded by payments from future workers. It was politically easy to design such systems when workers were much more numerous than retirees, but now this ratio is changing, especially where very low fertility will shrink the working-age population while the older population expands.
These arguments assume that legally set age thresholds for dependency-18 to 60 or 65 in industrialized countries-will continue to represent reality, and that age-related behavior is constant. But these thresholds are not even representative now. One aspect of modernization is that young adults are dependent well into their 20s. Succeeding in modern economies requires more schooling, and more trial and error to get situated; it’s no surprise that so many young adults still live with their parents. So current assumptions overstate how many youth will pay into systems, especially in countries that have very high youth unemployment (another damper on fertility).
Meanwhile, across the industrialized world, stunning advances in “healthy” life expectancy (meaning years of life in which people can physically take care of themselves) challenge the assumption of dependency in the 60s and beyond. In the United States, people who needed the money worked after age 65 before we had Social Security (in 1930, nearly three in five men past this age were gainfully employed); no one has yet argued convincingly that increasingly healthy sexagenarians can’t do it again. Instead, doom-and-gloom writers make such selective arguments as the effects of increasing obesity among people under age 60 on their ability to work after 60, while selectively ignoring the corresponding shift away from physically demanding to sedentary jobs, or the shift towards occupations and jobs that people like-and are continuing to work at regardless of their age.
These trends suggest other, perhaps easier policy options besides boosting population by accepting more immigrants, or spending large amounts on subsidized child care and other family benefits to increase fertility. In most low-fertility countries, simply increasing labor force participation under age 65 would improve the worker/retiree ratio. In Italy, for example, just erasing the gap between men’s and women’s rates would cut the pensioner/worker ratio by over 20 percent by 2050, John Bongaarts estimates.
Reversing tax and benefit incentives to retire before 65 is another obvious change (especially in countries like Germany where early retirement is common), as is designing incentives to work after 65. Bongaarts estimates that every one-year increase in the average retirement age would reduce the pensioner/worker ratio in 2050 by 6 percent. Deploying only one of these policy options would probably not avoid higher taxes (in relatively low tax countries) or benefit cuts (in relatively high benefit countries), but in combination, they can help most countries avoid these unattractive choices.
The broader concern about low fertility is that improving economic wellbeing requires a steadily increasing population. We can’t prove that it doesn’t, because population decline/stability is so new. But we know how we can compensate for it: by making the policy changes that maximize longer life spans through increasing workers’ productivity, fostering wise individual decisions in relation to working and spending, and adapting the social contract as to the age and length of time people should be “taken care of.”
The World Bank has found, for instance, that simply ensuring gender equality allocates resources, including investments, more productively (including reducing the role of corruption). Others have found that slowing population growth allows more investment in human and other capital, and intensifies the worker/capital ratio (other things equal). In itself, the shift to more older people makes savings and investment a bigger priority, contributing to economic growth as well as providing economic security for individuals. From this perspective, the “problem” of low fertility is the institutional transfer system. How best to change it is a political issue.
It’s a business issue too. Some argue that elderly people consume more than youth, mostly in health-related expenses; others argue that having more elderly people will repress aggregate demand. Some argue both; for these worriers, “demand for what?” is the question. Businesses that make toys for teenagers may suffer, while those involved in health care can prosper. Speculative investments may have a harder time attracting investors, more prudent ones probably won’t. As with most such arguments, the underlying tension is more about who wins, and who loses, than about the economy as a whole.
Fundamental Shifts
These arguments also reveal a conflict over what resources are worth investing in. Philip Longman, author of The Coming Baby Bust, is concerned that a smaller youth population will make military actions more difficult in most nations. It’s not just the numbers, he argues, but with only one or two children per family, parents will be less willing to put their children in harm’s way. And with more financial resources going to pensions and health care, governments will have less to spend on technologies designed to make fewer warriors more productive. For planetary sustainability, this demographic change is probably positive.
Whether population declines, stabilizes, or grows more slowly, the change in age structure produced by lower fertility and longer life expectancy may be the most important demographic influence on sustainability because it produces more households, at least in affluent countries, with more age-diverse householders. Other things equal, more households increase energy use, population density, and other concerns of environmentalists. Other things equal, more older householders will increase investment at the expense of spending, shift spending away from goods and toward services, and even shift focus from indiscriminate growth to improved welfare. Perhaps the new Italian University of Gastronomic Sciences is a first step in a redefinition of progress, away from “more” toward “better.”
It all comes down to people and whether they care enough about sustainability to make lifestyle changes. It also comes down to the usual politics of self-interest. Maybe conflict over resource and spending priorities explains the real demographic puzzle: why people worried about low fertility rates are overwhelmingly male-and, in the West, overwhelmingly white.
For women who write about these issues, increasing our investment in people, their health, and their productivity tends to be a good scenario. For nonwhite men and women, the prospect of releasing people of color from poverty no matter where they live is a long-held dream. For those who care about sustainability-a culture that ensures the survival and thriving of humans and the Earth’s other creatures for a long time to come-the prospect of a world population that could be smaller than it will be at the end of this century, but larger than it is now, is no nightmare but a promise.
The Honorable Martha Farnsworth Riche is a demographic consultant, a founding editor of American Demographics magazine, and former director of the United States Census Bureau (1994-1998).
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