The concept of steady development (international legal aspects)

The negotiations between the UN member states on ecological issues including the Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer etc. were held in 1980s. The UN Conference on environment and development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992 was an epoch-making event. It marked the beginning of a new global partnership in the interests of steady development based on the consciousness of indivisibility of the issues of environmental protection and development process. The documents of the conference considered the essential modern problems in this area and set the goal for the world to be ready for the tasks of the coming century i.e. to achieve the long-term goals of steady development. A social economic aspect of requirements to the steady development model predetermines a wide scale realization of the set of norms aimed at poverty alleviation, changes in the structure of consumption, regulation of population growth, health maintenance, facilitation the steady development of regions, international development in the sphere of environment, taking ecological requirements into account when making social and economic decisions. The ecological aspect of steady development implies a wide range of measures aimed at environmental protection and rational use of natural resources: protection of the atmosphere, rational use of land resources, preservation of the woods, fight against desertification and drought, preservation of a biodiversity, protection and rational use of water resources, ecologically safe use of biotechnologies, increase in safety of use of toxic chemicals, solution of the problem of wastes. Implementation of all these requirements has to provide dynamic balance in development which would allow to eliminate certain contradictions between the needs of society for natural resources and their satisfiability under the preservation of natural and resource potential. We need an optimum compromise between eternally contradictory interests of the subjects of market economy and requirements of ecological safety, between the interests of living and future generations. The problem is that if we fully subject modern production to the restrictions, necessary for ecological wellbeing, it will slow down economic development that in turn will lower possibilities of the solution of environmental problems, i.e. it is impossible to slow down economic development only for ecological reasons. Entrenchment in the rules of law and creation of the mechanism of implementation of strict ecological requirements should be carried out step by step in a balanced way, taking into account social and economic possibilities in various regions of the planet.

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