Role Of Mitigation In Sustainable Development

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To begin to understand the role that mitigation can have in ensuring a country’s sustainable development, both mitigation and sustainable development must be defined. Sustainable development is defined in the United Nations document, Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development as, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) describes mitigation as, “the effort to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters”. This paper proposes that mitigation can help with ensuring a country’s sustainable development through sustainable communities.
The term sustainable development has become very popular over the last ten (10) years by many governments and the sustainable development programs and initiatives in many countries. Sustainability encompasses three (3) major pillars/areas; social, environmental and economic. With each program and initiative being interpreted sustainability differently the focus is most times on one (1) of the stated pillars at a time. The social aspect of sustainability focuses on balancing the needs of the individual, this pillar supports initiatives like peace, social justice, reducing poverty, and other grassroots movements that promote social equity. Environmental sustainability occurs when processes, systems and activities reduce the environmental impact of an

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