The major roadblocks to sustainable development, and what are the solutions?

Nur Al Farani Rosli (Malaysia)
Honorable Mentions

Sustainable development has been widely advocated as a systemic framework that targets at combining social, economic and cultural policies to ensure high-quality production. However, there are obstacles to the implementation of sustainable development. According to the UK essays and other documents, the roadblocks comprised of economic and financial, innovation, social, political, poor monitoring and evaluation systems and institutional obstacles.
 First and foremost, there are economic and financial barriers. Economists have found that the prevailing paradigm of globalisation continues to concentrate on economic prosperity as a goal rather than on human rights or health, and on environmental mechanisms and limitations. This involves a change in the public view from viewing the atmosphere as part of the business to considering the ecosystem as part of the climate; economically, this implies that the system has to be adjusted to ensure that environmental resources are preserved. Government and private sectors should play their roles to build the sustainable development that considering the aspects of people, economy and social. Do not let greediness blind their eyes and minds by ignoring nature (biodiversity), then one fine day nature will destroy us slowly but surely.
 Next, the obstacles to creativity. There is a shortage of innovation-oriented work in the education field. This means that there needs to be a closer link between research institutes and the economy, which would also resolve the challenges of knowledge transfer to applications in real life. In terms of social inequalities, demographic increase, combined with excessive consumption and habits of output among the wealthy, is the greatest global problem for sustainable development in the world. If there is no substantial improvement in human actions, there would be little hope for survival. Many social obstacles include marginalisation of the disadvantages and structural inequities reduce the understanding of sustainable growth. Environmental problems involving legislators and the general population have divided civil society. Insufficient interaction between civil society and government. Insufficient incentives to for the private sector to pursue sustainable development. Thus, knowledge transfer program such as awareness campaign should be widespread among the publics to keep them on track to understand well the importance of creating a sustainable development despite of racing in constructing high building and be the developed countries while deforestation keep on occurring with no sign of stopping.
 Inadequate economic, social and environmental methods for policies, plans and projects are the major barrier in political crisis that combating the implementation of sustainable development. Moreover, inadequate tracking and assessment processes, such as the basic issue, lack of clear goals (globally, nationally and locally), analysis and evidence to chart success, contributing to a shortage of knowledge accessible to decision-makers. It is proposed for enhancing the monitoring and evaluation of sustainable growth approaches with a view to developing a complex mechanism of change, with a view to growing their efficacy. It is advised that policymakers take a closer look to evaluate the socio-economic effect of construction programs rather than the result alone. Eventually, the institutional barrier as a result of lack of institutional experience to operate all the mechanism of democratic system has been combating and frustrating sustainable development in many developing countries. To develop an area, one should master the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before start the construction. By ignoring EIA, we just like placing ourselves in the school of sharks as for instance, the site is exposed to the flooding or soil erosion then, we need to plan something earlier in order to mitigate the issue. Not randomly just build an area without knowledge and cut more trees greedily.
 Sometimes, this idea comes to my mind where I think that science is a barrier to sustainability. Science has produced too many different technologies by innovation that have interrupted healthy natural cycles. This is attributed to the human population development, globalisation, large-scale industrial technologies and methods for catering to the planet, and rivalry to achieve the top spot in all industries and fields has culminated in the exploitation of natural capital and the degeneration of natural resources. This has resulted in disparity between the conservation of natural resources and its consumption, which has generated the sustainability issue. In this glamorous world, greed is growing. We also realize that we live in a web of hopes, that when we crack this chain of survival, it may not be easy to fix. An individual and community require a decent deal of effort. The uncertainty of what could happen when getting out of this wish loop, the uncertain area-where it takes place-is a huge obstacle to sustainability.
 In the nutshell, as a young leader, to overcome these roadblocks and creating a sustainable and desirable future will require an integrated, systems level re-design of our socio-ecological regime which focusing explicitly and directly on the goal of sustainable quality of life rather than the proxy of unlimited material growth. This transition will occur through an evolutionary process to a certain extent that can control and direct. An integrated set of worldviews, institutions, and technologies are suggested to stimulate and seed this evolutionary re-design of the current socio-ecological regime to achieve global sustainability. Thus, the good policy on sustainable development with 17 Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG) should be implemented in variety aspects.