Local sustainable human development

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that the concept of sustainable human development is related to the development of new scientific paradigms, which give an excellent epistemic base. The validity and growth of its importance is not only that of concern for the environmental degradation of the planet, but also the logical consequence of a new look at reality, fundamentally from the abandonment of positivist rationalists so inclined towards optimistic determinism and from the arrival of a more complex, holistic, systemic, and less deterministic way of thinking. The emerging scientific paradigm gives importance to themes like ¨uncertainty,¨ the way the phenomena or the point of view of the observer are focused, the existence of elements apparently secondary which can become fundamental, the multiple connections between the different phenomena and other issues that change the traditional way in which we search for knowledge of the reality. Moreover, this current study insists on localization as a concrete way to obtain sustainable human development. It is that place, in the traditional geographic concept itself, which is the fundamental and specific subject of the policies and actions in which one can look for better welfare for people and communities. Without ruling out global actions, it is the local interventions which are going to produce changes in the people´s quality of life and in the quality of the environment. Global action can be more effective if it is conceived of as a planetary articulation of local action, than as a generic political world that does not consider the multiplicity and richness of diverse places.