Economic development in the context of "World Bank"

Sustainable development is an approach to growth and human development that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The aim is to have a society where living conditions and resources meet human needs without undermining planetary integrity. Sustainable development aims to balance the needs of the economy, environment, and society. The Brundtland Report in 1987 helped to make the concept of sustainable development better known.

Sustainable development overlaps with the idea of sustainability which is a normative concept. UNESCO formulated a distinction between the two concepts as follows: "Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal (i.e. a more sustainable world), while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it."

Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11 or Global Goal 11), titled "sustainable cities and communities", is one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The official mission of SDG 11 is to "Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable". The 17 SDGs take into account that action in one area will affect outcomes in other areas as well, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.

SDG 11 has 10 targets to be achieved, and this is being measured with 15 indicators. The seven outcome targets include safe and affordable housing, affordable and sustainable transport systems, inclusive and sustainable urbanization, protection of the world's cultural and natural heritage, reduction of the adverse effects of natural disasters, reduction of the environmental impacts of cities and to provide access to safe and inclusive green and public spaces. The three means of implementation targets include strong national and regional development planning, implementing policies for inclusion, resource efficiency, and disaster risk reduction in supporting the least developed countries in sustainable and resilient building.

In the history of Mexico, La Reforma (from Spanish: "The Reform"), or reform laws, refers to a pivotal set of laws, including a new constitution, that were enacted in the Second Federal Republic of Mexico during the 1850s after the Plan of Ayutla overthrew the dictatorship of Santa Anna. They were intended as modernizing measures: social, political, and economic, aimed at undermining the traditional power of the Catholic Church and the army. The reforms sought separation of church and state, equality before the law, and economic development. These anticlerical laws were enacted in the Second Mexican Republic between 1855 and 1863, during the governments of Juan Álvarez, Ignacio Comonfort and Benito Juárez. The laws also limited the ability of Catholic Church and Indigenous communities from collectively holding land. The liberal government sought the revenues from the disentailment of church property, which could fund the civil war against Mexican conservatives and to broaden the base of property ownership in Mexico and encouraging private enterprise. Several of them were raised to constitutional status by the constituent Congress that drafted the liberal Constitution of 1857. Although the laws had a major impact on the Catholic Church in Mexico, liberal proponents were not opposed to the church as a spiritual institution, but rather sought a secular state and a society not dominated by religion.

The Juárez Law reduced the power that military and ecclesiastical courts held. The Lerdo Law forced land held in collective ownership to be sold to individual owners. It aimed at creating a dynamic real estate market, creating a class of yeoman farmers owning their own land, and raising revenue for the state. The measure was intended to strip the Church of most of its property, as well as to break Indigenous communities' collective ownership of land.

Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse environmental, legal, social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in statistics or economics there are two main measures: absolute poverty which compares income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter; secondly, relative poverty measures when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. The definition of relative poverty varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.

Statistically, as of 2019, most of the world's population live in poverty: in PPP dollars, 85% of people live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day. According to the World Bank Group in 2020, more than 40% of the poor live in conflict-affected countries. Even when countries experience economic development, the poorest citizens of middle-income countries frequently do not gain an adequate share of their countries' increased wealth to leave poverty. Governments and non-governmental organizations have experimented with a number of different policies and programs for poverty alleviation, such as electrification in rural areas or housing first policies in urban areas. The international policy frameworks for poverty alleviation, established by the United Nations in 2015, are summarized in Sustainable Development Goal 1: "No Poverty".

Weak and strong sustainability are terms that have emerged from the field of environmental economics and describe different approaches to sustainability, specifically in relation to natural resource management and economic development. Weak sustainability is applicable when certain natural and human capital assets are assessed as interchangeable, meaning that the use or loss of, for example, a reduction in natural capital can be considered sustainable if the simultaneous change in human capital meets or exceeds the value of the change in natural capital. It assumes that different types of capital can be measured and given value in the same way. Strong sustainability is applicable when a specific capital asset, typically a natural capital asset, is assessed as incommensurable or so valuable that it should be maintained or enhanced independently of changes in other, typically human-made, capitals. It particularly considers that certain natural assets have critical ecological functions that cannot be substituted by human-made alternatives.

For example, according to weak sustainability, replacing a natural forest with a park or agricultural land can be considered sustainable if the recreational or economic value equal the value of the biodiversity lost and further environmental impact caused. According to strong sustainability, cutting down trees in a natural forest and planting new trees elsewhere might not be considered sustainable, when the value of biodiversity loss and wider ecological implications cannot be measured or offset.

The concept of human development expands upon the notion of economic development to include social, political and even ethical dimensions. Since the mid-twentieth century, international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank have adopted human development as a holistic approach to evaluating a country’s progress that considers living conditions, social relations, individual freedoms and political institutions that contribute to freedom and well-being, in addition to standard measures of income growth.

The United Nations Development Programme defines human development as "the process of enlarging people's choices", such choices allowing people to "lead a long and healthy life, to be educated, to enjoy a decent standard of living", as well as "political freedom, other guaranteed human rights and various ingredients of self-respect". Thus, human development is about much more than economic growth, which is only a means of enlarging people's choices. Some organizations, such as the Catholic Church and the Organization of American States, use the term "integral development" to reflect something wider than "economic" development.

Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).

Its targets were multilateralism and interdependence of nations in the search for a sustainable development path. The report sought to recapture the spirit of the Stockholm Conference of 1972, which had introduced environmental concerns to the formal political development sphere. Our Common Future placed environmental issues firmly on the political agenda: it aimed to discuss the environment and development as one single issue.

In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. The type of aid given may be classified according to various factors, including its intended purpose, the terms or conditions (if any) under which it is given, its source, and its level of urgency. For example, aid may be classified based on urgency into emergency aid and development aid.

Emergency aid is rapid assistance given to a people in immediate distress by individuals, organizations, or governments to relieve suffering, during and after man-made emergencies (like wars) and natural disasters. Development aid is aid given to support development in general which can be economic development or social development in developing countries. It is distinguished from humanitarian aid as being aimed at alleviating poverty in the long term, rather than alleviating suffering in the short term.