Permanent Monitoring Panel -
The Limits of Development
Members of the Panel:
Chairman:
Hiltmar Schubert (Germany) bmg@ict.fhg.de
Members:
Geraldo Serra (Brazil) gegserra@usp.br;
K C Sivaramakrishnan (India) cprindia@vsnl.com;
Margaret S. Petersen (USA) petersen@engr.arizona.edu;
Christopher D. Ellis (USA) cdellis@tamu.edu;
Juan Manuel Borthagaray (Argentina) manbor@fadu.uba.ar
Associate Members:
Bertil Galland (Switzerland), Alberto Gonzales-Pozo (Mexico)
Huo Yu-Ping (China), Leonardas Kairiukstis (Lithuania)
Karl Rebane (Estonia), François Waelbroeck (Belgium)
Summary of the Emergency
Limits of development are the observance of limitations of ecological,
economical and social developments in order to avoid emergencies to human
beings in a global or regional sense. The PMP considers that sustainability
is also an important part of its concern.
Priorities in dealing with the Emergency
The PMP has decided to monitor scientific results on the following subjects:
- Use of renewable resources
- Development of substitutes and technologies for non-renewable resources
- Development of technologies to reduce emission, recycle or safely
dispose of pollutants
- Demographic growth
- Urbanization
Workshop and Meeting Reports
1999 - MEGACITIES:
Members and guests presented papers on the limits of development of the
following megacities: Mexico City, New Delhi, Buenos Aires, São Paulo,
and the Texas Triangle (Dallas - Houston - San Antonio). The meeting concluded
that megacities are the locus of the main limits of development problems
and should be considered as the main concern for the PMP monitoring
2000 - WATER AS A LIMIT TO DEVELOPMENT:
Water availability and scarcity were considered under many and different
aspects, not only in the megacities mentioned, but also on the global
and regional scales. It was easy to consider water as one of the most
import issues to be considered in any approach to urban sustainability,
but most problems nowadays can be solved with technological development
or are stemmed by social constrains.
2001 - SUSTAINABILITY:
Considering the undeveloped and developing countries, as well as emerging
economies, it was decided at the Rio 92 meeting to adopt the concept of
sustainability together with, or instead of limits of development. The
meeting considered many aspects of sustainability of development and decided
to change its way of monitoring in order to adopt a new approach that
includes sustainability.
2002 - SOLID URBAN WASTE:
This year's meeting theme is solid urban waste. Collecting, transporting
and disposing of urban solid waste is becoming more and more complex,
particularly because of the trend of modern societies to generate ever
larger quantities of solid waste. Nowadays, in large urban areas, it is
more and more difficult to find disposal space. The main tasks of our
PMP are the definition of the emergency character of this problem and
to monitor the scientific and technological results in the field of urban
and territorial planning and management in order to find solutions.
2003 - URBAN MOBILITY:
Moving people, material, waste, information and energy, as well as organizing
urban mobility will be the theme in 2003, as decided at the 2001 meeting.
Special Recommendations
The most difficult and intractable development limits and sustainability
problems are in large urbanized areas. Therefore, the monitoring of development
and sustainability problems, and of scientific and technological research
results should concentrate on those large urbanized areas.
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