The Importance of Development

Every society needs to go through a process of development in order to grow and modernize. This includes providing better healthcare, education, and a clean environment to improve the quality of life of people in that society. The main goal of development is to provide a better standard of living for its citizens so they can have the resources and freedoms necessary for their well-being. This can be accomplished by building more schools, creating more jobs, and investing in research.

It was in the second half of the twentieth century that a focus on development emerged as a recognition developed that nations with similar per capita incomes could differ widely with regard to their populations’ quality of life. This is because a nation’s average income does not tell the whole story about its population’s opportunities for well-being. There are also numerous dimensions of human well-being that are not directly reflected in average income levels, such as the provision of adequate housing and sanitation, the affordability and accessibility of good nutrition and health care, the availability of educational and employment opportunities, and the security of personal safety.

The international community increasingly recognizes that the key to sustainable development is the pursuit of equitability and balance across three primary interrelated domains: social, economic, and environmental. Achieving this requires a commitment to address the underlying causes of unsustainable trends, for example, the enormous profits earned by pharmaceutical companies from the marketing and sale of expensive drugs that are inaccessible for many low-income countries.