Elcano and sustainable development

Prologue

The story we are telling you today seeks - not without the risk of falling into some anachronism - to establish a common thread between the fascinating adventure of the first circumnavigation of the Earth, with the famous Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) enacted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. A common thread between Juan Sebastián Elcano and sustainable development. To achieve this we will take you on a short journey through time...

Year 1522

On September 8, 1522, the day when the sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano, after an unparalleled epic, returned to the port of Seville completing the first trip around the world in history. He brought with him the news that the Earth was a round planet with precise limits, a definite world that ends, and, therefore, the natural resources that existed on it would also be finite.

Year 1972

This perception lasted for centuries until, in 1972, in the midst of the oil crisis, a non-governmental organization known as Club of Rome, published an independent study entitled Limits to growth, whose essential objective was to analyze the relationship between the consumption of human societies and the availability of natural resources to satisfy them.

Year 1992

The third stop on this trip takes us to the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. In it, a concept born to succeed will be born: sustainable development. It was first pronounced by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Bruntland, who in his speech spoke of the need to harmonize development and economic growth with the conservation and protection of nature, an ideal term because he spoke of development, and therefore of growth and prosperity, but also of sustainability; that is maintained, that respects, that does not exhaust...

Year 2015

The last stop on this journey to sustainability milestones took place at the United Nations Plenary, on September 25, 2015, when 193 member states approved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, a comprehensive program of measures that reactivated and improved the Millennium Goals and that seek to guarantee the sustainability of the planet, the development of societies, the quality of life of peoples and, most especially, the dignity of people and the protection of wildlife for the enjoyment of present and future generations.

A universal commitment that must lead us to become aware, once and for all, that human beings are an inseparable part of that everything that envelops and surrounds us, of that prodigious and indispensable Nature that is the source of our life.

Epilogue

Let's not forget, therefore, that this fascinating proposal to change our mentality and our way of relating to each other @s and to the environment, began one day in the late summer of 1522, almost 500 years ago, when our compatriot Juan Sebastián Elcano, returned to the port of Seville to tell the world that the Earth, our home, was a finite planet with limited resources. 500 years of History, Elcano and sustainable development.