Cooperatives and sustainable Development

Abstract

The environmental severe problems that today the humanity faces are the result of the imposition of the irrational models of production and consumption of the developed world. The destruction of the forests, the degradation of the soils, the contamination of the waters, the deflection of the ozone layer, the global warming and other phenomena, are driving to the disappearance of the human species. The cooperative model, in its production or services expressions, contemplates the same essence of the sustainable development, with a harmonic balance between the economic growth, the social equal development and the protection of the environment.

When analyzing the modern principles of the cooperatives, a narrow relationship is identified with the bases of the sustainable development.  These principles are intimately linked with the values of mutual help, solidarity, responsibility, justness, equality, justice, respect and democracy, for what they promote and they project a sustainability model, anchored in the community, for which an authentic true local development is built, private of the lucre and the anarchy whose main objective is the human being's harmonic development and of its personality, based in the common work to achieve a collective benefit.

In particular, the agricultural cooperatives have a great importance in the environmental topic and the sustainability, in correspondence with the so narrow connection with the soils and the water, natural resources that suffer a great pressure for the development, for what is indispensable that they introduce and extend technical and sustainable procedures, and be projected toward the natural and organic productions.