The development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is widely accepted translation of sustainable development. UNESCO has listed down four pillars for sustainable development, namely environment, economy, society and culture. The first three pillars were developed in the second half of the 1980s as the pattern to be used in local, national and global strategies for development.
However, these three pillars alone cannot possibly reflect the complexity of current society furthermore the future society. For that matter, many voices among the researchers from all background, NGOs, world organizations and world summits called for culture to be included in the sustainable development model, realizing that culture ultimately shapes what we mean by development and determines how people act in the world.
According to Oxford, the beliefs and attitudes about something that people in a particular group or organization share is known as culture. Culture as the heart of anthropology involves experiences transmitted through social learning in the society. This experiences later evolved into symbols and lead to modernity in humans.
Beliefs and attitudes of the people do affect the sustainable development in a significant ways. Be it in positive or negative impact. In some countries, sea turtle eggs are prized as an aphrodisiac. It is because of this belief triggers the consumption of sea turtle and inherited this practice from one generation to the other.
Malaysia as a multiracial country with a colorful culture can be the best example to study the relationship between culture and sustainable development. Study shows that major health issues among Malaysians differ according to their race. The eating culture, the lifestyle and even the working culture reflects not only on their life span but also other indicators. In many parts of the world, obesity is alarming in the urban areas contradict to the rural part of the world. One of the best reasons for this is the hectic and extremely busy culture of the urban folks.
The immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization including, practices of political organization and social institutions make up the intangible cultural heritage of a society. Political stability for instance is a critical precondition to a sustainable development. As a comparison, among Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) state members; Iran, Turkey, Malaysia and few others are doing better in Science, Technology and Innovation. This is due to the stable culture of politics in these countries. On top of that, Japan is one brilliant example of a country that emerges as among the top economic powers in the world molded by its own language, social practices and expressive forms such as music, dance, ritual and religion.
Culture does crosscut the other three pillars and has great influence towards sustainable development with all the examples given. Indeed, culture has a transformative power on existing development approaches and to make development much more relevant to the needs of people. Human condition as a whole makes the development cannot be judge by economic prosperity only but by culture as well.
