Links between sustainability and technology development

This article presents important official statements on the role of technology in sustainable development, such as some supporting cleaner production, sustainable development strategy, and the Environmental Technologies Action Plan (ETAP) of the European Union (EU). The author shows that sustainability entails more than using environmentally friendly technologies and products to achieve economic growth. The framework of sustainability implies that the impacts of a technology should be assessed using methods such as Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA) at the global and local levels to improve positive effects. The author refers to the case of pervasive computing as an area requiring such assessment.