Welcome to ITSSD.org
Our mission is to promote and implement a positive global paradigm of sustainable development that affords future generations from all Nations greater opportunities for a higher quality of life. To achieve this paradigm, we emphasize the importance of economic growth, free markets, the rule of law, strong intellectual property rights, scientific discovery, technological innovation, and the establishment of balanced, science-based and cost-effective national regulatory and standards systems.
The ITSSD advocates objective, benchmarked and market-driven and relevant standards and regulations, and strong recognition and protection of exclusive private property rights, which play an indispensable role in facilitating the international trade and investment flows, technological innovations, economic growth, social justice and environmental protection necessary to achieve sustainable economic development. When standards and regulations are not scientifically, technically and economically justified and are not developed in an open, inclusive and transparent manner, and when exclusive private property rights are continually being legislatively or judicially redefined by reference to popular social policies du jour, there is a real danger that regulations and standards may be utilized without accountability for ideological political purposes, as disguised protectionist barriers to trade and innovation, and as instruments of social change designed to circumvent the rule of law and to deny individuals their constitutional liberties and right to due process of law.
The ITSSD questions the
sustainability of trade and development assistance programs extended to
developing countries that call for the adoption and implementation of
non-science-based and cost-ineffective environment, health and safety
regulations and standards and for conditioning recognition and enforcement of
private intellectual property rights upon ‘public interest’ concerns (i.e., to
overly expensive universal access to healthcare and knowledge government-funding
promises), which have the effect of stifling local research and development
efforts, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship in such countries, as
well as, critical foreign direct investment.
What is a Positive Paradigm of Sustainable Development?
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development is defined by the quality, transparency, and objectivity of laws, regulations and standards, rather than merely by the quantity thereof. "If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." ~ Sir Winston Churchill
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development is a bottom-up, de-centralize(rather than a top-down centralized) representative democratic approach to economic, political and social governance emphasizing free markets, the rule of law, and institutional checks and balances - “Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development calls for limited rather than expansive government. “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
-- A positive paradigm of
sustainable development calls for strong protection of
exclusive private property
rights, tangible as well as intangible.
“The protection
of…the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate…is the
first object of government”. “In
a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may equally be
said to have a property in his rights”. ~
James Madison
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development envisions the ‘enabling’ of People via institutions at the local, regional and national levels (rather than at the supranational and/or global levels).
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development also envisions People being provided with unlimited opportunities to improve their own well-being through self-creation, self-innovation, self-entrepreneurship and self-development (self-realization) while, at the same time, not harming the well-being of others, either now or in the foreseeable future.
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development can be achieved only if public institutions remain accountable to the People and if People responsibly exercise their constitutional rights commensurate with their constitutional responsibilities.
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development is ultimately grounded in the founding principles underlying the United States Constitution. "Our particular security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty making power as boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
-- A positive paradigm of sustainable development can be achieved without requiring the absolute preservation of specific natural resources inherited from the past. To the extent economic activities deplete essential natural resources, such resources should be renewed, supplemented and/or replaced with comparable long-term capital value, such as scientific knowledge, new technologies and equipment, or some environmental investment. Technology may be used and economic growth may be pursued in ways that affect the environment, provided, in the end, that future generations are left with “a generalized capacity to create wellbeing”.