Sustainable Development in Judaism

The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to till it and tend it. (Genesis 2:15) When the Holy One Blessed Be He created the first man, He took him and warned him about all the trees in the Garden of Eden, saying: 'See My works, see how beautiful and perfect they are, and all I created - I created for you. Beware lest you spoil and destroy my world, for if you will spoil it, there is no one to repair it after you.' (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13) Twenty years after the historic assembly of world leaders, in Stockholm, for the Conference on the Human Environment, world leaders met once again, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992. There they decided on Agenda 21: The Earth Summit - Strategy to Save Our Planet. There, too, the term "Sustainable Development" became part of the mainstream of world debate. In this congress, the participants expressed their fear of the damage caused to the environment by economies racing in the direction of enrichment and understood that what is done by one part of the world influences other parts; they resolved that economic activity must be subject to continuous evaluation regarding the influence of such activity on the environment. It became clear that a healthy environment and a healthy economy are not parallel tracks and that the world must enact "sustainable development" if it wishes to remain intact