Planet Budapest Sustainability Expo opens

MTI/Bruzák Noémi

János Áder, chairman of the board of trustees of the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation and the event’s main patron, emphasized in his opening speech that sustainability has many factorial concept, a complex science, the essence of which is that the Earth’s resources are finite.

– said the former head of state.

Therefore, human knowledge and creativity must be focused on creating a balance between human well-being and nature’s finite resources. “Nature itself teaches us this, which does not produce waste, does not let anything go to waste and is capable of continuous renewal” – said János Áder.

In his presentation, János Áder also touched on the problems, including the fact that today man is endangering his own future, overusing his resources: polluting the air, soil, water, and destroying the wilderness.

He emphasized that man acts as if he does not receive every molecule of oxygen he breathes, every sip of water he drinks, every bite of food he eats from nature, as if he had forgotten that he cannot grow infinitely because he cannot outgrow the Earth.

He said that the desire to involve more and more resources and maximize profits drives continuous growth in the current sense, but the way people are pursuing it today is unsustainable.

As an example, he mentioned that according to the Hungarian customs authority’s report, the number of low-value commercial packages arriving from abroad in Hungary increased by 50 percent last year, amounting to 204 million pieces. Most of these originated from overseas and arrived in the country over long distances. All of this has a positive impact on GDP in the areas of manufacturing, packaging, transportation, industry, trade, and logistics. However, the negative externalities resulting from manufacturing, packaging, and transportation are also important: the harmful health, social, and environmental effects. The former head of state believed that the numbers show that “we pollute the air and water for convenience reasons, and use our resources unnecessarily“.

The same questions were asked by economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, in the language of science, and the expert pointed out that nature had been left out of economic models – the former president explained.

Therefore, János Áder drew attention to whether it can be called growth when the quality and quantity of natural capital, the most important tool of the economy, is continuously decreasing, losing its diversity and ability to renew itself. Based on the professor’s findings, he noted that sustainability, in addition to being a nature conservation and moral program, is also a question of money.

János Áder also touched on the measurement of changes in natural capital and the economy, which is being dealt with by excellent experts worldwide. He drew attention to the measurement model presented in 2024, which was jointly created by 3 cooperating Hungarian research groups under the auspices of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation. Its great virtue is that its methodology makes visible the use of ecological resources that have been mostly invisible until now.