Club of Rome
Topic: Natural Resources: Classification, Planning and Sustainable Use · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 1 "Resources and Development"
Meaning
The Club of Rome is a think tank (a group that studies problems and suggests solutions), founded in 1968. NCERT credits it with being the first to argue for resource conservation in a systematic way. Its well-known report, The Limits to Growth (1972, by Donella Meadows and others), used computer models. It warned that unchecked growth in population, industry and resource use would hit the planet's limits within a century. Critics say the Green Revolution proved its famine forecasts wrong.
Example
The Limits to Growth came out in 1972, the same year as the UN Stockholm Conference. It helped push the world towards thinking about environmental limits. That thinking later led to the idea of sustainable development in the Brundtland Report (1987).
Don't confuse with
- Brundtland Commission: a UN body whose 1987 report, Our Common Future, defined sustainable development. The Club of Rome is a private think tank.
Related concepts
- The Population Bomb
- The Limits to Growth
- Ecological footprint
- Earth Overshoot Day
- Planetary boundaries