Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment, so that these needs can be met not only in the present but also for future generations to come. It means different things to different people, but the most frequently quoted definition is from the report Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland Report), stating that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainable development is not a new idea. Many cultures over the course of human history have recognized the need for harmony between the environment, society, and economy. What is new is an articulation of these ideas in the context of a global industrial [Page 411]and information society. Sustainable development focuses on improving the quality of life for all of the Earth's citizens without increasing the use of natural resources beyond the capacity of the environment to supply them indefinitely. It requires an understanding that inaction has consequences and that we must find innovative ways to change institutional structures and influence individual behavior. It is about taking action and changing policy and practice at all levels, from the individual to the international.

Discussions about the limits and implications of economic growth have been recurrent in economic history. In the early 1970s, the debate spurred by D. H. Meadows and colleagues (1972) mainly focused on the prospects of shortages in material stocks of nonrenewable natural resources and on whether economic growth would inevitably lead to environmental degradation and social collapse. At that time, economic growth and environmental quality were largely perceived as opposing each other. In the 1980s, the importance of reconciling economic growth with the environment had come to be generally recognized, providing an intellectual underpinning to efforts to elevate the importance of environmental issues in policy making. The origin of sustainable development dates back to 1982, when the World Commission on Environment and Development was initiated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and its report, Our Common Future, was published in 1987. The prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, was the chair of the commission.

The commission's membership was shared between developed and developing countries. Its roots were in the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, at which the conflicts between environment and development were first acknowledged, and in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which argued for conservation as a means to assist development, and specifically for the sustainable development and utilization of species, ecosystems, and resources. Drawing on these, the Brundtland Commission began its work, committed to engage environment and development.

As with previous efforts, the report was followed by major international meetings. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (the so-called Earth Summit) issued a declaration of principles, a detailed Agenda 21 of desired actions, international agreements on climate change and biodiversity, and a statement of principles on forests. Ten years later, in 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the commitment to sustainable development was reaffirmed.

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