Sustainable Development

The term sustainable development is intended to convey the idea that economic development and environmental sustainability should and can be made compatible. It has become one of the dominant ideas in development thinking today and one of the most prominent phrases in development discourse. The most common definition of sustainable development is based on the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) report of 1987 (published as Our Common Future), which stated that development should meet the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. With that definition, sustainable development encompassed inter- and intragenerational equity and promoted the idea that, using appropriate technology, economic growth could be achieved without exceeding environmental limits.

Sustainable development is best understood within the context of its institutional history. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 usually is identified as having laid the groundwork for the formulation of the idea at the international level. It was here that the term ecodevelopment was introduced and that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established. The conference drew explicit links between environment and development. For example, participating nations agreed that development need not be impaired by environmental protection, that development was needed to improve the environment, and that this would require assistance such as funding for environmental safeguards.

In 1980, UNEP, along with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund, published the World Conservation Strategy (WCS), the document in which sustainable development was first codified. The WCS identified three categories of conservation objectives: (1) the maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems, (2) the preservation of genetic diversity, and (3) the sustainable use of species and ecosystems. The WCS had strong roots in wildlife conservation and was intended to bring these concerns to bear on questions of development by providing a framework for resource management.

In contrast, the WCED's 1987 report focused on economic development as the primary mechanism for achieving an equitable and environmentally sound world economy. Published during a decade of declining (or, in some countries, negative) economic growth rates, Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland Report) identified poverty as the primary cause of environmental degradation and prescribed economic growth as the cure. The rising burden of debt servicing and declining terms of trade and austerity programs were identified as inhibiting sustainable development in the Third World. Our Common Future, which was presented to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, served to link discussion of development and the environment at the international level. Widely read, it also popularized the idea of sustainable development.

As a follow-up to Our Common Future, the UN scheduled a conference on environment and development to be held 5 years after its publication. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (the “Earth Summit”) in 1992 was the largest environmental conference ever held, being attended by 172 states, more than 100 heads of state, and 9,000 media representatives, with an additional 28,000 participants at the coinciding International Nongovernmental Organization Forum. The primary output of the official conference was Agenda 21, a large document (600-plus pages) so named because it was intended to demonstrate how to make the planet sustainable by the start of the 21st century.

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