'Sustainable development' is famously defined in Our Common Future (also known as the 'Brundtland Report') as follows:[^1]

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

  1. the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
  2. the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.

Working toward sustainable development entails evaluating the world as an integrated system, both spatially and temporaly. Many conceptualization of sustainable development seek to reconcile humans' place among other living beings—each of which is uniquely dependant on natural resources.

Within a unified system, it is assumed that air pollution from North America can have an affect on air quality in Asia and that use of pesticides sprayed in Argentina could harm fish stocks off the coast of Australia. The dimension of temporaility reminds us that the decisions our grandparents made about how to farm the land continue to affect agricultural practice today and the economic policies we endorse today will have an impact on urban poverty when our children are adults.[^2]

quality of life is a system, too.

good to be physically healthy poor and don't have access to education?

secure income air in your part of the world is unclean?

freedom of religious expression but what if you can't feed your family?

The problems we face are complex and serious, but we can address them.

innovate for a healthy and meaningful future for this planet and its inhabitants.

[^1]:Our Common Future. Brundtland Report [^2]:https://www.iisd.org/sd/

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. For a development initiative to be sustainable, the benefits should not only outweigh the social and ecological costs and also be founded on a rational use of human and natural resources.

Contents

Twenty Years After Brundtland

This conference was held in Ottawa, Ontario, October 18-19, 2007 to reflect on the past twenty years of sustainable development in Canada since the publication of the Brundtland report in 1987. The presentations are now available as well as information from the conference.

Ten Years After Rio: Successes and Failures

Looks at the most important successes and failures in SD in the decade following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Published in 2002 to coincide with the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development

Sustainable development

Sustainable development is a road-map, an action plan, for achieving sustainability in any activity that uses resources and where immediate and intergenerational replication is demanded. As such, sustainable development is the organizing principle for sustaining finite resources necessary to provide for the needs of future generations of life on the planet. It is a process that envisions a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use continue to meet human needs without undermining the "integrity, stability and beauty" of natural biotic systems.[^2]

http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/sd.html

What is Sustainable Development

There are many definitions of sustainable development, including this landmark one which first appeared in 1987:

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

— from the World Commission on Environment and Development’s (the Brundtland Commission) report Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

But what does this mean? What are the needs of the present? Take a minute and jot down five to ten needs that you have in your own life.

Have you listed any needs that conflict with one another? For example, if you listed clean air to breathe, but also listed a car for transportation, your needs might conflict. Which would you choose, and how would you make your decision? If within ourselves, we have conflicting needs, how much is that multiplied when we look at a whole community, city, country, world? For example, what happens when a company’s need for cheap labor conflicts with workers’ needs for livable wages? Or when individual families’ needs for firewood conflict with the need to prevent erosion and conserve topsoil? Or when one country’s need for electricity results in acid rain that damages another country's lakes and rivers?

How do we decide whose needs are met? Poor or rich people? Citizens or immigrants? People living in cities or in the countryside? People in one country or another?You or your neighbor? The environment or the corporation? This generation or the next generation? When there has to be a trade off, whose needs should go first?

The Long and the Short of It

People concerned about sustainable development suggest that meeting the needs of the future depends on how well we balance social, economic, and environmental objectives--or needs--when making decisions today. Some of these needs are itemized around the puzzle diagram.

What social, economic, or environmental needs would you add to the puzzle?

Many of these objectives may seem to conflict with each other in the short term. For example, industrial growth might conflict with preserving natural resources. Yet, in the long term, responsible use of natural resources now will help ensure that there are resources available for sustained industrial growth far into the future.

Studying the puzzle raises a number of difficult questions. For example, can the long term economic objective of sustained agricultural growth be met if the ecological objective of preserving biodiversity is not? What happens to the environment in the long term if a large number of people cannot afford to meet their basic household needs today? If you did not have access to safe water, and therefore needed wood to boil drinking water so that you and your children would not get sick, would you worry about causing deforestation? Or, if you had to drive a long distance to get to work each day, would you be willing to move or get a new job to avoid polluting the air with your car exhaust? If we don’t balance our social, economic, and environmental objectives in the short term, how can we expect to sustain our development in the long term?

What sustainable development dilemmas do you and your family face in your everyday lives?

Going Further

Explore some of the social, economic, and environmental challenges that are part of the sustainable development puzzle by working through the Learning Modules on this site. Delve into the issues that people around the world strive to balance when making often difficult decisions about development.

Read More

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/sustainabledevelopment

Sustainable development recognizes that growth must be both inclusive and environmentally sound to reduce poverty and build shared prosperity for today’s population and to continue to meet the needs of future generations. It must be efficient with resources and carefully planned to deliver immediate and long-term benefits for people, planet, and prosperity.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/sustainabledevelopment/overview#1

Over the past two decades, economic growth has lifted more than 660 million people out of poverty and has raised the income levels of millions more, but too often it has come at the expense of the environment and poor communities.

Through a variety of market, policy, and institutional failures, Earth’s natural capital has been used in ways that are economically inefficient and wasteful, without sufficient reckoning of the true costs of resource depletion. The burning of fossil fuels supported rapid growth for decades but set up dangerous consequences, with climate change today threatening to roll back decades of development progress. At the same time, growth patterns have left hundreds of millions of people behind: 1.2 billion still lack access to electricity, 870 million are malnourished, and 780 million are still without access to clean, safe drinking water.

Sustainable development recognizes that growth must be both inclusive and environmentally sound to reduce poverty and build shared prosperity for today’s population and to continue to meet the needs of future generations. It is efficient with resources and carefully planned to deliver both immediate and long-term benefits for people, planet, and prosperity.

The three pillars of sustainable development – economic growth, environmental stewardship, and social inclusion – carry across all sectors of development, from cities facing rapid urbanization to agriculture, infrastructure, energy development and use, water availability, and transportation. Cities are embracing low-carbon growth and public transportation. Farmers are picking up the practices of climate-smart agriculture. Countries are recognizing the value of their natural resources, and industries are realizing how much they can save through energy and supply chain efficiency.

The question facing countries, cities, corporations, and development organizations today is not whether to embrace sustainable development but how.

References