What is Sustainable Development?

At the most fundamental level, the sustainability of human societies is a function
of the relationship between ecosystem energy production, human energy expropriation,
and the ecosystem transformations that result from human withdrawals of energy and
matter and additions of waste and pollution.

Sustainability in a Nutshell

The ruins of past civilizations teach us that societies that overshoot their carrying capacities by depleting nonrenewable resources while simultaneously degrading ecosystems face the possibility of collapse. In modern times, the acceleration of ecological degradation, the rapid increase in human population, continued resource depletion (e.g., peak oil), climate change, and other issues such as environmental justice and wealth inequality, provide mounting evidence that human societies are on an unsustainable track.  Unsustainable development refers to societal dependency on an economic process–the “treadmill of production”–that requires increasing withdrawals of energy and material from ecosystems in order to promote societal progress.

It was in this context that the sustainable development concept was put forward as a way to deal with our problems by the World Commission on Environment and Development (i.e., the Brundtland Report):

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (1987: 43).

How can sustainable development be achieved?

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