Historical background

The exact origin of the concept of sustainable development is debatable, but as can be seen from studying the “Sustainable Development Time Line”, available at the IISD web site (1), our understanding of man’s tenuous relationship with nature developed over a considerable period of time. An alternative view is available at the web site of “The Sustainability Report” (2) providing “An environment and sustainability chronology”.

Two important events along this road, were the arrival of the two concepts known as sustainable development and the triple bottom line respectively, enabling the capability of expressing complex relationships between current economic, environmental, and social challenges, as illustrated by the sustainability model as presented.

Sustainable Development

The use of the concept sustainable development gained world-wide currency through the work of the UN Commission initiated in 1984 -- World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by then Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report,  – Our Common Future – published in 1987, became better known as the Brundtland Report (3), and  stated that critical global environmental problems were primarily the result of the enormous poverty of the “South” and the non-sustainable patterns of consumption and production in the “North”. It called for a strategy that united development and the environment – described by the now-common term «sustainable development».

The most quoted definition of sustainable development resulted from the Brundtland report as “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”