What is Sustainable Development?

There are a number of definitions of sustainable development, some of them very confusing! The words are sometimes used to selectively regarding exclusively economic issues. To be "sustainable" development must work in harmony across environmental, economic and social factors. 

Set out below is the definition that we use when considering projects for the fund;
"Sustainable Development will promote and enhance the environmental, economic and community well being of the Arnside and Silverdale AONB, and ensure a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come."

Achieving sustainable development requires working towards four main goals:

  • Social progress which meets the needs of everyone
  • Effective protection of the environment
  • Ensuring a diverse and prosperous rural economy
  • Prudent use of natural resources

You can find links to lots of websites within this section that will provide all the detailed information you could wish for regarding Sustainable Development. However for a useful guide to implementing the principles in everyday living take a look at Bio-regional.com and their "One Planet Living" webpages.


Who first thought of Sustainable Development?

The concept of sustainable development has received most attention since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The summit marked the first international attempt to draw up action plans and strategies for moving towards a more sustainable pattern of development. Over 100 Heads of State with representation from 178 national governments attended it - the largest gathering of national leaders that the world had seen at that time. The Summit was also attended by representatives from a range of other organisations representing civil society.

However, sustainable development's history goes back further than Rio...

Recognition for inventing the term itself has been variously attributed to Eva Balfour, founder of the Soil Association, the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute in the USA and a geneticist and biodynamic farmer. (Some would even go further and suggest that Ghandi was one of the first proponents of Sustainable Development!)

Most commentators agree that sustainable development was born out of the emerging environmental movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The movement was concerned that human activity was having severe and negative impacts on the planet, and that patterns of growth and development would be unsustainable if they continued unchecked. Key works that highlighted this thinking included Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons (1968), the Blueprint for Survival by the Ecologist magazine (1972), and the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report (1972).

The concept of sustainable development received its first major international recognition in 1972 at the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm. The term was not referred to explicitly, but nevertheless the international community agreed to the notion - now fundamental to sustainable development - that both development and the environment, hitherto addressed as separate issues, could be managed in a mutually beneficial way.


source - Sustainable Development Commission

Our Common Future - the Brundtland Report

The term was popularised 15 years later in Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, often referred to as the Brundtland Report. The report included what is deemed the 'classic' definition of sustainable development: "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

It was not until the 1992 Rio Summit, however, that major world leaders recognised sustainable development as the major challenge it remains today.

More recently, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg in 2002, attended by 191 national governments, UN agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major groups to assess progress since Rio. The Johannesburg Summit delivered three key outcomes: a political declaration, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and a range of partnership initiatives. Key commitments included those on sustainable consumption and production, water and sanitation and energy.

source - Sustainable Development Commission
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