RESEARCH STARTER

Sustainable Development: Overview

Sustainable development is a multifaceted approach aimed at meeting the needs of the present generation while ensuring that future generations can also meet their own needs. It involves balancing economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity to create a more sustainable world. Originating from the 1987 Brundtland Commission report, this concept emphasizes that development should not deplete natural resources but instead promote their responsible use and conservation. Sustainable development advocates for equal access to the earth's resources and seeks to improve living standards for all, especially in underdeveloped regions.

The framework includes significant international agreements, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which identifies seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at addressing global challenges like poverty, inequality, and climate change. Policymakers are encouraged to adopt sustainable practices, such as implementing green technologies and establishing environmental quality standards. However, challenges remain, as recent reports highlight setbacks in achieving these goals due to crises like the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic. As sustainability becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, efforts from governments, corporations, and individuals are essential in fostering a more sustainable future.

Full Article

Introduction

Sustainable development refers to the process of advancing technology, increasing capital, and improving standards of living without harming the earth or depleting natural resources. The concept was introduced in 1980 and includes such projects as ecotourism, recycling, reduction in building materials, alternative energy, and minimum consumption of goods. Supporters of sustainable development also hope to change transportation systems by promoting mass transit, carpooling, bicycling, and walking.

Proponents say that sustainable development is not only possible and desirable, it is mandatory given the increasing global population, widespread pollution and other damage to the environment, climate change, and the rapid depletion of natural resources such as petroleum and rainforests.

Some environmentalists maintain that there is no such thing as sustainable development. The environment is always damaged as a result of the development of roads, houses, and tourism. Any use of natural resources depletes the already diminishing supply, and it takes a very long time for the earth to replenish these resources. The term "sustainable development," they argue, is misleading and dishonest, and it is used by capitalists to create the appearance of environmental friendliness. Other critics oppose the concept of sustainable development because they fear that applying those principles will cost too much money, resulting in job loss and higher taxes.

Understanding the Discussion

Alternative energy: Energy sources that do not use fossil fuels. These include wind, solar, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy, as well as heat from the earth's core.

Desertification: The transformation of arable or habitable land to desert.

Ecotourism: A form of tourism in which people visit undeveloped natural sites without disturbing the environment, with the goal of maintaining the pristine condition of the sites and benefiting the local economy.

Environmental degradation: Severe damage to the environment, making it unproductive and/or unlivable.

Environmental sustainability: The process of keeping the consumption of natural resources to a level low enough that the environment can renew them.

Green: A commitment to preserving the natural world. Developers who are "green" strive to interfere with the environment as little as possible. Some environmentalists maintain that development is inherently anti-green.

Sustainable economy: A sustainable economy is one that uses a minimum of natural resources and recycles materials. Each individual or industry consumes less while the worldwide standard of living rises.

History

According to the 1987 report of the United Nations (UN) World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission, humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that the current generation meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development involves a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. The Brundtland Commission envisioned the possibility of continued economic growth, population stabilization, improvements in global economic equity among all nations, and environmental improvement, all occurring simultaneously and in harmony. Since publication of the commission’s report, titled Our Common Future, the goal of sustainable development—both environmental and economic development—has become the dominant global position.

At the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, the United Nations issued the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The Rio Declaration outlined what scholars term the “third generation of human rights,” which include group and collective rights, the right of self-determination, the right to economic and social development, the right to a healthy environment, the right to natural resources, the right to information and communication, the right to participation in cultural heritage, and the right to intergenerational equity and sustainability. The 2012 United Nations' Rio+20 conference's The Future We Want report reiterated the members' goal of eradicating poverty, invoked the Rio Declaration human rights, and affirmed the need for broad representation of civilians (particularly women, youth, and Indigenous peoples), governments, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses in policymaking for sustainable development. It also established an intergovernmental forum to replace the Brundtland Commission and outlined a "framework for action" for global concerns such as poverty eradication, food security and agriculture, water and sanitation, energy, housing and urban development, maternal health and health infrastructure, marine ecosystems and fisheries, disaster mitigation, climate change, forest management, and development in small island states, African nations, and landlocked countries.

The United Nations General Assembly began a working group in 2013 focusing on creating a proposal of sustainable guidelines that should be globally implemented. In 2015, all members of the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlined sustainability in development, protecting the earth, and partnerships among developed and developing nations using seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition to this agenda, several agreements were adopted in 2015, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development.

Advocates of sustainable development hold a normative philosophy, or value system, concerned with equal distribution of the earth’s natural capital among current and future generations of humans. They promote three core values. First, current and future generations should have equal access to the planet’s life-support systems—including the earth’s gaseous atmosphere, biodiversity, stocks of exhaustible resources, and stocks of renewable resources—and should maintain the earth’s atmosphere, land, and biodiversity for future generations. Exhaustible resources, such as minerals and fossil fuels, should be used sparingly and conserved for use by future generations. Renewable resources, such as forests and fertile soil, should be renewed as they are used to ensure that stocks are maintained at or above current levels and are never exhausted.

Second, all future generations should have the opportunity to enjoy a material standard of living equivalent to that of the current generation. In addition, the descendants of the current generation in underdeveloped regions should be permitted to increase their economic development to match that available to descendants of the current generation in the industrialized regions. Future development and growth in both developed and underdeveloped regions must be sustainable.

Finally, future development must no longer follow the growth path taken by the currently industrialized countries but should utilize appropriate technology. Development should also limit use of renewable resources to each resource’s maximum sustained yield—that is, the rate of harvest of natural resources such as fisheries and timber that can be maintained indefinitely through active human management of those resources.

Sustainable development is promoted through a combination of public policies. First, to the extent possible, policymakers assign monetary values to elements in the earth’s support system so that they can make the economic and financial calculations necessary to ensure that the requirements of weak sustainability are met. Second, economic development in the underdeveloped world is shifted away from high-resource-using, high-polluting patterns that have been seen in the developed nations and toward more sustainable or “appropriate” patterns. Suggested appropriate technologies and techniques for sustainability include solar energy, resource recycling, cottage industry, and microenterprises (factories built on a small scale). Third, objective and measurable quality standards for air, water, and other resources are established and enforced to ensure that a continuing minimum quality and quantity of natural capital is maintained and that certain stocks of natural capital are protected through the establishment of wilderness areas, oil and gas reserves, and other reserves. Finally, each individual human is encouraged to make a minimal personal impact on the earth’s natural capital by adopting a commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

Environmental improvement results from the changes in resource utilization that are part of sustainable development. For example, reductions in the use and waste of natural capital reduce the environmental impacts of resource extraction techniques such as strip mining and waste disposal methods such as incineration. The setting of environmental quality standards and policies requiring the maintenance of biodiversity has led to the implementation of antipollution efforts and ecosystem restoration projects.

Sustainable Development Today

Following the 2015 adoption of the UN's Sustainability Development Goals, the UN continued to review its goals and assess progress at an annual meeting called the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Additionally, the UN secretary general published a SDG progress report each year detailing the implementation of the seventeen goals. In 2024, that report highlighted the challenges the world had faced meeting the SDGs and the lack of progress that had been made. Among other roadblocks, the report noted that the convergence of multiple global crisis, including escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions, , growing climate chaos, and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had all contributed to a failure to meet the goals, and the report pushed for world leaders to recommit to the SDGs in order to meet the 2030 deadline.

Many countries worked to pass new legislation to meet growing environmental issues. Some governments implemented green taxes on harmful environmental activities. For instance, Mexico enacted a tax on the sale and import of gasoline and other fossil fuels, and Spain imposed taxes on plastic packaging and waste disposal. Likewise, governments granted tax rebates for meeting stricter environmental standards. Such measures helped increase demand for sustainable products like electric vehicles and solar panels. In the US, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022, which provided tax credits and incentives to help companies combat climate change and other concerns. However, President Donald Trump rescinded parts of the law through an executive order and also pulled the US from the Paris Climate Agreement as a means of pushing his administrations own climate agenda.

On a more granular level, the concept of sustainable development had taken hold in many facets of everyday life by the early 2020s, from new "green" products on the market and commitments by corporations to act more responsibly to efforts by state and local governments to increase energy efficiency in homes and businesses. Efforts by corporations and nongovernmental organizations also highlighted the importance of work at all levels of society when trying to meet sustainability goals and tackle environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.


Bibliography

Ang, Frederic, and Steven van Passel. “Beyond the Environmentalist's Paradox and the Debate on Weak versus Strong Sustainability.” Bioscience, vol. 62, no. 3, Mar. 2012, pp. 251–59. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.3.6. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.

Baker, Susan. Sustainable Development. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2016.

Bowers, John. Sustainability and Environmental Economics: An Alternative Text. Longman, 1997.

Dryzek, John S. “Environmentally Benign Growth: Sustainable Development.” The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2005.

Landon, Megan. Environment, Health, and Sustainable Development. Open UP, 2006.

Lee, Kai N. Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment. Island P, 1993.

Magill, Kate, and Lamar Johnson. “Trump freezes Inflation Reduction Act funding.” ESG Dive, 24 Jan. 2025, www.esgdive.com/news/president-trump-inflation-reduction-act-executive-order-ev-mandate/738197/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2025.

Reid, David. Sustainable Development: An Introductory Guide. Routledge, 2013.

Rogers, Peter P., et al. An Introduction to Sustainable Development. Earthscan, 2008.

“The 17 Goals.” United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 3 Apr. 2024.

Sitarz, Daniel, ed. Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet. Earth Press, 1993.

“The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023: Special Edition.” Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, 10 July 2023, unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

“United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20.” Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Welford, Richard. Hijacking Environmentalism: Corporate Responses to Sustainable Development. Routledge, 2013.

Wurster, Stefan. “Comparing Ecological Sustainability in Autocracies and Democracies.” Contemporary Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, Mar. 2013, pp. 76–93. doi:10.1080/13569775.2013.773204. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.

Full Article

Introduction

Sustainable development refers to the process of advancing technology, increasing capital, and improving standards of living without harming the earth or depleting natural resources. The concept was introduced in 1980 and includes such projects as ecotourism, recycling, reduction in building materials, alternative energy, and minimum consumption of goods. Supporters of sustainable development also hope to change transportation systems by promoting mass transit, carpooling, bicycling, and walking.

Proponents say that sustainable development is not only possible and desirable, it is mandatory given the increasing global population, widespread pollution and other damage to the environment, climate change, and the rapid depletion of natural resources such as petroleum and rainforests.

Some environmentalists maintain that there is no such thing as sustainable development. The environment is always damaged as a result of the development of roads, houses, and tourism. Any use of natural resources depletes the already diminishing supply, and it takes a very long time for the earth to replenish these resources. The term "sustainable development," they argue, is misleading and dishonest, and it is used by capitalists to create the appearance of environmental friendliness. Other critics oppose the concept of sustainable development because they fear that applying those principles will cost too much money, resulting in job loss and higher taxes.

Understanding the Discussion

Alternative energy: Energy sources that do not use fossil fuels. These include wind, solar, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy, as well as heat from the earth's core.

Desertification: The transformation of arable or habitable land to desert.

Ecotourism: A form of tourism in which people visit undeveloped natural sites without disturbing the environment, with the goal of maintaining the pristine condition of the sites and benefiting the local economy.

Environmental degradation: Severe damage to the environment, making it unproductive and/or unlivable.

Environmental sustainability: The process of keeping the consumption of natural resources to a level low enough that the environment can renew them.

Green: A commitment to preserving the natural world. Developers who are "green" strive to interfere with the environment as little as possible. Some environmentalists maintain that development is inherently anti-green.

Sustainable economy: A sustainable economy is one that uses a minimum of natural resources and recycles materials. Each individual or industry consumes less while the worldwide standard of living rises.

History

According to the 1987 report of the United Nations (UN) World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission, humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that the current generation meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development involves a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. The Brundtland Commission envisioned the possibility of continued economic growth, population stabilization, improvements in global economic equity among all nations, and environmental improvement, all occurring simultaneously and in harmony. Since publication of the commission’s report, titled Our Common Future, the goal of sustainable development—both environmental and economic development—has become the dominant global position.

At the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, the United Nations issued the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The Rio Declaration outlined what scholars term the “third generation of human rights,” which include group and collective rights, the right of self-determination, the right to economic and social development, the right to a healthy environment, the right to natural resources, the right to information and communication, the right to participation in cultural heritage, and the right to intergenerational equity and sustainability. The 2012 United Nations' Rio+20 conference's The Future We Want report reiterated the members' goal of eradicating poverty, invoked the Rio Declaration human rights, and affirmed the need for broad representation of civilians (particularly women, youth, and Indigenous peoples), governments, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses in policymaking for sustainable development. It also established an intergovernmental forum to replace the Brundtland Commission and outlined a "framework for action" for global concerns such as poverty eradication, food security and agriculture, water and sanitation, energy, housing and urban development, maternal health and health infrastructure, marine ecosystems and fisheries, disaster mitigation, climate change, forest management, and development in small island states, African nations, and landlocked countries.

The United Nations General Assembly began a working group in 2013 focusing on creating a proposal of sustainable guidelines that should be globally implemented. In 2015, all members of the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlined sustainability in development, protecting the earth, and partnerships among developed and developing nations using seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition to this agenda, several agreements were adopted in 2015, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development.

Advocates of sustainable development hold a normative philosophy, or value system, concerned with equal distribution of the earth’s natural capital among current and future generations of humans. They promote three core values. First, current and future generations should have equal access to the planet’s life-support systems—including the earth’s gaseous atmosphere, biodiversity, stocks of exhaustible resources, and stocks of renewable resources—and should maintain the earth’s atmosphere, land, and biodiversity for future generations. Exhaustible resources, such as minerals and fossil fuels, should be used sparingly and conserved for use by future generations. Renewable resources, such as forests and fertile soil, should be renewed as they are used to ensure that stocks are maintained at or above current levels and are never exhausted.

Second, all future generations should have the opportunity to enjoy a material standard of living equivalent to that of the current generation. In addition, the descendants of the current generation in underdeveloped regions should be permitted to increase their economic development to match that available to descendants of the current generation in the industrialized regions. Future development and growth in both developed and underdeveloped regions must be sustainable.

Finally, future development must no longer follow the growth path taken by the currently industrialized countries but should utilize appropriate technology. Development should also limit use of renewable resources to each resource’s maximum sustained yield—that is, the rate of harvest of natural resources such as fisheries and timber that can be maintained indefinitely through active human management of those resources.

Sustainable development is promoted through a combination of public policies. First, to the extent possible, policymakers assign monetary values to elements in the earth’s support system so that they can make the economic and financial calculations necessary to ensure that the requirements of weak sustainability are met. Second, economic development in the underdeveloped world is shifted away from high-resource-using, high-polluting patterns that have been seen in the developed nations and toward more sustainable or “appropriate” patterns. Suggested appropriate technologies and techniques for sustainability include solar energy, resource recycling, cottage industry, and microenterprises (factories built on a small scale). Third, objective and measurable quality standards for air, water, and other resources are established and enforced to ensure that a continuing minimum quality and quantity of natural capital is maintained and that certain stocks of natural capital are protected through the establishment of wilderness areas, oil and gas reserves, and other reserves. Finally, each individual human is encouraged to make a minimal personal impact on the earth’s natural capital by adopting a commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

Environmental improvement results from the changes in resource utilization that are part of sustainable development. For example, reductions in the use and waste of natural capital reduce the environmental impacts of resource extraction techniques such as strip mining and waste disposal methods such as incineration. The setting of environmental quality standards and policies requiring the maintenance of biodiversity has led to the implementation of antipollution efforts and ecosystem restoration projects.

Sustainable Development Today

Following the 2015 adoption of the UN's Sustainability Development Goals, the UN continued to review its goals and assess progress at an annual meeting called the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Additionally, the UN secretary general published a SDG progress report each year detailing the implementation of the seventeen goals. In 2024, that report highlighted the challenges the world had faced meeting the SDGs and the lack of progress that had been made. Among other roadblocks, the report noted that the convergence of multiple global crisis, including escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions, , growing climate chaos, and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had all contributed to a failure to meet the goals, and the report pushed for world leaders to recommit to the SDGs in order to meet the 2030 deadline.

Many countries worked to pass new legislation to meet growing environmental issues. Some governments implemented green taxes on harmful environmental activities. For instance, Mexico enacted a tax on the sale and import of gasoline and other fossil fuels, and Spain imposed taxes on plastic packaging and waste disposal. Likewise, governments granted tax rebates for meeting stricter environmental standards. Such measures helped increase demand for sustainable products like electric vehicles and solar panels. In the US, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022, which provided tax credits and incentives to help companies combat climate change and other concerns. However, President Donald Trump rescinded parts of the law through an executive order and also pulled the US from the Paris Climate Agreement as a means of pushing his administrations own climate agenda.

On a more granular level, the concept of sustainable development had taken hold in many facets of everyday life by the early 2020s, from new "green" products on the market and commitments by corporations to act more responsibly to efforts by state and local governments to increase energy efficiency in homes and businesses. Efforts by corporations and nongovernmental organizations also highlighted the importance of work at all levels of society when trying to meet sustainability goals and tackle environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.


Bibliography

Ang, Frederic, and Steven van Passel. “Beyond the Environmentalist's Paradox and the Debate on Weak versus Strong Sustainability.” Bioscience, vol. 62, no. 3, Mar. 2012, pp. 251–59. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.3.6. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.

Baker, Susan. Sustainable Development. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2016.

Bowers, John. Sustainability and Environmental Economics: An Alternative Text. Longman, 1997.

Dryzek, John S. “Environmentally Benign Growth: Sustainable Development.” The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2005.

Landon, Megan. Environment, Health, and Sustainable Development. Open UP, 2006.

Lee, Kai N. Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment. Island P, 1993.

Magill, Kate, and Lamar Johnson. “Trump freezes Inflation Reduction Act funding.” ESG Dive, 24 Jan. 2025, www.esgdive.com/news/president-trump-inflation-reduction-act-executive-order-ev-mandate/738197/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2025.

Reid, David. Sustainable Development: An Introductory Guide. Routledge, 2013.

Rogers, Peter P., et al. An Introduction to Sustainable Development. Earthscan, 2008.

“The 17 Goals.” United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 3 Apr. 2024.

Sitarz, Daniel, ed. Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet. Earth Press, 1993.

“The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023: Special Edition.” Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, 10 July 2023, unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

“United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20.” Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Welford, Richard. Hijacking Environmentalism: Corporate Responses to Sustainable Development. Routledge, 2013.

Wurster, Stefan. “Comparing Ecological Sustainability in Autocracies and Democracies.” Contemporary Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, Mar. 2013, pp. 76–93. doi:10.1080/13569775.2013.773204. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.

More Like ThisRelated Articles

Related Articles (4)

Related Articles (4)