on Feb 24th, 2008Sustainable Living
This section of the website aims to provide practical advice and solutions to how you can be more sustainable everyday.
There are literally millions of websites devoted to defining and describing ‘sustainable development’. Our view is that sustainable development is the only process we can follow that might keep humankind, its cultures, and the planet’s ecological systems from catastrophe. Sustainable development means different things to different people, but the most frequently quoted definition is from the report Our Common Future (also known as 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.”
*Sustainable development focuses on improving the quality of life for all of the Earth’s citizens without increasing the use of natural resources beyond the capacity of the environment to supply them indefinitely. It requires an understanding that inaction has consequences and that we must find innovative ways to change institutional structures and influence individual behaviour. It is about taking action, changing policy and practice at all levels, from the individual to the international.
Sustainable development is not a new idea. Many cultures over the course of human history have recognized the need for harmony between the environment, society and economy. What is new is an articulation of these ideas in the context of a global industrial and information society.
Progress on developing the concepts of sustainable development has been rapid since the 1980s. In 1992 leaders at the Earth Summit built upon the framework of Brundtland Report to create agreements and conventions on critical issues such as climate change, desertification and deforestation. They also drafted a broad action strategy—Agenda 21—as the workplan for environment and development issues for the coming decades. Throughout the rest of the 1990s, regional and sectoral sustainability plans have been developed. A wide variety of groups—ranging from businesses to municipal governments to international organizations such as the World Bank—have adopted the concept and given it their own particular interpretations. These initiatives have increased our understanding of what sustainable development means within many different contexts. Unfortunately, as the Earth Summit +5 review process demonstrated in 1997, progress on implementing sustainable development plans has been slow.
(*World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 p. 43.)
