History of Sustainable Development

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History of sd Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development John Robinson Ecological Economics 48 (2004) 369– 384 the concept of sustainable development emerged in the early and mid 1980s (Clark and Munn, 1986; IUCN/UNEP/WWF/FAO/UNESCO, 1980; World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) as an attempt to bridge the gap between environmental concerns about the increasingly evident ecological consequences of human activities and socio-political concerns about human development issues. The reformist element had to do with the strongly human-centered nature of the Brundtland report, which led to the suggestion that the solution to both over- and under-consumption, and thus the answer to environmental concerns, lay in promoting more, not less, human development, albeit development that was sensitive to environmental concerns. In a formulation that was to become notorious, the Brundtland Commission called for a ‘‘5–10-fold’’ increase in gross world industrial activity over the next century to meet the needs of the poor. Of course these two aspects of the Brundtland report are closely linked. If under-development is threatening the global environment and human welfare, then more development is clearly required. If, however, as Brundtland also argued, over-development is an equal threat, then more of the same kind of development is just as clearly not the answer. The answer, therefore, must lie in a new form of ‘sustainable’ development, defined as development which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs’’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 23). The interesting thing about this dichotomy Sustainability: Social and Ecological Dimensions Sabine U. O'Hara REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY Since the 1970s, however, the predictability

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