The notion of  sustainability emerged in The Ecologist's A Blueprint for Survival,
in 1972. The quest to make modern civilization sustainable inspired the UN's Stockholm Conference in 1972 and the global trusteeship of subsequent international environmental treaties. Sustainability is related to futurity, hence the Brundtland Commission in 1987 defined sustainable
development as development which meets the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainability animates the precautionary principle, affirmed by the European Union (EU) in 1990 in its Bergen
Declaration on Sustainable Development, which requires ecological
preservation in cases of scientific uncertainty where serious or
irreversible damage is threatened. The Earth Summit in 1992 established sustainable development as the most important policy of the 21st century. Sustainability is at the heart of The Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development and Agenda 21, accords signed at the Earth Summit that
herald a new paradigm of society, economics and the environment. The
EU's Fifth Environmental Action Programme (1993) pursues sustainability in industry, energy, transport, agriculture and tourism. Sustainability has also been endorsed by the Clinton Administration (1994).
In the light of these events, sustainability is now used widely in biology, economics, sociology, urban
planning, ethics and other domains. It is regarded as tantamount to a
new philosophy, in which principles of futurity, equity, global
environmentalism and biodiversity must guide decision-making. Far from
being a mere doctrine of development science, sustainability has emerged as a universal methodology for evaluating
whether human options will yield social and environmental vitality. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/113509890/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 |
sustainability
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