Milestones towards sustainable development

1972: Stockholm Decleration

United Nations Conference on the Human Environment: developing countries and developed countries discuss about global environmental protection

⇒ Beginning of the environmental protection debate.

1972: Club of Rome "The limits to Growth"

Meadows predicts based on economical models future development

⇒ Current way of living is not sustainable

1974: Symposium "Review of Economic Studies"

Stiglitz vs. Meadow's pessimistic forecast: technological advance, scale earnings and substitution of natural capital by real capital can provide economic growth despite limited natural ressources.

⇒ economic growth is possible despite limited natural ressources

1980's: Environmental Disasters

Chernobyl disaster, forest decline, acid rain

⇒ public awareness of enviornmental problems

1980's: Washington Consensus

IMF and World Bank: structural adjustment policies

⇒ privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation

1987: Brundtland Commission: "Our common future"

Former Norwegian president Brundtland publishes report "Our common future" being  Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).

⇒ Definition of sustainability: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

1992: Earth Summit/Rio Summit (Rio de Janeiro)

United Nations Conference on Environement and Development (UNCED)

⇒ resulting documents: Rio Decleration, Agenda 21, Forest Principels, Biological Diversity, Desertification, Climate Change

1992: Good Governance

World Bank introduces concept of Good Governance based on disapointing experiences in most development countries in the 1980s.

⇒ Good Governance as pre-condition of sustainable development

1995: World Summit of Social Development (Kopenhagen)

Poverty reduction should be main focus of any development efforts.

⇒ basis for MDGs (Millenium Development Goals)

1997: Rio+5 (Rio de Janeiro)

Intermediate results: almost no member has developed sustainability strategies according to the Rio Summit documents.

⇒ members should present national sustainability strategies until 2002.

1997: Kyotto Protocol

Became finally effective in 2005 (55 members causing in total 55% of all emissions had to ratify it)

⇒ cut emissions of greenhouse gases and establish emissions trading

2000: Millenium Decleration (New York)

Result of the preceding Millenium Assembly
Catalogue of binding goals with focus on poverty reduction, human rights, environmental protection and sustainable development.

⇒ direct basis for MDGs (Millenium Development Goals)

2001: Millenium Development Goals

Based on the Millenium Decleration eight development goals are established which should be achived by 2015.

⇒ 8 development goals with concrete targets and indicators.

2002: Rio+10 (Johannisburg)

Almost all countries have developped national sustainability strategies, however not yet implemented.

⇒ plan of implementation of national sustainability strategies

2012: Rio+20 (Rio de Janeiro)

United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD).
Resulting document "The future we want" only lip service; no concrete results.

⇒ Rio process stagnating; summit failure

2013: UN Climate Change Conference (Warsaw)

no final document; all states should cut emissions.

⇒ process postponed to 2015

2015: (Paris)

Goal: binding agreement on climate and reduction of emissions inorder to limit global warming.

What is sustainability?

What is sustainability?

There are endless numbers of definitions of sustainability in use and even more discussions ongoing which definition is explaining the concept of sustainability in the best way. There are articles, books, PhD theses, web pages etc. which will give you all details about those definitons.
Therefore, let me just put here the most common (and most quoted) one which is from the Brundtland Report ("Our common future"):

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

So we have two important concepts within this definition:

• intergenerational justice: taking into account the future generations and their needs
• intragenerational justice: establishing a balance between poor and rich countries (the richt "north" and the poor "south")

Hence, all of our actions have to take intergenerational and intragenerational justice into account, i.e. we have to consider how our decissions are impacting the future needs of future generations and the present needs of all people nowerdays.