Q.What is meant by 'sustainable development'? State the definition given by the Brundtland Commission.
The most widely accepted definition of sustainable development comes from the 1987 report Our Common Future, prepared by the World Commission on Environment and Development, popularly known as the Brundtland Commission. It defines sustainable development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
This definition combines two ideas of fairness: intra-generational equity, ensuring the needs of the present generation — particularly the poor — are genuinely met, and inter-generational equity, ensuring that resources are not so depleted or ecosystems so degraded today that future generations inherit a diminished capacity to meet their own needs. Sustainable development is therefore not opposed to growth, but insists that growth must not undermine its own long-run foundations.
Sustainable development, per the Brundtland Commission (1987), is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs — combining fairness to the present (especially the poor) with fairness to the future.
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