Q.The Brundtland Commission (1987) defined sustainable development as development that:

This tests the precise wording of the Brundtland Commission's definition, which centres on balancing present and future needs, not on halting growth altogether. …

Option (a) is incorrect — sustainable development does not endorse maximising GDP growth 'regardless' of environmental cost; that is precisely the unsustainable approach the concept was developed to move away from.

Option (b) is correct. This is the Brundtland Commission's own 1987 wording in Our Common Future: sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, balancing intra-generational and inter-generational equity.

Option (c) is incorrect — sustainable development does not mean restricting all economic activity in sensitive areas; it means ensuring that activity everywhere does not undermine future capacity to meet needs, which can still permit carefully managed economic activity. …

Option (c) is a common wrong pick because students sometimes equate 'sustainable' with 'no economic activity at all' — the Brundtland framework explicitly allows development, provid …