Definitions of Sustainability

The definitions given below encompass all aspects of SUSTAINABILITY.

1.   Brundtland (1987): 


This is the most commonly quoted definition and it aims to be more comprehensive than most:

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

It contains within it two key concepts:

The concepts of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given, and:

The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environments ability to meet present and future needs.

2.   Harwood (1990):

Sustainable agriculture is a system that can evolve indefinitely toward greater human utility, greater efficiency of resource use and a balance with the environment which is which is favorable to humans and most other species.

3.   Pearce, Makandia & Barbier (1989):

Sustainable development involves devising a social and economic system, which ensures that these goals are sustained, i.e. that real incomes rise, that educational standards increase, that the health of the nation improves, that the general quality of life is advanced.

4.   Conway & Barbier (1990) from 1,2 &; 3:

We thus define agricultural sustainability as  the ability to maintain productivity, whether as a field  or farm or nation. Where productivity is the output of valued product per unit of resource input.

5.   Daly (1991) then argued that:

Lack of a precise definition of the term 'sustainable development' is not all bad. It has allowed a considerable consensus to evolve in support of the idea that it is both morally and economically wrong to treat the world as a business in liquidation.

6.   Heinen (1994):

No single approach to 'sustainable development' or framework is consistently useful, given the variety of scales inherent in different conservation programs  and different types of societies and institutional structures

7.   IUCN, UNEP, WWF (1991):

Sustainable development, sustainable growth, and sustainable use have been used interchangeably, as if their meanings were the same. They are not. Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely. Sustainable use, is only applicable to renewable resources. Sustainable development is used in this strategy to mean: improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems.

8.   Holdgate (1993):

Development is about realizing resource potential, Sustainable development of renewable natural resources implies respecting limits to the development process, even though these limits are adjustable by technology. The sustainability of technology may be judged by whether it increases production, but retains it other environmental and other limits.

9.   Pearce (1993):

Sustainable development is concerned with the development of a society where the costs of development are not transferred to future generations, or at least an attempt is made to compensate for such costs.

10.   HMSO (1994):

Most societies want to achieve economic development to secure higher standards of living, now and for future generations. They also seek to protect and enhance their environment, now and for their children. Sustainable development tries to reconcile these two objectives.

Culled from University of Readings website: http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/definitions.htm