Sustainable Development and Sustainability

During the last century many radical changes and innovations have taken place. Particularly during the last seven decades, there have been unprecedented advances in development and industrialisation with dramatic economic and technological changes. Such changes have resulted in positive impacts, but also negative ones. A number of milestones have been reached since the first definition of sustainability appeared in 1713 by Hans Carl von Carlowitz to reach the current state of sustainable development (SD), e.g. ‘Our Common Future’, the Rio Conference, the Johannesburg Conference, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A number of sustainability perspectives can be found: (1) Central focus; (2) Substitutability of natural capital; (3) Constituency; (4) Trends; and, (5) Scope. These perspectives show that SD is a broad, complex, controversial, open ended, and challenging notion that is open to different, and in many cases mutually exclusive, definitions and interpretations. This has created much controversy, especially since such characteristics makes sustainability difficult to implement or be of practical value. In many cases, SD is considered to address only the environmental dimension. In other cases, it focusses on the three ‘pillars’ (economic, environmental, and social). SD encompasses four dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time), as well as their interrelations.