From sustainability to resilience: a paradigm shift

Abstract

Despite inherent definitional and interpretational difficulties the term ‘sustainability’ is widely used in contemporary economic, social and environmental discourse to describe a desirable endgame. Although the term was popularized in the 1987 report Our Common Future published by the World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland report), its origins can be traced back to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972 (UNEP). This declaration, although the title refers to the human environment, acknowledged the importance of the environment in achieving human well-being. More importantly, it drew attention to the “growing evidence of man-made harm in many regions of the earth: dangerous levels of pollution in water, air, earth and living beings; major and undesirable disturbances to the ecological balance of the biosphere; destruction and depletion of irreplaceable resources; and gross-deficiencies, harmful to the physical and mental and social health of man, in the man-made environment…” (UNEP 1972:1). The Brundtland report penned the now classic definition of sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This report was followed by a set of 27 sustainable development principles adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The conference also adopted Agenda 21, a global plan of action for sustainable development, described in 40 separate chapters with a set of actions. The conference was notable for establishing three seminal instruments of environmental governance: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the non-legally binding Statement of Forest Principles. A further consequence was the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).