/SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT
What is sustainable development?
Sustainable development is deemed to be all that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the future. Sustainable development in all shapes and forms must provide for economic growth, social development and value the environment. Only those companies that are able to manage these three factors can consider themselves sustainably managed.
The concept of sustainable development was first defined in 1987 by the Brundtland Report, which was drafted by the World Commission on Environment and Development, created by the United Nations. This report criticised the development model being followed by industrialised countries, stating that it considered their production and consumption strategies to be incompatible with the vulnerability of ecosystems.
At the end of the 1980’s, 182 countries meeting at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro officially recognised the need to implement sustainable development on a worldwide scale. This would be achieved through the approval of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and through the adoption of the global action plan for sustainable development included in Agenda 21. The importance of considering the interaction between the social, economic and environmental fields was agreed therein, and organisations should consider them to be component parts of a whole when drawing up strategies.