The challenge for sustainable development thinking is to bring … somewhat disparate perspectives into at least a dialogue, if not a convergence.

Over a quarter of a century ago, the World Commission on Environment and Development (known as the Brundtland
Commission) released a report entitled “Our Common Future,” which brought the term “sustainable development” to the center stage of the development discourse. Although the term had emerged earlier in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy, the Brundtland Commission gave it a succinct and catchy definition: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

This definition caught the imagination of policy makers, academics, and activists alike, leading to widespread adoption of the term at all levels. The term’s popularity has increased almost exponentially, and so has the literature. A search for “sustainable development” yields 36 million hits on Google and 89,000 articles with that term in their title on Google Scholar. It is now being used in every imaginable context from transport to agriculture, from local to global, from rural to urban.