Environmental Sustainability: Finding a Working Definition

摘要

Since at least 1987, when the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future, sustainability has become an increasingly central concept in redefining environmental stewardship-development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."~1 The most recent contribution to this conceptual framing can be found in the United Nations' ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the developed and developing world. And yet, despite its expanding presence in environmental policy discourse since its first introduction almost 30 years ago, sustainability still suffers from ambiguity that must be overcome if governmental and private-sector decisionmakers are to optimize the concept's potential.