Sustainable development: Our Common Future revisited
Kristin Linnerud2014, Global Environmental Change
Introduction ''Anything on which John Major, George Bush and Fidel Castro all agree can't really mean anything, can it?'' Whitelegg (1997, p. 101) Sustainable development is increasingly being presented as a pathway to all that is good and desirable in society. Some of the proposed national indicators of sustainable development from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Finland illustrate this point. They include such factors as crime rate; participation of 14year-olds in social organizational work; teacher capabilities; workforce skill level; the number of 19-year-olds in the UK with Level 2 qualifications, classes taught in a minority language, children in public care, daily smokers, and internet users; the manner in which children get to school; obesity rates; and R&D expenditures (Banister, 2008; Holden, 2007; Holden and Linnerud, 2007). And the list grows longer yearly. Thus, the sustainable development concept has become so comprehensive and complex that it is no longer useful in guiding policymaking. Not surprisingly, a number of scholars have argued that the sustainable development concept is in danger of becoming irrelevant (e.g., Hopwood et al., 2005; Redclift, 2005). Even though there is not yet any political or scientific agreement on a definition of sustainable development, it remains remarkably persistent as an ideal political concept, similar to democracy, justice, and liberty (Meadowcroft, 2007). Indeed, sustainable development ''is now like 'democracy': it is universally desired, diversely understood, extremely difficult to achieve, and won't go away'' (Lafferty, 2004, p. 26). Unquestionably, sustainable development still is an important concept, which was clearly illustrated at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. One of the conference's main outcomes was the agreement by member states to set up sustainable development goals, which could be useful tools in achieving sustainable development. Thus, achieving sustainable development is still high on the international and national agendas 25 year after the concept was launched with the publication of Our Common Future, commonly referred to as the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987). However, to become a useful tool, the concept must be clearly defined. This article attempts to do so by going back to its origin, the Brundtland Report. We suggest an assessment method that involves four equally important primary dimensions mentioned in the Brundtland Report, and then define suitable indicators and assign minimum/maximum thresholds for each indicator.
