Sustainable development is an imprecise concept. In my book "On People and Machines"  (Amazon/Kindle) I wrote the following paragraph in that regard.

Sustainable behaviour is described as the one that meets the needs of the present people, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (in Dusek, p. 195). This description looks nice, but it uses elusive concepts, such as "needs" (the present and the future ones) and "compromising the abilities", so that it does not say much. It has been said that sustainable development must "balance and integrate ... social well-being, economic prosperity and environmental protection for the benefit of present and future generations" (in Lovelock, p. 3). This is not a precise discourse; it is difficult to give a precise definition of sustainable development, and without reasonable behaviour no definition will help us much. ... It seems that only a series of catastrophic events of large proportions could make people and humanity change their behaviour. A slow deterioration of climate conditions will not be enough.

Sustainable development is an imprecise concept. In my book "On People and Machines"  (Amazon/Kindle) I wrote the following paragraph in that regard.

Sustainable behaviour is described as the one that meets the needs of the present people, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (in Dusek, p. 195). This description looks nice, but it uses elusive concepts, such as "needs" (the present and the future ones) and "compromising the abilities", so that it does not say much. It has been said that sustainable development must "balance and integrate ... social well-being, economic prosperity and environmental protection for the benefit of present and future generations" (in Lovelock, p. 3). This is not a precise discourse; it is difficult to give a precise definition of sustainable development, and without reasonable behaviour no definition will help us much. ... It seems that only a series of catastrophic events of large proportions could make people and humanity change their behaviour. A slow deterioration of climate conditions will not be enough.

Dear Jayanta,

How the professor Radova write, I believe that is necesary to consider the diversity of theories in the disciplines but also the discussion between different disciplines, about the construction of this concept.

I invite you revise my last article published, thtat related with differents approaches from economics.

Sincerely,

http://revistas.uptc.edu.co/index.php/cenes/article/view/4240

Dear Jayanta.

You ask if sustainable development is a reality or a dream . I think it is both as I will  show in what follows. My answer to your question, however, is a short answer,

As Mario sates, sustainable development is still an imprecise concept. Even so, the idea that sustainable development tries to reconcile the needs and legitimate interests of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and legitimate interests (e.g., to have a healthy life), is accepted as a working definition by the majority, if not all, supporters of sustainable development and ecotourism. Fortunately, there are now many countries around the world that are looking for sustainable development and ecotourism. Thus, sustainable development is, to some extent, a fortunate reality that is looked for by many developed and developing counties around the world. Note, for example, that ecological education is now a compulsory module or discipline at many schools all over the world. 

Let me say that at the present time, sustainable development and ecotourism is being discussed by many RG members. You can accompany this discussion if you look, on Research Gate, at the following title: The Identifying, Preparation and Building a Project Proposal as well as its Implementation on Sustainable Development and Ecotourism. I have been following this discussion and have profit a lot from it. Peter Kahn's thinking and findings on environmental values in many countries (e.g., Brazil, Portugal, United States) is a relevant literature on, say, nature's protection. As far as I see it, no sustainable development is possible if it were implemented at the cost of destroying natural resources, such as forests, potable water, and the like. This means that we should protect nature not only because this is useful for us -- anthropocentric moral-ecological reasoning --, but also because nature and its elements (e.g. water, air, and land) deserve to be respected in themselves -- biocentric moral-ecological reasoning.

Of course, sustainable development has been, still is, and probably will always be a dream, mainly because people's behaviors are difficult to change. In other words, to change, say, people's wild behaviors (e.g., not to respect environmental values, such as to pollute water and air) to, say, people's green behaviors (e.g., to respect environmental values, such as not destroying forests or other natural resources) is not a easy task. As far as I can see, people' and countries' concern with nature and sustainable development is now more visible than it was the case when I was child.

It is likely that sustainable development will never be a reality in all countries across the world. Even so, we should not give up looking for it. If this were not the case we would risk following prey to the naturalistic fallacy, that is, to go from the "is" domain or the domain of how things are to the "ought" domain, or the domain of how things ought to be. In other words, it makes much sense to look for an ideal (e.g,, to pursuit sustainable development, the unknown, the truth, and the justice) even when we know in advance that such ideal will be never totally achieved  in factual terms.

As I referred to above, no sustainable development is possible at the cost of environmental protection. Environmental protection has given rise to what may be called an ethic of conservation, whose main injunction is that we should protect the environment because of the reasons mentioned above. Note that traditionally, the  term ethic was applied only to relations among humans. All of us have heard, for example, from an ethic of justice, whose main injunction is that we should not treat others unfairly (see, for this respect, L.Kohlberg's moral theory and its focus on an ethic of justice),and from an ethic of caring and responsibility, whose main injunction is that we should not turn away from someone in need (see, for this respect, C.. Gilligan's thinking on women's morality and their concern with taking care of others). That we can now hear from an ethic of environmental protection, only compounds my idea that sustainable development and ecotourism is now more applicable than it was, for example, a couple of years ago.

Best regards.

Orlando, you are mostly right. The only problem is in the perennial discrepancy between what "we should" do and what we do.

Dear Mario and all

You are right when referring to the frequent inconsistency between moral cognition (what we should do) and moral action (what we do). Note, however, that there is accumulated evidence that shows that the more morally advanced one is in terms of moral reasoning or deontic judgments, the more one is likely to act on these judgments, that is, to convert them into responsibility judgments or one's commitment to do what is judged to be right or even obligatory for the self. This means that individuals at high Kohlbergian stages (e.g, stage 5) are those who more easily convert their deontic judgments into responsibility judgments, and hence, the more they tend to do what they think it should be done. Aretaic judgments or judgments about the moral worthiness of a moral action play also a role in the consistency/inconsistency between moral cognition and moral action problem. Note that aretaic morality dates back to Aristotle's virtues ethic. As I see it, people nowadays think that, say, environmental protection actions are laudable and meritorious in terms of virtue and arête. And this, of course, favors the appearance of green behaviors. As I am optimistic, I think that sustainable development, although unattainable all over the world, will be an ever increasing reality, or a dream that is becoming reality.

Best wishes.

""Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development"".

I am dealing with this question at the moment.  The approach I am taking is that the central problem is that development tends to be discussed in terms of progress.  When you lock it into that sort of enlightenment discourse then you need to argue that the two are mutually exclusive - entropy will kick in.  Certainly if you look at both the original Club of Rome report and Turner's subsequent analysis how we were tracking in 2000 -it is clear that we are heading for collapse.  

The additional problem is that globally we are not all in the same place so it is possible that in some polities there is still room for sustainable development.

Orlando, you explain things in academic terms, but reality may well be rather different. Incidentally, as much as I remember, Plato has a nice story in which he says that all people praise virtuous behaviour, with the aim to encourage others to behave in such a way, but they themselves do usually not behave in such a way.

Anyway, let me put forward a paragraph from my book "Communication and Control", in which I address the reality of the contemporary public discourse.

Do we take our media discourse seriously? Not really. Let me mention a small example. After a long and intense public discourse about the devastating effects of global warming, in 2008 the BBC reported that most British people did not believe that global warming and climate changes were connected with human activities and the excessive use of fossil fuels. This seemed incredible, indeed. Many frightening images and videos were shown in a long campaign about the global warming and its catastrophic consequences. Many awards (Nobel and Oscar included) were given to the brave activists in the campaign about the global warming. The media were reporting about all this every day during the past years. However, most British citizens did simply not believe what their media had been telling them for years.

This is a collapse of public discourse: we do not believe what we is unpleasant. What does then public discourse serve for at all? This stupefying noise has become the opium for the people: it keeps us company and fills our emptiness. Such opiates have always been in great demand. Finally, people learned that everybody lies in accordance with their interests: why should then common people believe what is unpleasant and inconvenient?

Dear All,

           Have you already thought about sustainable development being a path that leads to sustainability?

            Folowing this statement, sustainable development would be something real, created and implemented day by day and sustainability a state, something abstract, that is in our minds and that we are following, searching,  but we never reach because as we promote sustainable development the idea of sustainability  changes (develops) to something even better.

            So, as your question, I would say that sustainable development is not a dream, it is real, as to  sustainability, it is not also a dream; it is an abstract concept that develops as we put into practice our new ideas to reach sustainable development. I would complement  saying that sustainability is a dream that no one dreams alone and this kind of "dreams" soon become a plan and reality.

            I recommend reading the ideas of Amartya Kummar Sen about the relationship of sustainable development  and freedom.

Sustainable development is a holistic and multidimensional conception for the construction of organized, fair and rational society in a such way that the productive processes, clerks of the natural resources, last in the time without damage of the natural and cultural patrimony of the nation, and whose economic and social results contribute to the well-being of all the citizens without exclusion.

This conception is based in the application of sustainable principles and it is governed by certain bases that they guarantee the construction of an equal, fair, rational and organized society.

Form my point of view its a dream, because many aspects should be integrated to reach the minimum limits of the sustainability. However, any dream will be reality if individuals and governments did their best for that.

I agree with the colleagues who support that sustainable development is a dream. I hope something to change, because if not, ...

Regards

I strongly support that sustainable development is a  reality. We need to do something to save the future environment. This is concept that will help us  save the  the future.

I agree with Smart Uchegbu and add that not only the future of environment is in danger but also the quality of social, economic and cultural life that we are leaving for the future generations; as it was stated by the   World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in the document "Our common Future".