Sustainable economic development is an important component, yet a subset of sustainable development. The latter is a much broader concept, which includes components such as: energy, land planning, agriculture, transportation, recycling, social justice, education, and more.

I agree with Bruno Sir

Economic growth cannot be the sole objective for sustainable development and markets cannot expand in a limitless manner as we all live on a finite planet. The concept of ecological footprint proposed by Mathis Wackernagel puts what I am writing here well into perspective.

Thank you Bruno, I get what you're saying but I'm still battling to find a proper definition/explanation of what sustainable economic development is as opposed to sustainable development. Sustainable development is widely accepted to include social, economic and environmental aspects. So how do we separate economy from it? Like you said: energy, land planning, agriculture, transportation, recycling, social justice and education are all components of sustainable development; but aren't these components just as important to ensure sustainable economic development? Where do we draw a line/distinction between sustainable development and sustainable economic development? I am writing a paper on what the effects of connections or linkages of economic activities are on sustainable economic development, within African economic regions/communities such as SADC, ECOWAS, EAC etc. But first I need to determine what exactly sustainable economic development entails?

The definitions I use are:

Sustainable Development = an increase in quality of life within a community between two points in time, using the skills of the population and the ecological services from the landmass it manages in a manner that can be maintained in perpetuity.

Sustainable Economic Development = an increase in the quality of life between two points in time by increasing specialization and productivity of the population, while reducing the internal barriers to trade of critical resources and the external barriers to co-management of critical resources, and retaining a sufficient financial reserve to address economic disruptions.

I'd be happy to share the logic of how that was developed.

I don't think that sutainable economic development implies, or should imply, that there is economic growth. A society may be perfectly stagnant and still be sustainable, I would rather say that the chances are much higher that a steady-state economy is sustainable than a growth economy. I believe the whole sustainability discourse has been hijacked by political interest pursuing a market-oriented agenda, that has nothing to do with human well-being.

@Douglas, I wish you could go ahead and share the logic. I find the two definitions interesting. On one end you build the stock of specialization/skills, while on the other hand you use the skills.....

But what I am missing from the second definition is the aspects of ecology. I understand that sustainable economic development is more at the outcome level, while sustainable development is at the impact level.

As requested... A work in progress...

The way I understand it, each term being added restricts the concept more. Thus Development has more degrees of freedom than Sustainable Development or Economic Development, and they each would have more degrees of freedom than Sustainable Economic Development.

https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C15/E1-29-04-08.pdf

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5839GSDR%202015_SD_concept_definiton_rev.pdf

https://www.comm-dev.org/images/attachments/118_Track%201%20Economic%20Growth%20in%20a%20Sustainable%20Development%20Context-%20Gauvin.pdf

@Gunnar Rundgren Could you please give an example of a stagnant society which at the same time is perfectly sustainable?

I can understand the concept but still I believe that in practice we observe sustainable development in cases of economies with economic growth.

I read all the interesting comments and answers to this question. Anyhow, the distinction between sustainable economic development and sustainable developemt stays not so clear to me.

I will go with this answer.

Sustainable Development = an increase in quality of life within a community between two points in time, using the skills of the population and the ecological services from the landmass it manages in a manner that can be maintained in perpetuity.

Sustainable Economic Development = an increase in the quality of life between two points in time by increasing specialization and productivity of the population, while reducing the internal barriers to trade of critical resources and the external barriers to co-management of critical resources, and retaining a sufficient financial reserve to address economic disruptions.

Interesting