Some publications from last millennium showing how long this discussion has been going on--with no resolution:

1. https://scarp.ubc.ca/sites/scarp.ubc.ca/files/1989%20May_Defining%20Sustainable%20Devt_Rees.pdf

2. Article Sustainability and sustainable development: Historical and c...

3. Article Sustainable Development: A Critical Review

4.Article 'Sustainable Development': Is it a Useful Concept?

Instead, we propose practical ways forward:

1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2_2

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imic.2015.04.001

In short, in my opinion it means that,

Ecology is better than economics

Best Regards

Amin

Sustainability is the ultimate goal of a system. Even though every field is having its own independent identity, Its link with other fields should be balanced otherwise it destabilize the system. A system that requires a holistic approach that will always make the system sustainable.

For example, In Agriculture, during the green revolution period (between1965-75), a lot of new varieties and new management practices have come into the picture in the irrigated areas of Northern India. Farmers and the Government enjoyed the fruits of it because the country became self-sufficient in food grain production. But this particular revolution could not continue in the later years and became a plateau. The main reasons are soil degradation, salinization, new pests & diseases and weeds, changes in ecological balance, groundwater exploitation, change in government policies, etc. ultimately destabilizing the environment and ecology. The governments are now realizing the bad that occurred now started to rethink how to bring back the soil health, ecological balance, and judicious use of natural resources to sustain the yield potentials of different crops and also the food basket of the country to feed the second largest population in the world.

In this above example the hybrid seed, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, free power to farmers, etc. are the major players to destract and destabilize the entire gambit of Agriculture in India. Here we got benefitted but it is not long-lasting or in other ways it is unsustainable.

To all three respondents (as of 11AM US Eastern Standard Time, February 4, 2022), I wish to remark that: (1) Thank you all very much for the thoughtful responses; and (2) Obviously, the definition as to what is "sustainable development" depends on the sector one is considering, and the spatial-temporal horizons involved. Hence, this notion/concept is a very relative one, to say the least, although (as already remarked) it has been very popular since the 1960s at least. Again, thank you all, and I'm looking forward to advancing the discussion with new perspectives added by additional respondents.

Using the basic description from Our Common Future as a starting point, Sustainable Development is development (defined by the UNDP as a process of enhancing quality of life within a community over time) that meets the needs of today without compromising the needs of future generations. That implies that the concept requires an understanding of needs, and how not to compromise future generations. Just thinking about multiple generations requires thinking at population scales larger than families, and temporal scales longer than individuals and businesses (too ephemeral). Thus, I take Our Common Future's description to require community (and larger) planning scales.

Quality of life comes from how needs are met. Needs are met through activities that prevent the degradation of the individual, the family, or the community. We use time and resources to create infrastructure, with an expectation of a return on that investment in the form of time and/or resources into the future. There is a relationship between time use and ecological footprint, and the slope of the curve at the biocapacity of the community represents the minimum future time cost that is associated with the loss of over-consumed resources, energy, and ecological functions.

I define Sustainability as the capacity of all of the people of a community to meet all of their needs using their time and skills, and the resources, energy, and ecological functions of the land/air/water the community is stewards of, in perpetuity. The minimum threshold of Sustainability is Needs Security, and this relies on Needs Sovereignty at multiple scales of community simultaneously.

Sustainable Development is currently taken as "do no future harm" (of course, do nothing isn't sustainable, as the world's ecological footprint is vastly beyond its biocapacity, so both do nothing and do no harm aren't really good enough), and so other concepts have been considered. Restorative Development puts back what is broken (of course, that means the cause of the breaking has to be addressed first, or it won't be successful). Regenerative Development allows the co-evolution of communities and their ecosystems.

I hope the attached files will be useful.

Thank you for your thoughtful and extended response with citations and references Douglas. I'm sure we all appreciate it.

As you are, undoubtedly well aware, the issues you have presented form a tall order. They raise questions related to many disciplinary subjects, including (without being limited to) matters addressed by the fields of Economics, Ecology, Biology, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, and above all, Political Science. They entail setting up objectives and drawing up constraints that extend over long-term horizons, and cross over national borders.

It is highly unlikely that any consensus can emerge on such diverse and complex subjects, not only within national borders, but internationally and over the long run. What then this inability might lead to is (as it has been happening already) resorting to locally define and locally micro-manage "sustainable development", rather than approach it from a global holistic long-haul standpoint, effectively.

If so, the road to such noble grand cause is likely to be arduous and with a lot of bumps, as various settings (mostly intra-nationally, to a limited extent nationally, and to a far lesser extent inter-nationally) muddle through. It is an open question still, if: (1) a consensus as to the very definition of what "sustainable development" is, can or will ever be reached; (2) if such a definition is produced, by entities such as the UNDP, whether it would be universally accepted; and (3) if a broad agreement could ever be attained, as to the exact (and feasible) means that would get the entire World (with its vast variety of local, national and international settings) there.

But your response, may provide inroads towards obtaining local suboptimal solutions, as global optima in such complex optimization problems are unlikely to be either found or reachable.

You can reference a basic definition for Sustainable Development from the Brundtland Commission’s report. The more complex answer is, the entirety of human civilization (aka worldsystem) has many variables that come together to form its system-state. As civilization moves through time, it travels state trajectory. The current system-state is operating beyond the earth’s biophysical limits. The trajectory must pivot towards the accessibility state for long-run sustainability. The major issue is that, though we are already over the biosphere’s limits overall, many people are extremely poor, so their pull on available resources hasn’t even registered yet. Bottomline: It’s already been identified as a dynamic between Earthsystem and Worldsystem is a zero-sum game (each turn of the wealth-creation cycle takes something), but we are also headed into an increasingly volatile zero-sum dynamic across human population groups.

From the perspective of an “alien ecologist”, the obvious conclusion is that humans are headed toward an inevitable population collapse as the biosphere relentlessly reinforces its limits on humankind (and as humans find among themselves about what to do). The only things delaying that terrible world are science and technology, and humanity’s average moral aptitude.

The signs are everywhere that the foundation for our worldsystem (state-plus-markets) has reached its intrinsic performance limits. The worldsystem is shaking as it tries to bifurcate to a higher level of complexity. The problem is that the first principles for this new worldsystem has not been identified yet. In the interim, we are dealing with the same tradeoffs that have plagued us throughout the Industrial Age. They are equity versus efficiency, employment versus environment, inequality versus growth, national sovereignty versus solving global challenges, inflation versus full employment, growth versus nature, and on-and-on. What then should we do?

Humankind has no choice but to increase (rather suddenly) the complexity of its economic and financial paradigm in order to trigger new emergent properties able to confront our bit entropic challenges. In other words, we need a higher-level, non-zero-sum game. Current solutions like Green New Deal, impact investing, social enterprise, effective altruism, transformative placemaking, and many others are not paradigms. They are hybrid constructs in search of the stable elegant social system that is able to increase our quality of life. Of course, we much quickly reduce CO2e emissions, but sustainable development requires a lot more than that. I have a proposal for Third Wave social-system design which I call The Sympathetic Theory of Economics and Policy. Please contact me if you’d like to know what it’s all about.

Dimitrios S. Dendrinos - you are right - Sustainability is a tall order.

It requires communities (from hamlet to planet) to figure out what they mean by 'needs' - far easier at the small scales than large ones - I would suggest that Human Security becomes a lower minimum.

It requires communities to have Shared Sovereignty of the land they are stewards of, likely at multiple nested scales, and potentially different scales for each need.

It requires creating a plan on how to address over-consumed energy, resources, and ecological functions - if we are consuming 2% of our ecological 'capital' each year, then we will have to decrease our consumption by at least 2% per year, which means a combination of substitution (which always has an associated time cost), abstinence (which often has an associated impact on effectiveness), or something else.

On the other hand, Sustainability offers the elimination of poverty, a reduction in disparity, a vast increase in quality of life for most people, and hope that extends beyond Peak Fossil Energy.

In my mind, it's worth the work.

Ultimately, I don't care if the solutions are somewhat suboptimal, if they allow the current population to continue to exist on the planet with less suffering, even after the full impacts of our existing bad decisions is felt. With even a few success stories, people will be able to find the political will to disconnect quality of life from economic growth, and thereby eliminate the associated risks of infinite growth on a finite world.

Again, I wish to thank, the participants for their thoughtful and elaborate responses, as well as their supplied references. All the issues that were brought up in the discussion, thus far, identify not only certain elements of the complex nexus of problem definition and outlines of problem solutions; but also they point to the variety of perspectives involved in this topic's Architecture.

The Architecture of "sustainable development" contains (unavoidably) all imperfections of human thought and action, their brilliance and their limitations (contradictions, paradoxes, incompleteness, etc.) Moving forward (it is generally and conventionally accepted) requires a better understanding of the issues and a fuller appreciation of the underlying knowledge (information) of the multiplicity of subjects (intelligence) embedded in this endeavor, an endeavor in which the overall societal objectives and constraints remain largely unexplored, potentially still ill-defined and certainly far yet from enjoying a universally sought overwhelming consensus. Most importantly, it is not at all clear whether such political consensus is either attainable or desirable (if it were to be imposed on the World's vast approximately current 7.8 billion fellow inhabitants).

In forming the issue as the "Architecture of 'sustainable development'" and the implied limitations and contradictions, let me bring up a sticking example that has to do with "Architecture" proper.

Literally, viewing and discussing the overall Architecture of "sustainable development" one can't fail but noticing the inherent contradiction contained in the construction of large scale structures under modern Architecture morphologies (worldwide), buildings and in some instances entire towns that are of an unprecedented scale,; yet these structures and cities are built and presented as being " environmentally friendly, sustainable Architecture and City Planning" when the real costs of operating, maintaining and continuously upgrading them are not only not fully accounted at the time of their planning and construction, but largely unknown and only roughly speculated over the short term. This example is a reminder that what is presented as "sustainable development" has costs associated with it, as well as benefits.

Technological innovation (already brought up and discussed by a number of participants) is a highway to a more comfortable, livable and prosperous Future for Humanity and Human Civilization. Creativity and advances in all Arts and Sciences and the Professions (including Architecture, Engineering, Business Administration, Law, Medicine, etc.,) is possibly the only way out of the conundrum of more effectively (a term that might be preferable to either "efficiency" or "equity" in the field of Economics) meeting the demands of a globally expanding population.

The World's socio-economic (cultural) Dynamics are complex; navigating turbulent seas seeking a safe harbor is no easy task. There might not be such a harbor, and the storm may be long lasting. But one should always be governed by an optimistic outlook, and measured expectations. And although there might not be a single unique optimum path for Humanity as a whole, there might be many incrementally suboptimal trails, to the many boats that are currently floating on the World's Oceans. Not all of Humanity is riding a single boat, fortunately or unfortunately.

Obviously, all possible actions must be taken by all to see to it that all boats reach safe harbors; but it must also be recognized that there are no guarantees in this World, a world full of risks within a complex and everchanging Ecology, where risk-taking is essential, no matter the potential (and unavoidable) social costs attached to it. But it is the expected future social benefits that must always be the guiding light.

Thanks again to all those who have participated in this discussion, and to those who have read these comments.