Nations' (1987) definition of sustainability development has failed in maintaining main purpose of sustainability (i.e. protecting the environment) for several reasons. This report overestimates the dimension of economy by emphasizing that it is the only way to avoid social and environmental problems. The report also ensures that the promotion of economic aspects is the way for achieving growth at all levels. Based on this, should we view the three dimensions of sustainability as unequally weighted? or equally weighted? This ill-definition of sustainability has caused many confusion for many researchers.
As far as my opinion on this subject matter is concerned, an organization's primary goal is to increase their economic returns and so whenever there lies a matter of sustainability then instead on focusing on economic aspect organizations should be more inclined towards environmental aspect as economic aspect will any ways be taken care of (given the survival instinct of organizations).Moreover instead of showcasing environmental performance on papers only to earn goodwill one should seriously think of embedding the same in their organizational culture to see positive returns in long run. In the present scenario when the world is facing rapid depletion of resources and when the pollution level is at alarming rate I think its the environmental and social aspect that should be given a higher weightage than economic aspect.
There is no doubt that sustainability has different facets, usually seen as the attempts to harmonize social, economic and environmental aspects of society and their changes. Since these three pillars of sustainability were brought in it was always clear that they are conflicting with each other and that the way is the goal, meaning to come as close as possible to eliminate these contradictions. This is a policy statement or a statement about what should be; I never saw it as an empirical issue, but of course the matter is to describe how societies should look like that come closest to this idea. To develop such concrete utopia one needs to bring ecologists, sociologists, economists, psychologists, philosophers (and many more) together and to reflect on what is good life. We never will get an universal answer on this as the question asks for a normative response and as values differ between people the idea of what is good life differs the same way.
We therefore need to look at minimum standards, not what is the best life imaginable and how to get there, but what are minimum standards that should be reached for everybody and are there maximums beyond which good life has unacceptable consequences for others socially, environmentally and economically.
Finally, who decides on such issues? Can we say: the people of China, India, Brazil should not be allowed to reach consumption levels like in the USA as this would suffocate Planet Earth. This would be environmental dictatorship.
So the challenges are enormous, but I am optimistic that humans are able to mater them. Why? I am really not sure, why.
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