Sustainability

3Sustainable Development: Dimensions, Intersections and Knowledge Platform

Pritee Sharma and Kanak Singh

Discipline of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India

3.1 Introduction

Sustainability is an open, dynamic and evolving idea that aims to encompass various possibilities of interdependencies, independencies and interpretations among various sectors, stakeholders, actions and contexts across space and time. The definition of sustainable development was created as an attempt to reconcile the tension between environmental and developmental concerns that were at the heart of global policymaking. The concept equally engages with the economic, social and environmental domains, and has been widely incorporated into policy. For example, many countries have developed ideas for sustainable development. Initially, the concept of sustainable development was central to environmental law and policy, yet its application continues to be the focus of much debate, with many different versions of the concept (Redclift 2005; Beckerman 1994).

A key issue in the concept of sustainability is its intergenerational equity, which refers to fairness across generations. According to the widely cited Brundtland Report (Brundtland 1987), with sustainable development future generations should be able to meet their own needs. This implies an ethical dimension: essentially, we need to pass on to forthcoming generations a fair share of resources. ...