AECID - Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo

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Sustainable development is a fluid and open notion, evolving constantly, and whereby solutions are sought to complex realities and situations through apparently simple ideas.

The concept of sustainable development was placed on the international agenda in 1987 in the framework of the World Commission on Environment and Development, (the Brundtland Commission) with the report “Our Shared Future”, confirmed by governments as an international priority at the United Nations Environment and Development Conference, the so-called Earth Summit, held in 1992 in Río de Janeiro.

The Brundtland Commission’s definition is the one most universally accepted, of sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Thus sustainable development recognises the short- medium- and long-term inter-dependences between human society and its surroundings. Thus only integrated planning will enable environment, society and economy to be harmonised as they need to be.
Accordingly, for development to be sustainable, it must take account of a number of dimensions: it must be environmentally sound, socially fair and economically viable.

This means that man’s activity must be kept within the planet’s overall load-capacity and in particular that of the immediate environment, so consuming renewable resources more slowly than they are generated according to the systems’ charging capacities; to produce waste and emission levels below the environment’s absorption capacity; and to optimise the efficiency of processes, so that ecosystems are able to conserve their main characteristics, essential to their long-term survival.

It also implies that the basic needs of the current population must be met while guaranteeing the right to a dignified life for them and for future generations by equitable distribution of benefits to the groups, societies or nations forming part of the system, the eradication of all forms of poverty, personal and collective development, gender equality and respect for cultural and ethnic diversity, through the participation of civil society and public sector transparency.

Finally, the production and distribution of goods and services to satisfy human needs must be backed by adequate technologies which guarantee sustainable resource management.