David Banister

Erling Holden

Kristin Linnerud

Taking the ethical foundations from the seminal UN Report (1987), Our Common Future, this revised, updated, and extended second edition builds a model that emphasizes three equally important moral imperatives – satisfying human needs, ensuring social justice, and respecting environmental limits. The model presented identifies sustainability themes and assigns thresholds to them, defining the space within which sustainable development can be achieved, wherein it recognizes that different countries face different challenges and must follow different pathways. This revised edition has been brought up to date throughout and contains three new chapters exploring the history of the concept, including the status of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, competing indicators and models of sustainable development, and an overview of global and local changes in the six sustainability themes. It is divided into four parts, each contributing to a deeper understanding of what sustainable development is and what is required to achieve it, including an introduction to key arguments, theoretical foundations and competing models, new empirical knowledge discussing how different countries position themselves in relation to sustainable development, and future directions, offering perspectives on how it can be achieved locally and globally. Building on the extensive literature exploring humans needs, equity, justice, environmental science, ecology, and economics, this book will be essential reading for everyone interested in the future of sustainable development and the complex environmental and social issues involved.

Needs, Justice, Limits

The Imperatives of Sustainable Development

Valeria Jana Schwanitz

August Wierling

Thirty years ago, the UN report Our Common Future placed sustainable development firmly on the international agenda. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development takes the ethical foundations of Our Common Future and builds a model that emphasizes three equally important moral imperatives – satisfying human needs, ensuring social justice, and respecting environmental limits. This model suggests sustainability themes and assigns thresholds to them, thereby defining the space within which sustainable development can be achieved. The authors accept that there is no single pathway to the sustainable development space. Different countries face different challenges and must follow different pathways. This perspective is applied to all countries to determine whether the thresholds of the sustainability themes selected have been met, now and in the past. The authors build on the extensive literature on needs, equity, justice, environmental science, ecology, and economics, and show how the three moral imperatives can guide policymaking. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development synthesizes past reasoning, summarizes the present debate, and provides a clear direction for future thinking. This book will be essential reading for everyone interested in the future of sustainable development and in the complex environmental and social issues involved.

Oluf Langhelle

James Meadowcroft

Geoffrey Gilpin

Sustainable development brings together a series of normative themes related to negotiating environmental limits, to addressing equity, needs and development, and to the process of transformation and transition. To mark the 30th Anniversary of Our Common Future (1987), that first placed sustainable development on the global agenda, the editors have brought together a group of international scholars from a range of social science backgrounds. They have discussed these same themes - looking backwards in terms of what has been achieved, assessing the current situation with respect to sustainable development, and looking forwards to identify the key elements of the future agenda. This book presents a series of critical reflections on these enduring themes. The overriding concern is with the present and with the future as the editors seek to explore the question: What next for sustainable development?

Our Common Future at Thirty

What Next for Sustainable Development?

Kristin Linnerud

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