Evidence for Hope

Introduction

EVIDENCE FOR HOPE

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, 1987.

The first of the international development and environment summits was held at Stockholm in 1972 – the UN Conference on the Human Environment – bringing together different disciplines in a common cause. Twenty years later Stockholm was followed by the Rio Earth Summit and ten years after that by the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg. Such international events have fuelled a major debate about the impacts of consumption and growth on our social, economic and natural ...