ABSTRACT

The most widely known and used definition of sustainable development is that provided by the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987:8) which suggests that sustainable development is ‘development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. This definition says very little about what sustainable development actually is or how it might be achieved. Since 1987, there has been a plethora of attempts to define the concept more closely, and explicitly or implicitly, it has been interpreted and reinterpreted in different and often markedly discordant ways.