Sustainable development

Sustainable development merges three important areas—environmental, social and economic—into an integrated single perspective. Business management needs to build its own business strategies, based on these three types of strategy. The notion of sustainable development has been inspired by the ongoing need for an assurance throughout the world for individual and group opportunities to improve the quality of life. Sustainability is the goal of the process of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a normative ideal. This means that policy-makers consider that sustainable development should be accepted as an objective. Adherents of weak sustainability, in contrast, accept that manufactured capital of equal value can take the place of natural capital. Sustainable development, as defined by the world commission on environment and development is closely concerned with intergenerational equity. Awareness of the issues is an important starting point for anyone considering the links between business and the environment.