ABSTRACT
The question of the Brundtland Commission (WCED, 1987), how well-being can be sustained for future generations, has gained little attention from scholars working with the capability approach (CA). This is astonishing at first sight, given the political importance of sustainability and the CA’s chief concern with what well-being is. Only in 2000 did Anand and Sen (2000) publish the—rather obvious—general idea to replace the reference to ‘needs’ in the Brundtland definition by a reference to ‘freedoms’ or ‘capabilities’, without really elaborating, however, on the implications of this replacement. In the last years, however, the subject of sustainability has been taken up by a couple of scholars and research projects, as the 2011 UN Development Report (UNDP, 2011), this book and the literature referred to shows.
