Introduction

The Brundtland Report began with a section on ‘Successes and Failures’ in meeting ‘the global challenge’. In particular, English planner, psychologist and sustainability consultant, John Elkington, teased out the concept of environmentally sustainable development by introducing the ‘triple bottom line’ model in 1994, suggesting the need to balance economic development policies and practices with equal concern for environmental impacts and social outcomes. The US-based science writer Rachel Carson is widely acknowledged as being the mother of the modern environmental movement which began in the USA before achieving global reach and significance in the 1970s. The concept of ‘environmentally sustainable development’ tends to suggest that we can have our cake and eat it too. Social Ecology model of sustainability reworks the ‘triple bottom line/three sectors’ model in order to bring the ‘personal’ into view.