ABSTRACT
The modern concept of sustainability has emerged over a journey of 40 years, during which individuals, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the world have experienced a gradual awakening to the importance of the environment and our increasing impacts on the natural world. This journey has been punctuated by a number of seminal events that have shaped and in many ways defined the outlook of two generations. A timeline of some of these events is provided in Figure 2.1, starting in 1960 and extending to the present day.
