ABSTRACT
The term ‘sustainability’, and more particularly ‘sustainable development’, drew on longer intellectual debates across disciplines. The Rio conference launched a number of high-level convention processes – on climate change, biodiversity and desertification – all with the aim of realizing sustainable development ideals on key global environmental issues. However, the simplistic managerialism of many initiatives labelled ‘sustainable development’ left much to be desired. In the post-Brundtland, post-Agenda 21 policy debates on sustainability, however, the usage is explicitly normative. Sustainability refers to a broadly identifiable, but often poorly specified, set of social, environmental and economic values. Although the world is endlessly complex and dynamic, it is useful for analytical and practical purposes to think in terms of particular systems. The narrative therefore defines and bounds the system in global terms. Some of the most important challenges of sustainability involve issues that were – at least at their outset – of just this kind.
