efforts to improve the living standards of the few or the many should be sustainable; in other words, they should be able to be continued without undermining the conditions that permit life on Earth, thus making future development impossible or much more difficult. The term represents an effort to tie economic growth, the protection of the environment, and social development together, a recognition that future economic growth is possible only if the basic systems that make life possible on Earth are not harmed. It also implies a recognition that the economy, the environment, and social conditions are all important, that economic development and the reduction of poverty are essential to the protection of the environment.
The United Nations environment conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 made the term “sustainable development” widely known around the world. Sustainable development was endorsed by the conference and a new organization – the Commission on Sustainable Development – was set up under the United Nations to monitor the progress nations are making to achieve it. But it still was not a mainstream concept for the development community.
Meanwhile, the social dimensions of development were becoming more acute. The elevated profile of the “Right to Development” from its introduction in 19817 made it clear that development needed to be inclusive, not just economically lucrative in the context of raising a country’s average GNP. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing elevated gender issues to a new level. The International Labor Organization saw a proliferation of global labor agreements to address some of the workforce challenges of industrialized economic growth. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks began adopting new policies and procedures to address unacceptable impacts to communities caught in the crosshairs of well‐intentioned development projects. And amid all of this, poverty remained persistent and pervasive, even as the twentieth‐century development model continued to churn out ever‐increasing rates of production and consumption.
Wave of Hope: The Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015)
As the challenges of inclusive development became more acute, in 2000, the nations of the world historically committed themselves to work toward helping the neediest when they endorsed the Millennium Declaration and adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which refocused development on the “basic needs” approach, recognizing that market‐based solutions alone could not solve widespread poverty and that governments needed to support effective social policies such as healthcare and education to avoid marginalizing the poor.8 Between 2000 and 2010, natural resource shortages contributed significantly to food and energy crises, in turn challenging traditional notions of economic development based on the once dominant Washington Consensus model.9
Continuing to focus on positive developments, one can find many reasons to feel optimistic. In 2000, representatives of 189 nations met in a conference sponsored by the United Nations and adopted eight goals they would work toward achieving in the new century. Each goal, which was stated in general terms, had specific targets to help measure progress in reaching the goal. This is significant in that development was broken down into more elements and indicators than the twentieth‐century model focused on GNP. Education, gender equality, child and maternal health, infectious diseases, and hunger were all incorporated into the development goals. And significantly, one of the goals (MDG # 7) was focused on environmental protection, with a notable goal of integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs. Finally, the last goal was focused on addressing some of the structural problems of the twentieth‐century development model, with the aim of improving the global financial system, addressing countries’ mounting debt load, and offering special considerations for the poorest and other specially situated countries.
By 2014, several targets of the Millennium Development Goals had been met, including halving hunger rates as well as the extreme poverty rate: by 2010, 700 million fewer people lived on $1.25 per day than in 1990.10 Advances in malaria and tuberculosis treatment saved an estimated 25.3 million lives by 2012, and 2.3 billion people gained access to drinking water from an improved source.11 Development aid had increased by 66 percent.12
At the beginning of the MDG period, the concept of “sustainability” was a small part of the development dialogue. At that time, “sustainability” was mostly a popular buzzword for those who wanted to be seen as pro‐environmental but who did not really intend to change their behavior. It became a public relations term, an attempt to be seen as abreast with the latest thinking of what we must do to save our planet from widespread harm. But within a decade or so, governments, industries, educational institutions, and organizations started to incorporate “sustainable development” in a more serious manner.
A number of large corporations appointed corporate officers for sustainability. Not only were these officials interested in how their companies could profit by producing “green” products, but they were often given the task of making the company more efficient by reducing wastes and pollution and by reducing its carbon emissions. Many colleges and universities adopted sustainability as a legitimate academic subject and something to be practiced by the institution. Many nonprofit organizations added the promotion of sustainability to their agendas. This all set the stage for a more formal convergence of the UN’s environmental and development agendas.
As sustainable development gained momentum, the “Washington Consensus” of the twentieth century began to erode. Nancy Birdsall and Francis Fukuyama of the Center for Global Development argued that the global recession driven by the United States at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century changed the model for global development and that now the focus is much more on the ability of governments to help the poor and provide social protections.13 They predicted that many mid‐and lower‐income countries would reject the free‐market approach and adopt a basic needs approach while increasing domestic industrial production. “In fact,” they explained, “development has never been something that the rich bestowed on the poor but rather something the poor achieved for themselves.”
Sustainable Development Goals (2015–2030)
In 2015, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals for 2015–2030 to replace its mainstream Millennium Development Goals in place from 2000–2015. While the sustainable development agenda from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit factored in clearly to some of the individual goals, the overall focus was still on poverty alleviation through the historic paradigm of economic development. During that same period of implementation, countries began to embrace sustainable development as a key pathway to creating an economy that can provide for the population without undercutting the people and planet that form the basis of that very economy.
In 2012, countries met again in Rio for a new global summit on sustainable development. By this time, it was clear the development and environment agendas were becoming more aligned. Countries shared progress they had made towards sustainable development and discussed challenges going forward, but largely diverted conversations about targets. There were questions about how to best integrate economic and social development with environmental considerations, and governments began focusing on high‐level efforts to merge development and environment, building from the Millennium Development Goals and Rio summits on Sustainable Development. There are two ways to view this development: one is that countries have found environmental problems challenging and wish to avoid taking on new, high‐profile commitments. The other is that the concept of “sustainable development” has become so mainstream that environmental considerations have become integrated
