 | |
| Author | World Commission on Environment and Development |
|---|---|
| Subject | Sustainability |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 1987 October |
| Pages | 383 |
| ISBN | 019282080X |
Our Common Future, also known as theBrundtland Report, was published in October 1987 by theUnited Nations through theOxford University Press. This publication was in recognition ofGro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and Chair of theWorld Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).
Its targets were multilateralism and interdependence of nations in the search for asustainable development path. The report sought to recapture the spirit of theStockholm Conference of 1972, which had introducedenvironmental concerns to the formal political development sphere.Our Common Future placed environmental issues firmly on the political agenda: it aimed to discuss the environment anddevelopment as one single issue.
The document was the culmination of a "900-day" international exercise which catalogued, analysed, and synthesised written submissions and expert testimony from "senior government representatives, scientists and experts, research institutes, industrialists, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and the general public" held at public hearings throughout the world.
The report's definition of "sustainable development" is possibly the best-known definition of this concept:[1]
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability offuture generations to meet their own needs.[2]
The Brundtland Commission's mandate, officially adopted at its inaugural meeting inGeneva on 1–3 October 1984, was to:[3]
The report noted that the Commission had "focused its attention in the areas of population, food security, the loss of species andgenetic resources, energy, industry, and human settlements - realizing that all of these are connected and cannot be treated in isolation one from another".[2]: Paragraph 40
The report recognized that human resource development in the form of poverty reduction, gender equity, and wealth redistribution was crucial to formulating strategies for environmental conservation, and it also recognized that environmental-limits to economic growth in industrialized and industrializing societies existed. The Brundtland Report claimed that poverty reduces sustainability and accelerates environmental pressures – creating a need for the balancing between economy and ecology.[4]
The publication ofOur Common Future and the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development laid the groundwork for the convening of the 1992Earth Summit and the adoption ofAgenda 21 and theRio Declaration, and led to the establishment of theCommission on Sustainable Development.
In addition, key contributions ofOur Common Future to the concept of sustainable development included the recognition that the many crises facing the planet areinterlocking crises that are elements of a single crisis of the whole,[5] and of the vital need for the active participation of all sectors of society in consultation and decisions relating to sustainable development.
However, in 1988, the Norwegian politicianHelge Ole Bergesen wrote that this report is perceived by theThird World elites asgreen imperialism.[6]
