Sustainable Development: Exploring the Ethics of Our Common Future

The concept of sustainable development was placed on the international agenda with the release of the report Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. Although considerable attention has since been devoted to the idea of sustainable development itself, the broader conceptual framework of the idea—whereby the Commission tried to integrate environmental policies and development strategies in order to create the foundation for a global partnership—has been neglected in much of the literature. The purpose of the present article is to offer an interpretation of Our Common Future, where the concept of sustainable development is linked to the broader framework of normative preconditions and empirical assumptions. The structure of the argument is to demonstrate that the relationship between sustainable development and economic growth has been over-emphasized, and that other vital aspects of the normative framework have been neglected. Social justice (both within and between generations), humanistic solidarity, a concern for the world’s poor, and respect for the ecological limits to global development, constitute other aspects of sustainable development; aspects which are indeed relevant for the growing disparity between North and South.