A Ubiquitous modern buzzword ‘Sustainable development’ is a collaborative strategy to understand ourselves and our finite world. This word incorporates a set of theories and their practical implementation about the nature of requirements necessary for the progress and growth of our generation at the same time planning for the survival of our beautiful planet. Sustainable development has been very clearly defined in Brundtland Report as:
"A development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is Sustainable Development”.
This definition for sustainable development recognizes that the growth must be both inclusive and environmentally sound to reduce poverty and build shared prosperity for today’s population and to continue to meet the needs of future generations. It is efficient with resources and carefully planned to deliver both immediate and long-term benefits for people, planet, and prosperity [According to World Bank].
Implementation of these smartly written theories incorporate multitude of research aspects. If we explore the intention behind the birth of this fascinating concept we found that the ultimate aim is to define viable schemes combining the economic, social, and environmental aspects of human activity. Therefore before directly going for the deployment phase these three areas must be individually taken into consideration by communities, companies, and individuals throughout the globe so that a coherent and long-lasting balance between these three aspects can be achieved.
These three pillars of sustainable development – economic growth, environmental stewardship and social inclusion is very vast and have a bunch of separate parameters (like environment involves biodiversity, Renewable Energy, Ecosystem, Waste Management etc) that are researched and described many times throughout the international domain. Multiple meanings and definitions for sustainability and its underlying issues differ across research groups and decision makers. Sustainable development is a metaphor for opportunity and progress as well as a reminder of obligations and uncertainty [Andrew Dearing].
We need a global vision for the world’s future. There is an immediate need to change in the structure of strategies for pursuing sustainable development to produce more of what we want (sustainable) and less of that which is undesirable (unsustainable). Till the time we have an intuitive vision and a common platform to examine, plan, research and conclude, we can’t achieve the holistic vision of sustainability.
