Sustainable development, although a widely used phrase and idea, has many different meanings and therefore provokes many different responses. In broad terms, the concept of sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio-economic issues. To aid understanding of these different policies this paper presents a classification and mapping of different trends of thought on sustainable development, their political and policy frameworks and their attitudes towards change and means of change. Sustainable development has the potential to address fundamental challenges for humanity, now and into the future. However, to do this, it needs more clarity of meaning, concentrating on sustainable livelihoods and well-being rather than well-having, and long term environmental sustainability, which requires a strong basis in principles that link the social and environmental to human equity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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Sustainable development: mapping different approaches

The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy

Summary
In the early 1970s Ehrlich and Holdren devised a simple equation in dialogue with Commoner identifying three factors that created environmental impact. Thus, impact (I) was expressed as the product of (1) population, (P); (2) affluence, (A); and (3) technology, (T). This article tracks the various forms the IPAT equation has taken over 30 years as a means of examining an underlying shift among many environmentalists toward a more accepting view of the role technology can play in sustainable development. Although the IPAT equation was once used to determine which single variable was the most damaging to the environment, an industrial ecology view reverses this usage, recognizing that increases in population and affluence can, in many cases, be balanced by improvements to the environment offered by technological systems.

The IPAT Equation and Its Variants

We raise four challenges to the claim of ecological modernization theory (EMT) that continued modernization is necessary for ecological sustainability. First, EMT needs to go beyond merely demonstr...

Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory Institutional Efficacy, Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency

Systems for sustainability and transparency of food supply chains - Current status and challenges

Many contemporary environmental social scientists and commentators suggest that a major turn occurred in the 1980s with regard to the continuing undermining of sustenance bases of western industrial societies. The Brundtland report [WCED, 1987] is often denoted as the codification of that transformation, which was marked by other historical events as well, including the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Beyond this common understanding, divergent interpretations have developed on (i) the nature of that transformation, (ii) the actors and actions which have triggered innovations in societies' interactions with external nature, (iii) the extent to which such environmental improvements have reflected changing environmental ideologies and discourses, and (iv) the social and geographical distribution of those changes.

David A. Sonnenfeld

Papers

"Ecological Modernization Around the World: An Introduction"