‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

The brief history of the concept of sustainable development is well known. It gained its ‘right to the city’ with the definition quoted above. It was used in the famous 1987 Brundtland Report for the United Nations about the environment and development. Sustainable development made a timid appearance in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy prepared by the IUCN, the largest and most respected biodiversity and nature conservation organisation in the world. Its roots go back much further, however, demonstrating the so-far irreconcilable tension between its two concepts: the dynamic of growth and intensification associated with ‘development’ stands in contrast to the idea of balance and durability associated with the adjective ‘sustainable’.