Sustainable Development Meaning

However this definition has been criticised by many scholars and leading international institutions, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) (2004), as vague since it does not specify the time horizon of future generations, gives no indication of the role of the environment and refers to the opaque concept of human needs. Accordingly, a variety of definitions of sustainability and SD are used in different contexts. In simple terms, SD refers to maintaining development over time but, so far, there are well over one hundred definitions of SD currently available in the literature (see Ahmed and Stein, 2004; Pearce et al., 1989; Holmberg, 1992; Morita et al., 1993; Murcott, 1997; Elliot, 2001) providing different concepts, perspectives, concerns and solutions for SD. How they relate to each other and provide a clear understanding of our common future still remain a key question to be addressed. (Understanding Sustainable Development and Our Future Challenges Allam Ahmed, University of Sussex, UK)