Sustainability - Definition
Definition | Concepts and Issues | Implementing Agenda 21 | Types of Sustainability
Definition of sustainability
Put in simpler terms, sustainability is providing for the best for people and the environment both now and in the indefinite future. In the terms of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainability is: "Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." This is very much like the "seventh generation" philosophy of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy, mandating that chiefs always consider the effects of their actions on their descendants through the seventh generation in the future.
The original term was "sustainable development," a term adopted by the Agenda 21 program of the United Nations. Some people now object to the term "sustainable development" as an umbrella term since it implies continued development, and insist that it should be reserved only for development activities. "Sustainability", then, is nowadays used as an umbrella term for all of human activity.
In economics, sustainable growth consists of increases in real incomes (i.e. inflation-adjusted) or output that could be sustained for long periods of time.
From Wikipedia.