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The Brundtland Commission or the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), known by the name of its Chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland, was convened by the United Nations in 1983. The commission published its report, Our Common Future, in 1987 and proposed the concept of sustainable development as an ideal for the global economy and corporations. Sustainability was defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The WCED was created to address growing concern about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development. The work of the commission resulted in the Brundtland Report which contained two main concepts: (1) the concept of needs, in particular the needs of the world’s poor,...
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References and Readings
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United Nations General Assembly. (1983). Process of preparation of the environmental perspective to the year 2000 and beyond, Resolution A/RES/38/161, Adopted by the General Assembly on December 19, 1983. Retrieved March 20, 2011, from http://www.un.org/en/sustainability/
United Nations General Assembly. (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our common future. Transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to Document A/42/427 – Development and International Co-operation: Environment. Retrieved March 20, 2011, from http://www.un.org/en/sustainability/
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Thomsen, C. (2013). Sustainability (World Commission on Environment and Development Definition). In: Idowu, S.O., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Gupta, A.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_531
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