Abstract:
Sustainability is a societal goal that relates to the ability of people to safely
co-exist on earth for a long time. The 1983 UN Commission on Environment
and Development (Brundtland Commission) had a big influence on how wenow use the term "sustainability". The Commission's 1987 report, Our
Common Future, defines sustainable development as that which "meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs". The report helped bring
"sustainability" into the mainstream of policy discussions. It popularised the
concept of "sustainable development" (Purvis, Mao & Robinson, 2019).
Almost 30 years later, a global agenda to achieve Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) was adopted during the United Nations General Assembly in
2015. There are 17 goals in this new agenda, shown in Figure 1. The SDGs
take into account that action in one area will affect outcomes in other areas
and that development must balance social, economic and environmental
sustainability (United Nations Development Programme, 2020).
