Sustainability

Sustainability refers to the capacity of a process to endure or to be maintained and improved. This term acquired a specialized meaning in ecology where it came to describe biological systems, such as wetlands or forests, which may survive and evolve in healthy conditions, that is, without irreversible depletion of resources or deterioration of their environmental qualities. By extension, the Bruntland Report, commissioned by the United Nations (WCED 1987), introduced the neologism sustainable development that refers to the long-term well-being of social systems in the light of the interaction between their economic, environmental and social conditions. In this entry the focus is on the sustainable development of single countries and the global community is examined in its interaction with the process of globalization (a more detailed analysis on the same lines may be found in Borghesi & Vercelli 2008). Although some background information on this interaction since the first industrial revolution will be provided, the analysis will focus on developed countries after World War II.