Sustainable Development
Sustainable development means, in the words of the 1987 World Commission on Environment, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."1 In other words, sustainable development is a comprehensive approach to promoting development in ways that do not harm the environment or deplete natural resources so that they still will be available in the future.
This strategy is guided by the international agreement called Agenda 21, or the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which focuses on the goals of sustainable development.  These goals include economic prosperity in combination with and alongside protection of the world's atmosphere, promotion of sustainable farm production, combating deforestation and desertification, protection of the oceans, maintenance of biodiversity, and protection of water resources.2
As a strategy, sustainable development recognizes that past policies sometimes achieved development by means that could not be kept up over time. For example, in the 1990s, between 10,000 and 30,000 square kilometers a year of Brazilian rainforest were cleared, fueling rapid economic growth in farming and ranching operations.3 In the short term, the practice created jobs and increased food production, but environmental damage caused by the clearing made much of the newly cleared land unusable in the longer term; the net result in many cases was a negative economic outcome.
 On the other hand, a sustainable development project is, for example, a program funded by the Canadian International Development agency. Canadian experts in sustainable development worked for almost three years to help farmers in drought-prone regions of Zimbabwe and other Sub-Sahara African countries learn how to use new technologies of irrigation and soil conservation, and introduced drought-resistant types of seeds of indigenous species of plants. They also helped the local government officials work more closely and efficiently with the citizens to foster these policies, leading to improvement in what is known as "sustainable livelihoods" for the farmers.4
For more on sustainable development, refer to the Environment Issue Brief (Is Sustainable Development the Way Forward?).
1 World Commission on Environment Our Common Future 43.
2 United Nations “Agenda 21.”
3 Mongabay.com “Rainforests of Brazil.”
4 CIDA Sustainable Development Strategy: 2004-2006 Overview.
* Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/135258369/, www.elrst.com, www.gardenafrica.org
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