A brief recent history of sustainability

To understand how to practice sustainability, we must also look deeper into how the concept itself has evolved in modern times.

The rise of the modern environmental movement

The 1960s and 1970s are often credited as the beginning of the modern (western) environmental movement, where environmental concern–often centred around particular issues, such as pollution (the pesticide ‘DDT’), deforestation, whaling, and nuclear waste–came to the forefront of global public conversation.

Watch the following short video of the song “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, a track known for its environmental message.

Global environmental movements formed alongside the Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, and Anti-War movements. By the time we arrive in the mid-1980s characterised by extreme disparities between rich and poor, the stock market boom and sequent crash; famines in many sub-Saharan African countries, and global HIV/AIDS crisis, the interrelationship between economic prosperity, ecosystem decline, and social injustice were ever present.

Brundtland Commission

While the concept of ‘sustainable development’ had been around for some years, it was in this global context of colliding environmental, social, and economic emergencies that the Brundtland Commission (formerly the World Commission on Environment and Development) formed in 1987.

They detailed one of the earlier definitions of and popularised the term Sustainable Development;

development that meets the needs of the present without compromising future generations to meet their own needs (WCED 1987, p. 41).

They called explicitly for this development to include consideration of ecological, social (including cultural) and economic needs. These components were so intertwined that one could not exist without the other; there could be no environmental justice without equal movement towards social and economic justice.

Climate awareness and social justice movements from the 1990s to 2020s

The 1990s and early 2000s subsequently saw a wave of concern around waste, recycling, and water use, and eventually, after decades of alarm and pressing scientific evidence public awareness of climate change began to emerge.

By 2017 the #MeToo movement, and in 2020 the Black Lives Matter movement reignited (following the murder of George Floyd), gained global attention, as did continued calls for decolonisation and recognition of indigenous and first nations peoples (e.g. The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum), disability justice through the COVID-19 pandemic, and renewed attention to LGBTQIA+ rights and safety, all adding overdue international attention to the importance of social justice.

In 2019 the School Strikes for Climate began attracting hundreds of thousands of school students globally to march in the streets calling for action on climate, sparking renewed public conversation and debate about the urgency of the climate crisis; and along with it renewed awareness of the social aspects of sustainability that had become so prominent in the social justice movements of the years earlier and as the COVID-19 pandemic set in where a focus on slow sustainability in the household became popularised during lockdowns.

Earlier and in this step, we provided a brief overview of sustainability’s history. We’ll come back to this next week to explore how it’s influencing the world today and the exciting opportunities ahead–stay tuned!

Share your wisdom

What brings you here? Why are you interested in practicing sustainability?

Share your thoughts in the comments section.

References

_{World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987) Our common future, Oxford University Press: Oxford}