sustainable development a bird’s eye view鸟瞰可持续发展.pdfVIP

Sustainability 2011, 3, 1637-1661; doi:10.3390/su3101637 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 /journal/sustainability Review Sustainable Development: A Bird’s Eye View Tom Waas 1,2,*, Jean Hugé 1,2, Aviel Verbruggen 3 and Tarah Wright 4 1 Plant Biology and Nature Management, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; E-Mail: jean.huge@vub.ac.be 2 Institute of Environment Sustainable Development, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Antwerp, Belgium 3 University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium; E-Mail: aviel.verbruggen@ua.ac.be 4 Environmental Science, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax B3H 4J1, NS, Canada; E-Mail: tarah.wright@dal.ca * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: tom.waas@ua.ac.be; Tel.: +32-3-265-21-15. Received: 14 September 2011; in revised form: 16 September 2011 / Accepted: 19 September 2011 / Published: 2 7 September 2011 Abstract: At the turn of the millennium, the world ’s political leadership adopted sustainable development as a leading model for societal development. However, the terms “sustainable development”, “sustainability” and “sustainable” are sometimes over- and misused despite wide consensus about the concept’s meaning among sustainability scholars and practitioners. While the concept allows various sustainability views to co-exist, random conceptualizations which do not respect the fundamental sustainability principles undermi