Sustainable development - the challange for Irish economic policy-makers

Abstract

Sustainable development has become a key phrase during the last decade in development and environmental literature. Governments and international bodies have adopted the goal of sustainable development with surprising alacrity since the concept was brought to prominence in the early 1980s by the World Conservation Strategy. The concept became enshrined by the influential 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, or Bruntland Report as it is commonly known after its chairperson the Norwegian prime minister. That report provided a popular definition of sustainable development - "to ensure the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". A paper on sustainable development would then seem to be a topic that fits well with the original stipulations of the Barrington trust for a lecture that "relates to the conduct and duty of people to one another" (Black, 1947).