By Marianne Schulze
May 2007

The climate change has meanwhile become a fact of life. Increasing CO2 emissions raise the question of how we can reverse this as much as possible. Sustainable development, however, means much more.

The demand for more sustainability is nothing new. In 1972, the Club of Rome referred to the “Limits to Growth”. The oil crisis came shortly after that, which brought about a Sunday traffic ban in Germany and other countries. That also gave rise to the environmentalists and the “Greens”. However, as the energy market relaxed, everyone quickly suppressed the initial shock, and everyone who called for more sustainability and more responsibility to the environment were labelled as unrealistic eco freaks. Increasing productivity and consumption – that was still the credo; environmental protection was more of a nuisance.

Still, the deliberations of the Club of Rome did not go without repercussions. In 1987, the UN gremia responsible for environment created the model for “Sustainable Development”. The United Nations embraced this model at the Conference for Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. With the Agenda 21, it provided a plan of action that should be implemented on a national, regional and communal level. This statement was drafted by the UN commission that was named after the Swedish politician Gro Harlem Brundtland: “Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”