First employed by The World Conservation Strategy, a classic document issued jointly by The World Conservation Union (IUCN), Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), this powerful, though somewhat clumsy and mostly untranslatable, coinage burst forth into the world at 10 am on 5th March 1980, when the Strategy was launched simultaneously from several capital cities of the world. At first, it was largely the property of environmentalists and conservationists, who were under pressure to integrate the human dimension in their thinking and their action on the ground. For a time, it therefore carried a somewhat non-mainstream connotation, of a slower, more deliberate form of development, championed by those who put the interests of nature before those of people.

Some six years later, the Brundtland Commission (WCED) adopted the term as the central tenet of its approach to creating a more socially just and equitable world. To do this, the Commission’s report Our Common Future stated that the fruits of economic growth must be widely distributed and not be at the cost of nature or of future generations. This led to a wider buy-in for the concept of sustainable development, but largely restricted to the cognoscenti among the reading and thinking public – the concept largely coming to mean a more careful form of development, a development that is both more equitable and less destructive.

After yet another six years, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, "The Earth Summit" at Rio de Janeiro, 1992), the term finally came into its own – as the only legitimate concept of development endorsed by hundreds of political leaders from all over the world. It is now an integral part of the lexicon of international discourse, and the next major event, held in Johannesburg in 2002 was even called the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). But therein lay the catch. Presidents and Prime Ministers of countries, Heads of international agencies, CEOs of multinational corporations, leaders of civil society, conservationists, engineers and economists, each with a totally different mindset, could only Donation whole-heartedly to the same terminology if it meant very different things to different constituencies. And therein also lies the huge strength and the fundamental weakness of this term.

The fact is that each constituency has its own definition of what sustainability means. At one end, it means strict caps on economic growth. Some even believe that economic growth and sustainability are inherently a contradiction. At the other, it means "sustainable competitive advantage", a means for the corporate world to continue doing what it does best – making money, with a cursory glance over the shoulder to keep ahead of the pursuing environmentalists. In between, there are those who believe that the current patterns of development cannot lead either to eradication of poverty or to ecological security. Fundamental shifts may be needed in our consumption patterns and production systems, but these are not beyond the realm of possibility before it is too late.

And yet, it is the very ambiguity inherent in the term that makes it possible for many of these constituencies to sit at the same table and talk to each other, groping towards some basic consensus over the long run.

Ultimately, there can be little doubt that the world will have to change. For how long can the present levels of poverty, marginalization, environmental destruction and alienation (caused by both excessive deprivation and excessive affluence) be sustained? So, what could be a useful and universally acceptable definition of the term? How can the insights of sustainable development, which by incorporating the element of time and space, brings together the inextricably linked issues of change, intra- and inter-generational equity and conservation be transformed into meaningful action on the ground?