What Is Sustainable Development? Models and Innovative Approaches

Hook: borrowing from the future

Imagine your family spent all its savings this year on a huge party. It would be great now, but there would be nothing left for next year's rent. Many people argue that using resources faster than they renew, or polluting faster than nature can clean up, is like that: borrowing from the future. Sustainable development is about living well now without emptying the account for those who come after us.

Defining sustainable development

In 1987, the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development (often called the Brundtland Commission) published Our Common Future. It defined sustainable development as:

development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

In 2015, all UN member countries, including Canada, adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as clean water, affordable clean energy, decent work, and life on land and below water, to reach by 2030.

Two ways to picture sustainability

The three-pillar model shows three overlapping circles: environment, society and economy. A choice is sustainable when it is good for all three at once (the centre). For example, a well-managed forest provides habitat (environment), jobs and cultural uses (society), and wood products (economy).

The nested model puts the circles inside each other: the economy exists inside society, and society exists inside the environment. This model makes a strong point: without a healthy environment, there is no society or economy. It does not let us 'trade' a lot of environmental damage for a lot of money, because the economy depends on the environment.

Innovative models and approaches

1. Circular economy. Our usual economy is linear: take, make, waste. A circular economy designs out waste: products are made to last, be repaired, be taken apart and be recycled, so materials stay in use. Examples: repair cafés, refillable containers, remanufactured car parts, and rules that make producers responsible for collecting and recycling their products (Ontario uses this approach for packaging, batteries and electronics).

2. Industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks. Businesses are placed together so one's waste becomes another's resource: waste heat from a plant warms greenhouses; leftover sawdust becomes fuel pellets.

3. Triple bottom line. Businesses report on people, planet and profit, not just money.

4. Indigenous-led stewardship. Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas put Indigenous governments at the centre of conservation. For example, Thaidene Nëné in the Northwest Territories was established in 2019 by the Łutsël K'é Dene First Nation, working with the federal and territorial governments. Indigenous Guardians programs employ community members to monitor lands and waters. These approaches protect ecosystems while creating local jobs and supporting culture and language.

5. Long-term thinking. The Seventh Generation principle, associated with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, asks decision-makers to consider the effects of their choices on people seven generations in the future. Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk), a teaching shared by Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall, encourages using the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and Western science together.

6. Ecosystem-based management. Instead of managing one species or product, managers look after whole ecosystems and the well-being of communities. British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest agreements, reached by First Nations, the province, forest companies and environmental groups, use this approach to protect much of a coastal rainforest while allowing limited, carefully managed logging.

7. Green building and clean technology. Energy-efficient buildings, heat pumps, mass timber construction (which stores carbon in wood) and renewable energy reduce environmental impacts while creating jobs.