Sustainable development: The Conceptual Trajectory from the Brundtland Report to Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries

Abstract

This article re-examines the concept of sustainable development from historical and critical perspectives. It is based on the hypothesis that the concept’s increasing presence in academic, political and media discourse has not led to semantic stability. Instead, it has remained a living concept, continuously reshaped according to successive knowledge frameworks. The article traces the origins of the idea’s first articulation in literature on the limits of growth and at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, moving on to the pivotal moment of the 1987 Brundtland Commission report. It then examines the institutional embodiment of the concept, moving through the Rio Summit, the Millennium Development Goals and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and up to the most recent scientific developments related to the frameworks of safe and just earth system boundaries and the doughnut economy. The article also highlights the expanding gap between normative ambition and actual achievement, as revealed by the latest United Nations reports from 2024 and 2025.

The article concludes that sustainable development is not an expired slogan, but rather a renewed research agenda that reformulates its questions in response to changes in the scientific and political conditions of the global environmental and development crisis.