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Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of development policies have helped generate interest in sustainable development. Sustainable development is often defined as meeting present needs while ensuring that future needs are still met. This ensures that policy-making consider the long-term implications for social and ecological systems while working to meet the basic needs of so many living in poverty. As this cartoon by Zapiro, which was published shortly before the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that was held in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, the current geo-political-economic conditions remain highly inequitable.
A recent report from the IUCN titled “The Future of Sustainability” proposed a framework outlined in Figure 4:
