In a penetrating essay on the history and ambiguities of the sustainability movement, Joshua Yates dissects the tensions the concept has from its origins:
The term only rose to international prominence … as part of a grand synthesis (or compromise) between environmentalists and development experts within the United Nations system. That synthesis found its now classic articulation as "sustainable development" in "Our Common Future," the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (colloquially known as the Brundtland Report). This landmark report linked sustainability with development in order to harmonize tensions between advanced industrial nations increasingly concerned with environmental problems, on the one hand, and the need for economic development that bedeviled newly decolonizing countries, on the other. In this way, the rhetoric of sustainability was birthed as a policy rubric intended to bridge opposing constituencies in an international context of postcolonialism, Cold War geopolitics, and the beginnings of economic globalization.
The Dish 