“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This standard definition of sustainable development comes from the Brundtland report on the World Commission on Environment and Development, published in 1987. It is the first official recognition of the awareness that natural resources are limited and that it is necessary to find a means of development that takes this into consideration.

The impact of human activities on the environment has become a growing concern, the harmful effects of which are becoming more and more obvious:

Every day, our factories, cars, houses, power stations and farms consume a quantity equal to that which it took the planet 100,000 days to create. The world consumes almost three times as much energy as it did 40 years ago, and yet 77% of this energy is provided by burning petrol, coal and gas. This situation now poses two major concerns: firstly, burning energy pollutes and heats up the atmosphere on a large scale, and secondly, this burning is based on limited natural resources.

In its 2009 report, the International Energy Agency called for a “Clean Energy New Deal”.  The IEA presented two scenarios.

- Either humanity continues with its current rate of energy consumption and with the same energy mix, in which case coal, petrol and gas would have to meet 80% of consumption by 2030, which would cause “irreparable” damage to the planet.

- Or, a policy is put in place to improve energy efficiency (energy-saving) and to develop wind energy, solar energy, biofuels, nuclear energy and CO2 capture and storage. In the second scenario, it would be possible to reduce CO2 emissions to 450 parts per million (ppm), the target set in 2007 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Another effect of human activities on the environment is the decline in biodiversity: the human race claims 50% of what the earth produces for itself. As a result, the planet’s natural resources are struggling to renew themselves: two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land has suffered from soil erosion, 50% of the planet’s forests have been cut down, over-fishing affects 70% of species and drinking water reservoirs are drying up.

The damage to our environment also has serious consequences for our health: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 1.5 million people die every year from the effects of atmospheric pollution around the world. 

In developing countries, malnutrition, unprotected sex, lack of clean drinking water and sanitary conditions are the main causes of mortality.


Furthermore, these threats now have a cost for humanity that will only get higher if the international community does not take major action. The Stern report, published in 2006, states that the impact of climate change on the world economy if no action is taken would be 5% to 20% of the world’s GDP per year, against 1% of the world’s GDP to control gas emissions on the greenhouse effect.


Alongside this fact, mankind is certainly three times richer than it was 40 years ago, but key problems remain:

- 1.1 billion people still live below the global poverty line, i.e. on less than USD 1 per day. In 1980, the poorest people were 22 times poorer than the population of the United States, today they are 86 times poorer.

- Almost a billion people throughout the world suffer from malnutrition, while in the richest countries, the number of diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc.) linked to a bad diet is increasing drastically: obesity affects almost one in three Americans and one in ten French people, according to OECD figures.

Faced with these environmental, economic and social problems that are now occurring all over the world (climate change, scarcity of resources, gaps between developed and developing countries, drastic decrease of biodiversity, growth of the world’s population, natural and industrial catastrophes), sustainable development is one response that all players (governments, economic players, civil society) can make to reconsider economic growth on a global scale in order to take the environmental and social aspects of development into account.