20.    Sustainable development was famously defined by “Our Common Future” — the landmark report of the World Commission on Environment and Development published in 1987 — as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In this sense, it is not a destination, but a dynamic process of adaptation, learning and action.

21. Importantly, sustainable development is not a synonym for “environmental protection”. Instead, sustainable development is fundamentally about recognizing, understanding and acting on interconnections — above all those between the economy, society and the natural environment. Sustainable development is about seeing the whole picture — such as the critical links between food, water, land and energy. And it is about ensuring that our actions today are consistent with where we want to go tomorrow.

22.    With this in mind, how far is the world from a sustainable trajectory? How much has really changed since the Brundtland report, or since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, or since the reaffirmation of the Rio principles at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002? As shown in box 1, real progress has been made — but the world is still not on the path of sustainable development.

23.    Overall, the progress towards sustainable development to date has been neither fast nor deep enough, and the urgency of further-reaching action is growing all the time. But as the next section discusses, major changes are already in train in the larger, global context — changes that will have far-reaching implications for sustainable development.