Communicating sustainable development options — who evaluates the trade-offs?

The search for models of sustainable development has not been easy. Some concepts and definitions have taken their cue from the Brundtland report’s temporal understanding of sustainability as maintaining the welfare of present generations without endangering the welfare of future generations (WCED 1987); others see sustainability as a spatial concept which implies that sustainable communities or regions stay within their ecological carrying capacity (Wallner et al. 1996); yet others view sustainability as a concept of development that promotes a balance between three interrelated systems – the economy, social systems and ecological systems (Robinson and Tinker 1995, O’Hara 1998).