The Brundtland Commission's Report - 10 years

THIS CONTAINS THE papers and workshop reports from the conference held in Oslo, Norway in 1997 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brundtland Commission’s report Our Common Future. This 1987 report had re-introduced the concept of sustainable development into the international discourse on development and, by providing far-reaching suggestions of the need for new patterns of economic growth, where environmental concerns are integrated and the benefits of growth more equitably distributed, it was one of the most discussed and debated United Nations reports published in the past decade. As argued in the foreword, the attention the 1987 report has received seems to be leading to a historic shift in all societies – although at varying rates, levels of commitment and visibility.
The 1997 conference was convened to take stock of the progress towards sustainable development, and provide ideas and directions for future research. To ensure a wide range of perspectives, the conference programme committee gathered speakers from a variety of disciplines from within both the natural and social sciences.

Following the structure of the two-day conference, the publication begins with the opening remarks by Gro Harlem Brundtland on Knowledge for a Sustainable Development. This is followed by four sections:
·Population, Globalization and Urbanization – Trends and Underlying Processes
·Biodiversity and Sustainable Resource Use
·Sustainable Production and Consumption Patterns
·International, National and Local Institutional Challenges

The reports from a number of workshops form the last part of the publication. Topics covered in the workshops include: population/urbanization; globalization; temperate and tropical forests; oceans and other aquatic systems; land use; energy and sustainability; industry and sustainability; food security; and international, national and local institutional challenges. The workshop reports generally include an assessment of the current “state of the art” in the specific area, including progress and developments since 1987, followed by guidelines or agendas (and, in some cases, a list of obstacles) for future research.

The final paper consists of a summary of the discussions, drawing attention to a number of obstacles that have prevented necessary changes towards sustainable development, summarized in eight points: knowledge failure; market failure; institutional failure; political and behavioural failure; technology failure; information and transparency failure; incentive failure; and equity failure. It ends by stressing the need for closer cooperation between sectors to achieve a common understanding of how short-term actions create problems and opportunities for long-term sustainability.