A Sustainable Futures? The spatial and temporal disconnect of sustainability and its reference models.

The term sustainability refers to the quality of being able to continue over time. In the past, the term may have been used as a synonym for durability but, on closer inspection, sustainability contains within itself a capacity for change and transformation that cannot be reduced to the idea of duration and repetition of the present. The idea of sustainability, in fact, concerns a vision of the future which depends on what currently exists being considered more or less sustainable. Unlike durability, the concept of sustainability implies the possibility of a profound transformation of the status quo. A form of life, for example, may be sustainable because it manages to adapt well to the changes it encounters in its environment. The term sustainability entered the public debate in 1972, during the first United Nations conference on the environment, but a broad-based formulation of the term did not appear until 1987 with the publication of the so-called Brundtland Report entitled Our Common Future, prepared by the World Commission for the Environment and Development. The Bruntland Report laid the foundations of the idea of sustainable development; this idea soon became one of the central research themes in many scientific disciplines and in public policy development. Sustainable development means development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on En- vironment and Development 1987). This idea of sustainability brings to the fore of public debate the effects of present behaviours on future generations in times and spaces of which current generations have no experience, but with respect to which their lifestyles will impact in ways that may or may not have been foreseen and may or may not be desirable.