Page 61 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

44 A. Moltesen and A. Bjørn

5.1 Introduction

In 1987, the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development
published its report Our Common Future, which is sometimes referred to as the
Brundtland Report after its chairperson, Gro Harlem Brundtland (WCED 1987).
The report was a response; on the one hand to the growing disparity between North
and South and on the other hand to the increased awareness that many of the natural
systems on which we depend were under increasing stress. Development of the
South was seen as urgently needed, but the development had to be achieved in an
environmentally sound way which would allow for a continued thriving of the
world’s population—also in the future. The development in other words had to be
sustainable. While the term “sustainable development” was already introduced in
1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the publication of
Our Common Future created a widespread awareness of sustainable development
and provided its most well-known definition: “… development that meets the needs
of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs”. By coupling the concern for the present and future generations, the
concept of sustainable development, as defined in Our Common Future, provided a
framework for thinking these two increasingly pressing global challenges together
in one immensely influential term.
The ability of present and future generations to meet their needs depends strongly
on the life support functions of the earth and inherent in the definition of sustainable
development is thus a concern for the health of the environment. The development of
LCA can in many regards be seen as stemming from the same concern for envi-
ronmental protection (see Chap. 3). A natural question may therefore be; How does
LCA and sustainable development relate, and to what extent can LCA be used as a
methodology for informing decisions towards sustainability?
To answer these questions we will start by giving an overview of how sus-
tainable development is understood in literature, followed by an analysis of the
possibilities and limitations for LCA to support it.

5.2 What Is Sustainability?

Since the publication of Our Common Future, many different definitions of “sus-
tainable development” or the related term “sustainability” have been presented. In
this chapter we will use these two terms interchangeably, but it should be men-
tioned that in literature, these concepts can be used with different connotations. It is,
for example, sometimes asserted that sustainable development is primarily about
development (sometimes seen as synonymous with economic growth), whereas
sustainability gives priority to the environment. Others have argued that the dif-
ference is rather that sustainable development should be seen as the process or
journey to achieving sustainability.