Introduction: The Ethics of Sustainable Development
Author(s)
Engel, J. Ronald
Abstract
In its 1987 report Our Common Future, the United Nations Commission of Environment and Development, under leadership of Gro Harlem Brundtland, concludes that global well-being may depend on raising sustainable development to a global ethic. Exactly what this statement implies needs to be carefully examined. For example, we must ask what ecological, social, political, and personal functions sustainable development serves, and how human aspirations can be reconciled with our moral obligations to other species and the ecosystem. We must also know on what grounds sustainable development can be called a true ethic for humans.
