EIRP Proceedings, Vol 8 (2013)

Abstract

The concept of sustainable development assigns all the social and economic development methods and forms, whose fundament is firstly represented by the insurance of a balance between these social-economic systems and the elements of the natural capital. The most known definition of sustainable development is surely the one of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in the “Our common future” report, also known as the Brundtland Report:  “sustainable development is the development that aims at satisfying the present need without compromising future generations’ possibility to satisfy their own needs”. Sustainable development also aims at and tries to establish a theoretical frame in order to make decisions in all situations that include a human/environment report, whether it is about the environment, the economic or the social environment. Though sustainable development has initially been regarded as a solution to the ecological crisis determined by the huge industrial exploitation of resources and the continuous soil degradation of the environment and it has sought to preserve the quality of the environment, nowadays the concept has been extended to the living quality in its intricacy, involving the economic and social issue. Nowadays, the concern of sustainable development also represents a concern for right and country equality, not only for generations. Within the process, several international conventions have been adopted, which establish precise country requirements and strict implementation terms regarding climate changing, biodiversity preservation, protection of the forest fund and of the wet areas, access to environment quality information and others, that outline an international judicial space for the implementation of the sustainable development concepts.