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Concepts and Principles

Advancing towards sustainable development through research and innovation

The Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future,^[1] brought forth the concept of sustainable development as a critical and urgent innovation in governance. Sustainable development emphasized the dynamic linkages among human well-being, economic development and environmental underpinnings, with emphasis on the following:

• Intra- and inter-generational linkages
  Development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

• Inter-dependence
  Development that takes account of the inherent connections among our environment, the people living in it, and the economy within which we interact on a daily basis; and

• Multi-stakeholder perspectives
  Development that relies on the multiple perspectives of broad participation to adequately understand the complexity of issues and to attain the legitimacy necessary to implement initiatives that advance development.

• Multi-scale effects
  Understanding the inter-relationships between scales for issues and policy responses.

• Inherent capacities
  Understanding and appreciating the thresholds that exist within our inter-related socio-economic and environmental systems.

• Adaptive learning and management
  The need for continuous cycles of planning, implementation and adjustment due to the inherent complexity and uncertainty in environment-development processes.

To translate these principles into practice, many governments are creating and implementing sustainable development strategies. Strategies in their many forms represent a more systematic approach to policy planning and for managing sustainable development, and often provide the institutional context for measurement and assessment processes and products.

Measurement and assessment plays a critical role in strategic and co-ordinated action for sustainable development. Measuring progress is also a high leverage point for action—measurement and assessment provide an integrated understanding of current socio-economic and ecological conditions, and the use of measurement tools for strategic decision-making and motivation is pervasive in society. Understanding past and current conditions and dynamics is necessary for creating a vision and sets of priorities to guide societal actions for development. It is this understanding that motivates IISD's Measurement and Assessment program to continue advancing principles, approaches and tools for sustainability measurement and assessment.

Our world is complex, full of uncertainty, surprises and change. Consequently, strategic and co-ordinated action for sustainable development needs to be adaptive. Governments are taking interest in adaptive governance and, in this regard, measurement and assessment provide an important navigation tool. This tool provides information needed to assess our progress towards improving socio-economic and ecologic conditions, to develop scenarios for the future and to assist us with acting in ways that move the sustainable development agenda forward. IISD continues to advance concepts and principles for adaptive governance, through its work on integrated assessment and adaptive policy-making.

Contents

• SD Strategies
  A sustainable development strategy is a continuing and adaptive process of strategic policy planning and co-ordinated action. IISD continues to research and communicate innovative practices in sustainable development strategies to government practitioners around the world.

• Measuring and Assessing Progress
  As assessment and measurement of progress towards sustainability continue to expand and diversify, there is a need to identify common patterns, principles and potential ways forward. IISD provides research and advice in this area.

• Adaptive Governance
  Approaches to public management, policy-making and natural resources management that embrace the inherent uncertainty and complexity of our inter-related economic, social and environmental systems are needed. IISD advances the field by engaging in projects that emphasize relevant and timely information about where we are heading and how fast we are getting there.

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