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Assignment for Wednesday, March 29: General definitions and models Today we begin working with the concept(s) of sustainability. The place to start, inevitably, is with the first couple of chapters of Our Common Future, the widely read 1987 report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. It is this report that first proposed the idea of sustainable development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This report inevitably occasioned many critiques, from several different angles. Before coming to class today, please look at three of these: Chapters one and two from the Ecologist, Whose Common Future?, 1993, from a radical political perspective D.W. Orr, "Four Challenges to Sustainability," Conservation Biology 16:1457-1460 (2002) from a "concerned scientist" perspective Robert W. Kates et al., "Sustainability Science," Science 292 (5517), pp. 641-42, 2001, from an institutional perspective. If this whets your appetite, look at some of the articles cited at the bottom of the Orr article. Daily Resources Harrell's graph of sustainability time scale Harrell's reading notes Francis's reading notes