Sustainability is just one word and yet there seems to be hundreds of definitions. Just do a search on the internet using "sustainability" as the only seach criteria.

The best-known definition of sustainability or sustainable development is attributed to Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, and Chairperson of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The Commission was established by the Secretary General of the UN in 1983, and reported in 1987 ("Our Common Future", 1987).the World Commission on Environment and Development.

The definition suggests that sustainability is defined as "forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

Since 1983, the standard and most generally used definition of "sustainability is: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

1960		Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) created in Paris December 14, 1960. The organization is to promote policies designed to: achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the development of the world economy. contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non member countries in the process of economic development. contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis in accordance with international obligations. The original Member countries were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and the USA. Subsequent members: Japan, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Korea.
1962		Rachel Carson publishes "Silent Spring". This book brings together research on toxicology, ecology and epidemiology to suggest that agricultural pesticides are building to catastrophic levels. This is linked to damage to animal species and to human health. It shatters the assumption that the environment has an infinite capacity to absorb pollutants and unleashes a new wave of environmentalism.
1963		The International Biological Program is initiated by nations around the world. This ten year study analyses environmental damage and the biological and ecological mechanisms through which it occurs. In creating a large body of data, it lays the foundation for a science-based environmentalism.
1966		International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the UN
1968		Paul Ehrlich publishes book "Population Bomb" on the connection between human population, resource exploitation and the environment.
1968		The Club of Rome, led by Italian industrialist Aurrelio Peccei and Scottish scientist Alexander King, is established by 36 European economists and scientists. Its goal is to pursue a holistic understanding of and solutions to the 'world problematique'. It commissions a study of global proportions to model and analyse the dynamic interactions between industrial production, population, environmental damage, food consumption and natural resource usage (later published as “The Limits to Growth”.
1968		The Intergovernmental Conference for Rational Use and Conservation of Biosphere sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is held. This provides a forum for early discussions of the concept of ecologically sustainable development.
1968		The UN General Assembly authorises the holding of a Human Environment Conference in 1972.
1969		The US Congress passes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) creating the first national agency for environmental protection - the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
1970		The first Earth Day is held as a national teach-in on the environment. An estimated twenty million people participate in peaceful demonstrations all across the USA.
1972		Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward write "Only One Earth". The book sounds an urgent alarm about the impact of human activity on the biosphere but also expresses optimism that a shared concern for the future of the planet can lead humankind to create a common future.
1972		The United Nations Conference on Human Environment is held in Stockholm. The conference is rooted in the regional pollution and acid rain problems of northern Europe. There is opposition to this "eco-agenda" by the Group of 77 and the Eastern bloc. Nevertheless, it provides the first international recognition of environmental issues. The concept of sustainable development is cohesively argued to present a satisfactory resolution to the environmental versus development dilemma. The conference leads to the establishment of numerous national environmental protection agencies and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
1972		The Club of Rome publishes “Limits to Growth”. The report is extremely controversial because it predicts dire consequences if there is not a slowdown of "growth" (throughput of raw materials from nature). Northern countries criticise the report for not giving enough weight to technological solutions while Southern countries are incensed because it appears to advocate abandonment of economic development. The ensuing debate nevertheless heightens awareness of the interconnections between several well-known global problems. The authors make use of the notion that the stability of ecological and economic could be “sustainable far into the future”.
1972		Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil crisis facilitates an expansion of the limits-to-growth debate. (OPEC is an intergovernmental organization made up of twelve oil producing nations.)
1974		Chemists Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, then at the University of California, Irvine release a seminal work in Nature magazing on Chloro-fluoro- carbons (CFCs) which are compounds containing chlorine, fluorine and carbon only. They calculated that if human use of CFC gases is to continue at an unaltered rate the ozone layer will be depleted by many percent after some decades.
1979		James C. Coomer (ed.) publishes the book “Quest for a Sustainable Society”. In his own chapter, “The Nature of the Quest for a Sustainable Society”, he describes “the sustainable society is one that lives within the self-perpetuating limits of its environment. That society... is not a “no growth” society... It is rather, a society that recognizes the limits of growth... [and] looks for alternative ways of growing”.
1980		The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) releases the “World Conservation Strategy”. The strategy defines development as "the modification of the biosphere and the application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life". The section “Towards Sustainable Development” identifies the main agents of habitat destruction as poverty, population pressure, social inequity and the terms of trade. It calls for a new International Development Strategy with the aims of redressing inequities, achieving a more dynamic and stable world economy, stimulating accelerating economic growth and countering the worst impacts of poverty. “Sustainable development” is defined as the maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems, the preservation of genetic diversity, and the sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems.
1981		The Global 2000 Report to the President released by the Council on Environmental Quality (commissioned by President Jimmy Carter on May 23, 1977). The study director, Gerald O. Barney, based the research on computer models to make projections for the future based on trends for the 1960s and 1970s. The conclusion: If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the worlds people will be poorer in many ways than they are today. This report provides a comprehensive (and surprisingly accurate) projection of global environmental impacts and resource supply issues over the next 20 years. The Report recogniszes biodiversity for the first time as a critical characteristic in the proper functioning of the planetary ecosystem.
1985		The World Meteorological Society, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) calls a meeting in Villach (Austria). It reports on the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The meeting predicts global warming.
1986		The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Conference on Environment and Development is held in Ottawa. Participants see sustainable development as an emerging paradigm derived from two closely related paradigms of conservation: one reacting against the laissez-faire economic theory which considers living resources as externalities and free goods. one based on the concept of resource stewardship.
1987		“Our Common Future" (Brundtland Report) published. It reports the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development which was formed in 1983. The report weaves together consideration of social, economic, cultural, and environmental issues. For the first time it gives some direction for comprehensive global solutions. It also popularizes the term “sustainable development” defining it as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". (Chairperson Gro Harlem Brundtland)
1988		Establishment of an Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with three working groups to assess the most up-to-date scientific, technical and socio-economic research in the field of climate change.
1988		Ben and Jerry’s (Ice Cream Company) in the United State produces first Social Performance Assessments.
1990		Allan Solomon in the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) report “Towards Ecological Sustainability in Europe: Climate, Water Resources, Soils and Biota” defines “ecologically sustainable development” as a condition in which society's use of renewable resources takes place without destruction of the resources or the environmental context which they require.
1991		International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) publish “Caring for the Earth: 2nd World Conservation Strategy”. The strategy builds on the first World Conservation Strategy. In order to keep the focus on the concept of “sustainability” the strategy deliberately avoids using the term “sustainable development”. Instead it talks about a “sustainable society”, “sustainable living” and “sustainability” itself.
1992		The U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) is held in Rio de Janeiro. It results in the publication of Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Rio Declaration, and a statement of non-binding Forest Principles. The terms “sustainable development” and “sustainability” are used throughout the Agenda 21 document but are undefined. The main achievement of the Earth Summit is a treaty to reduce emissions of "greenhouse gases" which help trap heat in the atmosphere and are believed to be a cause of global warming. - Nations adopt 1990 as the benchmark year at the summit in which industrialised countries agree to take voluntary steps to cut emissions to that year's levels. Most countries, other than Germany and Great Britain, have failed to meet that goal.
1992		Creation of Business for Social Responsibility, a United States based business led membership organisation focusing on corporate social responsibility.
1992		September 30th - The United States space agency the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reports that the "ozone hole" over Antarctica grew 15 percent in 1992 and is now nearly the size of the entire North American continent. The Antarctic ozone hole, first spotted in 1985, is caused by the depletion of the Earthshielding ozone layer by human-made chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, known as CFCs.
1993		May 20 - United States scientists report that they have invented a computer model for predicting the effects of global warming on crops and forests. They find that the growth rate of plants is affected by the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, by nitrogen in soil and by temperature and moisture changes caused by global warming.
1994		June 1 - The international environmental group, Greenpeace announces in a report entitled "The Climate Timebomb", that global warming is causing severe climatic changes and environmental disasters around the world.
1996		The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in their report “Pollution Prevention and Control, Environmental Criteria for Sustainable Transport” point out that “the originators of the term sustainable development had a particular definition of the word sustainable in mind: capable of being continued” so they went on to define sustainable development as “development (activity) that is capable of being continued”.
1997		Negotiations for the The Kyoto Protocol decribing the implementation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Developed nations adopt targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (in aggregate, 5.2% below the 1990 levels). The targets become binding when the protocol is signed by a sufficient number of nations.
1997		John Elkington publishes Cannibals with Forks in it he coins the term Triple Bottom Line
1998		Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere publish an article in Scientific American "The end of cheap oil". They argue that world oil production will most likely peak in volume before 2010. This position is now also supported in broad terms by the International Energy Agency. (The image at left is from the June 2004 National Geographic.)
1998		November - Around 170 nations gather at the United Nations global warming conference in Buenos Aires to discuss ways of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases by 2008-2012. - Specialists from the United States and Canada tell the summit that global warming is killing the world's coral reefs, and with them the swarming sea life they shelter and support.
2000		A team of Dutch experts and an English writer (Paul Weaver, Leo Jansen, Geert van Grootveld, Egbert van Spiegel and Philip Vergragt) publish “Sustainable Technology Development” which reports on the results of a major program backed by the Dutch Government to develop technologies that can improve resource use efficiency by between Factor 20 and Factor 50 (that is, by between 95% and 98%). The book outlines a very practical and systematic methodology for achieving such extraordinary efficiency gains in a timely fashion.
2008		"Where are we now?" Additions to follow...