The discussion on 'Sustainable Development' was started after submitting a report on environment to the United Nation in 1987. That report was

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Our Common Future. In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, submitted its report 'Our Common Future' (the Brundtland Report) to the United Nations. It popularised the term 'sustainable development' and its classic definition — meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs — launching the global debate the question describes.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Not a real 1987 UN report on sustainable development. Global climate assessments came from the IPCC, whose First Assessment Report appeared in 1990 — a different body and a different theme.  (c) Again an IPCC-style climate assessment (the Second Assessment Report was 1995), not the 1987 report that introduced sustainable development.  (d) The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was released in 2013–14 and deals with climate-change science — decades after 1987 and unrelated to the origin of 'sustainable development'.

Concept: The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) was set up by the UN in 1983 under Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway. Its 1987 report 'Our Common Future' coined the widely used definition of sustainable development and set the agenda for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Sustainability rests on three pillars — economic, social and environmental — later operationalised through the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (2015).

State PCS 2020 Q13 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2020 Q13 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer