Sustainable Development – Conceptual Questions of Sustainability for Practice

Abstract

Sustainable development (SD), sustainability is well known and commonly used expressions in Hungary, too. Original meaning of SD, defined by UN in 1987, has been overwritten in many cases today. The aim of this paper is not only to give a short description of history of sustainability, to give concise outline of some researchers’ opinion on sustainability but by help of them to clarify the essence of the UN definition. There is an attempt to establish criteria of sustainability. By the help of criteria processes, activities could be assessed which one actually corresponds to the real sustainability. It is evidence that shift paradigm is needed however by putting SD into practice new serious questions appear on the horizon.