Sustainable Development" or the "Sustainability of Development" in International Law

Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from “Our Common Future”, also known as the 'Brundtland Report' which contains: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The key concepts of this definition are in particular: the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs". Strong attention in this essay is devoted, among other things, to the two foundational elements of the concept of sustainable development, namely "development" and "sustainability". Sustainability means that present and future peoples have the same right to find, on the aver¬age, equal opportunities for realizing their con¬cepts of a good human life; and development contains a wide range of social, economical and cultural improvements. Combination of these two may create some challenges for the contemporary international law which this article tries to consider them.