Brundtland Commission
It was founded in 1983 when Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, appointed Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, as chairperson of the commission.
Ten years after the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, a number of global environmental challenges had not been adequately addressed.
Neoliberalism and economic globalization dominated the political agenda of leading trading nations, led by the US's Ronald Reagan and the UK's Margaret Thatcher.
[2] In December 1983, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, asked the former Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, to create an organization independent of the UN to focus on environmental and developmental problems and solutions after an affirmation by the General Assembly resolution in the fall of 1983.
The document was the culmination of a “900-day” international exercise which catalogued, analyzed, and synthesized written submissions and expert testimony from “senior government representatives, scientists and experts, research institutes, industrialists, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and the general public” held at public hearings throughout the world.
The Brundtland Commission's mandate was to:“[1] re-examine the critical issues of environment and development and to formulate innovative, concrete, and realistic action proposals to deal with them; [2] strengthen international cooperation on environment and development and assess and propose new forms of cooperation that can break out of existing patterns and influence policies and events in the direction of needed change; and [3] raise the level of understanding and commitment to action on the part of individuals, voluntary organizations, businesses, institutes, and governments” (1987: 347).
[7] Furthermore,“The Commission has focused its attention on the areas of population, food security, the loss of species and genetic resources, energy, industry, and human settlements - realizing that all of these are connected and cannot be treated in isolation one from another” (1987: 27).
The commission suggested that while the "environment" was previously perceived as a sphere separate from human emotion or action, and "development" was a term habitually used to describe political goals or economic progress, it is more comprehensive to understand the two terms in relation to each other (i.e., one can better understand the environment in relation to development and vice versa because they cannot and should not be distinguished as separate entities).
[7] The Brundtland definition is open to interpretation, allowing for widespread support from diverse efforts, groups and organizations, and has also been criticized for being "self-defeating and compromised rhetoric".
Many of the members were important political figures in their home country, such as William Ruckelshaus, former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
[citation needed] The international structure and scope of the Brundtland Commission allowed multiple problems (such as deforestation and ozone depletion) to be looked at from a holistic approach.
With the overwhelming number of countries that put economic growth on the forefront of sustainable development, it is evident that the other two pillars have been suffering, especially with the overall well-being of the environment in a dangerously unhealthy state.
The Brundtland Commission put forth a conceptual framework that many nations agree with and want to try to make a difference within their countries, but it has been difficult to change these concepts about sustainability into concrete actions and programs.
[12] The focus on environmental protection transpired globally, including a great deal of investment in renewable energy power capacity.
