View article

Sustainable development is about the redirection of development (WCED, 1987). It is not about an identifiable end state (Kemp et al., 2005; Meadowcroft, 1999; Meadowcroft et al., 2005; Voß et al., 2006). Sustainable development is a contested concept. The requirements of sustainable development are multiple and interconnected. As an inherently dynamic, indeterminate and contested concept (Mog, 2004), sustainability cannot be translated into a blueprint from which criteria can be derived and unambiguous decisions can be taken to get there. From a governance perspective such disagreement is an essential part of sustainable development, one that makes operationalization difficult (Farrell et al., 2005).