Nachhaltige Entwicklung und Energieversorgung

Sustainable is an old established term which has made a political career in the past ten years. The roots of this career extend back into the 18th century, when an economic concept of forest management was developed to replace yield maximization achieved by means of complete deforestation by yield optimization attained by conservative forest management. This latter type of forest management was termed sustainable. The language used in today's sustainability debate was based on the idea of preserving the capital provided by nature and living on the interest. As a consequence, the term sustainable became one of the key points in environmental policy and economic policy after the Brundtland report had been published (V. Hauff, 1987), which also constitutes the background to this article.