Concept and indicators of sustainable development Almost two
decades ago the United Nations established a commission to
investigate persistent policy failures in both environment and
development. The so-called Brundtland Commission considered the
neglect of interdependences among nature, economy and society as
the principal cause of these failures. Acting on the Brundtland
report, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro propagated
sustainable development as the key to integrating the main –
social, economic and environmental – dimensions of development
in planning and policy making. Its Action Plan, Agenda 21,
considered integrated environmental and economic accounting as
“a first step towards the integration of sustainability into
economic management”. Ten years later, the Johannesburg Summit
on Sustainable Development reaffirmed the commitment to the Rio
principles and Agenda 21. It did not take up environmental
accounting, but called instead on governments to promote data
collection and indicators for sust