Sustainability - Consumers and employees have made a strong business case for firms to adopt sustainability

The concept of sustainability came on to the corporate agenda via the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (more commonly known as the Brundtland Commission after the name of its chairman, Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister). The commission, set up in 1983 to address growing concern about “the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources, and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development”, introduced the idea of sustainable development, which it famously defined as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.