Sustainability

Sustainability sounds like one idea. The workbook treats it as three ideas, joined together.

The definition comes from the United Nations. In 1987, a UN group called the Brundtland Commission wrote it down. Sustainability means meeting today's needs. It also means not harming the ability of people tomorrow to meet their own needs.

The workbook splits this into three parts. Environmental sustainability means we use nature no faster than nature can renew itself. It also means we pollute no faster than nature can clean it up. Social sustainability means a society protects human rights. It meets basic needs like healthcare, schooling, and transport. It does not let anyone face discrimination. Economic sustainability means people have a safe way to earn a living, with steady access to the resources they need.

The three parts are not separate boxes. The workbook draws them as circles, one inside another. The economy sits inside society. Society sits inside the environment. Each part depends on the part around it.

The 1987 definition and its source: the UN Brundtland Commission.

The three dimensions, each with its own test:

Where sustainability reappears in the paper. It is also one of the six evaluation parameters in the Social Project Monitoring Framework (Chapter 5, 5.9.3), where it asks a narrower question: will a specific project's benefits last after the funding period ends, and do communities feel ownership of what was built. That is a project-level test, distinct from this page's broader, three-dimension definition of sustainability itself.

No rupee figure attaches to the concept at this general level. The workbook gives sustainability a year (1987) and a structure (three nested dimensions), not a threshold or ratio — the numbers only appear once sustainability is applied to a specific project's own KPIs.

Illustrative cooperative; figures are made up.

Van Bandhu Cooperative runs a bamboo-craft livelihoods project for 150 tribal artisans in Gadchiroli, funded by a 3-year, ₹60 lakh grant.

• Environmental test: the cooperative harvests bamboo at a rate its own forestry survey says the local groves can regenerate within 4 years — consumption inside nature's replenishment rate.
• Social test: all 150 artisans get a written contract, a minimum day-wage of ₹350, and none are excluded from the cooperative's decision-making meetings by caste or gender.
• Economic test: by year 3, artisans earn an average of ₹8,000 a month from craft sales alone, a livelihood the cooperative expects to continue without further grant funding.

If the grant ended and the cooperative folded because artisans could no longer sell their bamboo products at a living price, the project would fail the economic dimension even if its craft techniques stayed environmentally sound. Sustainability needs all three dimensions to hold, not just one.

Chapter 1 (Introduction to Social Sector Ecosystem), section 1.5.1(v), gives the Brundtland Commission's 1987 definition and the three-dimension (environmental, social, economic) breakdown, with the nested-circles model. Chapter 5's evaluation parameters (5.9.3) reuse the word in a narrower, project-specific sense. Expect a question naming the 1987 source of the definition, or asking which of the three dimensions a described scenario tests.

• 1987, Brundtland Commission is the workbook's cited source — not a SEBI regulation or an Indian statute.
• Three dimensions: environmental, social, economic — not two, and not the same as the SPMF's single "sustainability" evaluation parameter, which asks a narrower question about one project's durability.
• The nested model matters: economy depends on society, society depends on environment — sustainability is not three independent checklists.
• Do not confuse this general definition with Sustainable Development Goals — the SDGs are a specific 2015 UN agenda built on this idea, not the definition itself.