Principles defining sustainable development

1. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
   
2. Sustainable development requires the promotion of values that encourage consumption standards that are within the bounds of the ecologically possible and to which all can reasonably aspire.
   
3. Meeting essential needs depends in part on achieving full growth potential, and sustainable development clearly requires economic growth in places where such needs are not being met.
   
4. Though the issue is not merely one of population size but the distribution of resources, sustainable development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.
   
5. Sustainable development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth; the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and living beings.
   
6. Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond which lies ecological disaster ... but ultimate limits there are, and sustainability requires that long before these are reached the world must ensure equitable access to the constrained resources and re-orient technological efforts to relieve the pressure.
   
7. Most renewable resources are part of a complex and interlinked ecosystem and maximal sustained yield must be defined after taking into account system-wide effects of exploitation.
   
8. Sustainable development requires that the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources should foreclose as few options as possible.
   
9. Sustainable development requires the conservation of plant and animal species.
   
10. Sustainable development requires that the adverse impacts on the quality of air, water and other natural elements are minimized so as to sustain the ecosystem's overall integrity.