In the end there may be as many definitions of sustainability and sustainable development as there are groups trying to define it. As early as 1996 you could find as many as 300 documented definitions of sustainability and sustainable development (Dobson, 1996). Currently a search in google for the question "what is sustainable development?" yields 61 million results. There is now a vast literature on sustainable development that we will not attempt to review here. In brief, most definitions include the following elements:
According to Wironen (2007), sustainable development is a fundamentally contested concept. He quotes the conclusion of Paul Ekins that sustainable development is "economically and technologically feasible, but requires lifestyle changes and guiding or fixing of the economy" (as cited in Wironen, p. 9). For some this has meant rejection of the dominant paradigm of sustainable development with its linkage to growth in favor of "de-growth." In this critical view, by promising to reconcile growth with environmental preservation, national governments and international organizations fail to recognize that the economic principle of endless growth that has caused environmental destruction in the first place (Fournier, 2008).