Three Pillars of Sustainable Development (Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability): A Brief Narrative

Often depicted as three overlapping rings with overall sustainability at the center, the three-pillar notion of (social, economic, and environmental) sustainability has gained widespread acceptance. This research examines and analyzes pertinent historical sustainability literature in order to determine the origins and theoretical underpinnings of this idea. This indicates that the three pillar concept did not originate in a single place, but rather developed gradually as a result of numerous criticisms of the economic status quo from social and ecological viewpoints in the early academic literature, as well as the United Nations’ attempt to reconcile economic growth as a solution to social and ecological issues. However, the idea of the three pillars appears to have existed before this. We have not come across a conceptually sound explanation of the three pillars elsewhere. This is believed to be partially caused by the sustainability discourse’s historical emergence from widely disparate schools of thinking. Approaches at a theoretically rigorous operationalization of “sustainability” are thwarted by the lack of such a theoretically sound conception.